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Barack Obama
Mar. 21, 2008
"The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there is a reaction that has been bred into our experiences that don't go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way."
—Obama, during a radio interview in Philadelphia, clarifying his recent speech on race relations in the U.S. in which he refers to his grandmother as "a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." Critics accused Obama's statement of perpetuating racial stereotypes.
— M.J. Stephey