ratbastid

You're living up to your nick in this thread, my friend. You're not reading or thinking, you're on ottopilot. If you'd READ smeth's post, you'd have seen him saying what Obama meant by "typical white person". Which is why I said "he did" when you asked him to define it. Which you called "avoidance response". It's all stimulus-response over there with you in this conversation, which isn't going to get us anywhere. So I request you set down your guns for a minute and actually READ the following.

Happy to, but first of all, get your smears right. He didn't say Ferraro was a typical white person. He said his grandmother is a typical white person.

By which he meant she lives in a world where racism is automatic and unthinking--she sees people she's scared of, and race has something to do with that, and it comes out in ways that aren't conducive to improving race relations. And that doesn't make her a bad person, rather it points to something in the environment, the culture of our nation, that has been largely unacknowledged and therefore impossible to deal with.

It's the single most honest thing I've maybe ever heard a politician say.

In that sense you can see (although he didn't say it) that Ferraro's statement illustrates that she dwells in the that same environment. As do I. As do, I suspect, most white Americans. THAT'S what Obama was saying. And it was only part of what he was saying--he also acknowledged that the black anger, the sort that Wright demonstrated, is part of that environment too. And without acknowledging that, it's also impossible to deal with.

Otto: I answered your question, now answer mine. Did you watch the full videos of the Wright sermons? Did that change at all your thinking about what he is saying, versus the impression you got from the high-repeat, out-of-context clips we've seen so many times now?