Regardless of these nit-picky discussions of the sentence structure, the use of the word "typical" is the bottom line. This statement was a stereotype, no ifs, ands, or buts.
It was a complicated sentence, and not one delivered clearly, on a touchy subject, so it is no wonder that people disagree about what it meant and are reading whatever they want into it. It would be very interesting indeed to know where the first quoted variant originated. It is one thing to argue over the meaning of a man's words, yet another to edit them and attribute the changed version to him. However, on listening to the exchange carefully I can see that the second version has also been cleaned up a bit, to remove stutters and other noise, although not a key word. In the interest of complete and utter fairness, here is my own transcription of the exchange from this video:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4s45v_obama-typical-white-person_news
complete with all stutters, repeats, and other warts. In general I have not attempted to add punctuation unless that was pretty much unambiguous. The first paragraph is from the interviewer, the second from Obama:
You gave an amazing speech on on Tuesday. We were actually at the constitution center, but not giving as eloquent a speech as you were, believe me. And you talked about your white grandmother, and how there was a time when even she feared black men, and that she even occasionally would use a racial or ethnic stereotype. What is she saying now about you being so close to the presidency?
Well, you know, she's extremely proud. And the uh the the point I was making was not that my grandmother uh harbors any any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a uh typical white person who uh (you know?) if [[slowly]] she sees somebody [[/slowly]] on the street [[pause]] that she doesn't know [[pause]] (you know?) there's a reaction that's been been bred into uh our experiences that that don't go away and that sometimes uh come out in in the wrong way and that that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it. And what(s) makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling [[pause]] a little bit less like that.
The two [you know?] phrases are almost subliminal they are so fast and slurred together, with the second one being much less distinct than the first. I'm not 100% confident about that part of the transcription, but the rest seems to be right.
Having now listened to the silly thing 20 something times it has pretty much lost all meaning to me. Since the question partially concerned his grandmother's reported "fear of black men" (something left out of the original post) it appears that what Obama was saying was that his grandmother is "typical of white people" in feeling threatened by [some][unknown] [young] black men and has some [unspecified] reaction to the situation. That's so vague that even if we accept it as a statement of a "typical white person" stereotype, I'd be hard pressed to accurately describe what that stereotype is.
Certainly that vague stereotype would apply to me. I'm not at all happy when encountering a group of young men I don't know, in exposed circumstances, which could indicate a risky situation. The key factors aren't their race though, it's their gender, whether or not I know them, their age, demeanor, and clothing. I mean, you don't have to be racist to recognize gang colors, and you'd be nuts not to avoid a potentially hazardous situation just because somebody else might think you were racist. If those same guys appeared to be employed, married, or going to school, they wouldn't bother me at all. It isn't a race thing, it's more of a "does that guy look dangerous" thing. Admittedly when the style becomes "let's look dangerous" things can get a bit confusing. I'll really be screwed if the muggers ever start wearing suits and ties.
