Please Define 'Typical White Person'

I admit it. I was at work Tuesday. I didn't see Barack Obama's speech on race.

And I was at work Thursday, which apparently is when an interview with Obama was aired.

But I heard clips from both on the radio as I was driving home. And then I saw clips on TV at night.

I don't have the advantage of having seen or heard the speech or the interview in their entirety. And that may or may not affect my opinion of what was said or the context in which it was said.

But Obama, who apparently referred to his white grandmother in his speech and spoke about her suspicions of blacks, seems to have dismissed her reaction as that of a "typical white person."

A couple of questions here ...

First, what is a typical white person, anyway?

I grew up in the South. In my early years, segregation was stil the law of the land in the South. In my native Arkansas, I have vivid memories of going to the only movie theater in my hometown and seeing blacks being herded into one specific section of the balcony.

(I have a specific memory of going with my parents to see the classic film "How the West Was Won," which was completed in 1962 but didn't make it to my hometown theater for a couple of years -- things were different in those days and theaters in small towns weren't high on the list for distributors. And I recall seeing black patrons being crammed into a rather small section of the balcony. Although there were plenty of unoccupied seats elsewhere in the theater, the management brought in some folding chairs for blacks to sit in once that section of the balcony was filled. Either the law or social convention -- or both -- prevented the management from allowing any blacks to sit in the "white" section of the theater.)

And when I enrolled in school in the mid-1960s, public schools were integrated in my hometown for the very first time. So when my class graduated from high school in 1978, ours was the first class in my hometown's history to be integrated from first grade through high school.

The Democratic Party, which Obama now wants to represent as the presidential nominee, in Arkansas in 1966 was still filled with segregationists -- although not exclusively -- and Arkansas' Democrats had nominated a staunch segregationist for governor that year who just happened to live a few miles down the road from my home. I well remember the first day of school, when the media representatives of the day were on hand to photograph the gubernatorial candidate's twin sons being enrolled in an integrated elementary school.

My parents were Democrats, but they chose not to support their neighbor and fellow Democrat, mostly on the issue of segregation. And they joined with other like-minded Democrats in Arkansas who helped elect the state's first Republican governor since Reconstruction, Winthrop Rockefeller.

When Arkansas' Democrats got around to nominating a more moderate candidate for governor -- Dale Bumpers -- in 1970, my parents supported him.

Who were the typical white people in Arkansas in those days, Sen. Obama? Were they the segregationists, like our neighbor who unsuccessfully sought to be governor? Or were they my parents and those who thought as they did?

I'm sorry, but that phrase "typical white person" rubs me the wrong way. And I find it difficult to imagine a white politician using the phrase "typical black person" and not being chastised severely for it.

Or, considering who Obama's competition is for the Democratic nomination, can you imagine the reaction if Obama had used the phrase "typical white woman" in referring to his grandmother?

Daniel Nasaw and Ewen MacAskill write, in the Guardian, that other white voters are equally offended by what they've heard.

"The danger for Obama is not just that he could lose badly in Pennsylvania but that senior Democrats will wonder whether the loss of white votes could cost him the November general election," write Nasaw and MacAskill. "A theme that emerges from the bars and diners of white Philadelphia is suspicion that Obama's failure to disown (his pastor) and his presence in his church for almost two decades suggests that he himself is secretly resentful towards white people."

A black cook reportedly told the Guardian that Obama's pastor's comments reflect "the way we think, as a people. It may be a big thing to the white race, but you know, these things happened to us. All these things that he's talking about happened to us."

That brings me to my next point. Obama's skin color may be the same as many of the people who are voting for him, but his ancestors' experiences are not. Obama's black father was from Kenya, which is in eastern Africa. Most of the blacks in America were descended from west Africans.

It's simply a fact that, when slave traders came to Africa looking for slaves to take back to the new world in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, they didn't go on time-consuming -- and profit-consuming -- trips across the entire African continent looking for them. They took what was convenient to take, and that was Africans on the western side of the continent.

I'll admit, it's possible that there were isolated incidents of east Africans who were enslaved on the eastern side of the continent and wound up being sold on the western side later on. But that group would be a relatively small part of the overall slave population.

But even if the traders had habitually gone all the way across Africa to Kenya looking for slaves, Obama's ancestors were not among them. His father was born and raised in Kenya. To my knowledge, none of Obama's ancestors ever spent a day in captivity. Certainly his father didn't. He was educated at Harvard and returned to his native country, where he was a successful politician until his death in 1982.

So when a black cook in Philadelphia tells the Guardian that Obama's pastor was speaking of things that "happened to us," he's not speaking of things that happened to Obama's ancestors. Or, necessarily, to Obama himself.

One of my favorite films of all time is "Being There" starring Peter Sellers. Sellers plays a well-meaning but naive, childlike person who has lived his entire life in a private home and finds himself cast into an unfamiliar world when the "old man" who owns the home dies.

