Typical (Black) (White) Person

by Nikitas
www.nikitas3.com
 
Many people have uneasy feelings about Barack Obama who seems like a personable guy on the surface but whom you suspect has an agenda that is beyond what we have seen in any previous presidential candidate.

Because he is the most liberal member of the US Senate. And he was raised Muslim for some of his youth. And his father rejected America and went back to Africa. And his “Christian” faith is tinged by radical politics.

And so forth.

Obama is the first “black” candidate to have a serious shot at getting the nomination for president. But the fact that Obama appears to be black even though he had a white mother is confusing the situation. Because if he looked whiter – which he biologically could have – the situation could have been, as Geraldine Ferraro said, quite different.

Ms. Ferraro, the 1984 Democrat vice presidential candidate said that Obama would never have made it so far if he were not “black” just as she said that she herself never would have been selected in 1984 if she were not a woman. She was chosen for the political ‘wow’ factor, she admits.

And she took an enormous amount of heat for her comment about Obama, because race is a touchy issue.

So indeed we are calling Obama black because his features are black. And one of the reasons so many people are supporting him is to give this potentially historic candidacy a chance at victory, and to give African-Americans their due at leadership.

But his recent comment about his white grandmother being “a typical white person”, shows how easily he can be tripped up and how inflammatory any racial comments can be even when we are trying to be nice and “explain things”. Because any single comment on race can incite a million reactions.

Obama has veered into two racial minefields recently, and America is watching closely, ready to parse every word. First there was the controversy over anti-American and black-liberation rhetoric from his longtime mentor Pastor Jeremiah Wright. Then came his own comments about his grandmother for which we could scold him because he is black. Or should we excuse him because he is white?

This all is thoroughly confusing. The big question is: How does Obama himself feel about white people? And how can he portray himself as so authoritatively black when he is as white as he is black?
 

Consider this scenario: What if Obama were elected President and on the very first day in office he spoke in a way that offended millions of white people outright over, say, a racial beating that had occurred a few days previous? Would this not harm his entire presidency?

Yes, it probably would. And since we know little about him, and since he already has made a gaffe in calling his grandmother “a typical white person”, there are real concerns over a potential Obama presidency. And you’d better believe that Hillary and Bill are dissecting every word and struggling for any advantage before the Obama Tsunami gets too big to stop.  

Look at the complete statement that Obama made to a Philadelphia radio station:
“The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she’s a typical white person who – if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know – there’s a reaction that been bred into our experiences that don’t go away, and that sometimes comes out in the wrong way, and that’s just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it. And what makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling a little less like that.”

What Obama really meant to say was that his grandmother is an average white person who is frightened of black males she might see on the street. His words were different, however – “if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know” is how he phrased it. He was afraid to even speak clearly about it.

Perhaps he understands this fear because he was raised by a single white woman and knew that she was afraid of black males in the streets. Which may have been upsetting to Obama since his father was black.

But considering the grim FBI crime statistics, there is good reason for white women to feel this way, and even white men. If you were a friend of Eve Carson, the student body president at the University of North Carolina who was recently gunned down by two black gang-bangers for no reason whatsoever, you would be justified in being afraid. Meanwhile millions of other white Americans have been victims of black crime.

We should never hurry into blaming blacks for their behavior. African-Americans have suffered massive oppression and deprivation for hundreds of years. But we can take a closer look at their patrons in the Democrat party who today are contributing to blacks’ social dislocation by pushing a leftist agenda which has done tremendous damage.

It includes marginalization of the family structure and of the role of strong fathers in the lives of black children. This social breakdown is one of the key factors in the aimlessness and criminality of so many young black males, and a growing number of whites too. Our nation’s jails are full of inmates who never had fathers to guide them.

Entertainment-industry leftists also have pushed violent rap music into the urban black mainstream, while dysfunctional public schools in inner-city neighborhoods, controlled by the Democrat party lock, stock and barrel, have undermined black achievement all over America.

Meanwhile, the Democrat party itself has frequently fueled the racial fires by attacking decent blacks who have achieved a great deal without the liberal crutch of affirmative action and such. Just consider the “high tech lynching” administered by Democrat US Senators to conservative Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in his 1991 confirmation hearings. Or how the media have savaged Condoleezza Rice, the first African-American woman to attain the post of Secretary of State. Or Democrats’ utter rejection of two US Senate candidates from Maryland (Michael Steele) and Ohio (Ken Blackwell) who happened to be both black and conservative.

The treatment of these figures was abhorrent and has engendered much anger among conservatives who have held these four in high esteem for their rational and intelligent approach to contemporary issues. But such is the nature of liberalism. It is selectively “compassionate” and “caring”. It’s all politics. So now we wonder if Obama can handle any race politics without being consumed.

Obama seems to want to be the black president who can act as a calming center in the middle of the racial storm. He obviously does not want to be a provocateur in the mold of Jackson or Sharpton. But so far, in the few months we have known him, it looks as though Obama may not be the racial father figure that we need to have moderating this debate.

Because he listened passively for years to the hate-mongering of Pastor Wright, and is under tremendous pressure from Democrats to be more black – and consequently more confrontational and angry – than white. And this must be confusing to Obama who has hugged his white family and slept in their homes and eaten at their tables vastly more often than he has commiserated with the black family of the father who abandoned him at a young age.

Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency is dotted with trap doors. Will he be a ‘black president’ or a good president of all the people who happens to look black? Will his bi-racial nature allow him to see both sides of the issue? Will he walk on verbal eggshells when talking about race?

Perhaps his racial status would be good for America.  Perhaps he could understand what it means to be both a “typical white person” and a “typical black person”. If there were such a thing. Which there really is not. So forget that one.

As a Democrat, Obama will find it very difficult to be neutral, and he will be pressured to take racial positions dictated by people who now are propelling him to the White House. And that would be the great loss in his presidency, should it ever come to pass.