Reply #51: My high school sweetheart was black.

[Sparkly]

At the time, I thought racism was just some leftover hangup among certain older people. I basically thought we'd had a civil rights movement that took care of that, and it's over.

My boyfriend and I thought racism was funny. We did things like going into a bakery to ask if they could make one of those plastic cake toppers with a white bride and a black groom, just to see the reactions. Somebody stared at us in a grocery store once, so we started talking loudly about what kind of baby food to buy. We found things like that hilarious.

But then one Christmas when he gave me a "pre-engagement ring" (the equivalent of "going steady," really) my parents expressed some nervousness. I was shocked! And his relatives decided I was black, which I now think made them feel better about things. (I have dark hair but my skin is ghostly white. He said they insisted I looked "part spook, and if you're part spook you're all spook." Their words. I felt it was their way of accepting me.)

Anyway, I think Obama just misspoke with the phrase "typical white." Who knows what's typical and what isn't? I trust that if he had it to say over again, he'd say "like many white people" or something like that.