Sellers' character is so naive that he has no comprehension of what has happened when Louise, the black housekeeper, tells him the news. Yet he manages to stumble his way into the seat of power and becomes the focus of cultlike attention when those around him believe he tells them what they want to believe that he tells them. In the end, he is being considered for the presidential nomination -- even though, as a gardener, everything he says is about plants and seasonal growth cycles.

I've mentioned this film before because it represented to me the kind of cult that I believe has been forming around Obama for quite some time. But I've been thinking about something else in the film that seems particularly appropriate now.

At one point in the film, Louise is shown watching Sellers' character on TV. He's being interviewed on a Tonight Show type of program that has everyone, including the president, riveted to their TV sets, and Louise observes, to her companions, "It's for sure a white man's world in America. ... All you gotta be is white in America to get whatever you want."

Is that an example of "the way we think," as the cook from Philadelphia puts it? If it is, it doesn't show much understanding of the history of this country.

By that logic, every white person in America has his/her dreams fulfilled simply by virtue of race. But the reality is that nearly every white person I know has unfulfilled dreams -- whether those dreams are to be rich and successful or to have the ideal love relationship.

And what I've heard from Obama is unconvincing even in defense of his freedom of religion.

I can't claim to be a frequent churchgoer. I believe it is my right as an American to attend or not attend church, as I see fit, and I believe it is the right of every American to attend the church or synagogue or mosque or whatever of his or her choice.

In America, no one is or should be compelled to attend any house of worship he or she does not choose to attend.

Barack Obama has attended the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years. And, from what I've read and heard in the last several days, there are numerous recordings of Rev. Wright's hateful, racist comments from many different days and months and years, enough to know that Obama's pastor's remarks were not isolated incidents. They happened all the time.

If one does not agree with the remarks one's pastor frequently makes, one has a few options if the person is a man of consicence. Initially, he may express his concerns directly to the pastor. Since Obama portrays himself as the agent of change, bringing about a change in racial attitudes in his pastor and his church would demonstrate profoundly what he is capable of. Did Obama make such efforts in his church? If he did, what was the result of his efforts?

I think it's reasonable for voters to ask that question. Everyone, including Obama, has acknowledged that he doesn't have much experience, and that's how voters tend to assess a candidate for president. In the absence of experience, Obama has sought to assure voters of his commitment to bringing about change.

Was there a change in his pastor or church? Well, I see no evidence of a change. True, the pastor is retired now. But the church publishes a magazine that honors recipients who are deemed worthy with awards. Such an award -- which bears the pastor's name -- was given to Louis Farrakhan. Obama has never disavowed the magazine or the award -- or Farrakhan.

If a congregant is unsuccessful at bringing a change in the church, he may choose not to attend that pastor's services anymore. If he is truly a man of faith, he will seek out a house of worship in which he is more comfortable.

If he agrees with what his pastor says or if he has no conscience, he will stay where he is. Obama stayed where he was.

The recordings of Rev. Wright's rantings against America play against the American need for a president who at least seems patriotic.

"It is already easy to imagine the Republican attack ads against Barack Obama," writes Sheldon Alberts for National Post.

The scenario isn't too hard to picture in one's mind. It's as if the ad has already been put together and is just waiting for the right time to be aired:

"They open with video of his wife, Michelle, saying she was proud of America 'for the first time in my adult lifetime' because of her husband's presidential candidacy. Cut to the Illinois senator explaining that he doesn't wear an American flag lapel pin because it is a 'substitute for true patriotism.' Then flash a clip of Obama explaining that his Caucasian grandmother was a 'typical white person' because she uttered racial epithets and was afraid of black people.

"Finally, the coup de grace, pictures of Obama's angry, arm-waving preacher blaming the United States for 9/11 and shouting 'God Damn America' to the rafters of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Game, set, election, John McCain."

I've heard a lot of people in the media in recent days applauding Obama for speaking courageously about the race issue. I don't think he spoke so much from courage as from political necessity. As the first black who has a realistic chance of winning a major party's nomination for president in a nation that once legally condoned slavery, it was inevitable that race would need to be addressed.

But confronting racism requires more from Obama -- who is, after all, as much white as he is black -- than stereotyping his grandmother as a "typical white person" while applying no such racial label to anyone -- his pastor, for example -- who is black.

If Obama is going to be a true spark for change, and if he wants some of that change to come in the area of race relations, he cannot frame discussions in an "us vs. them" way -- even if that is more implied than overtly expressed. His words this week did not suggest unity to many white listeners.

Because (as he surely must be aware by now), if Obama becomes the first president with dark skin, as much attention will be paid to what his words may or may not be suggesting as will be paid to the words themselves.

Whatever their traditional definitions may be.