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Last week Geraldine Ferraro made the comment that Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama was only doing well in his presidential race because he was black.

MSNBC reports that her exact quote was as follows

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

The statement shocked the country, baffled everyone and left the media's heads spinning. Hilary Clinton expressed disagreement with Ferraro's comment, saying it was "regrettable."

Obama has said that the comment made by Ferraro was "ridiculous" and his campaign has asked Clinton to denounce the statement.

In an interview on the "Today Show" Obama said

"Part of what I think Geraldine Ferraro is doing, and I respect the fact that she was a trailblazer, is to participate in the kind of slice and dice politics that's about race and about gender and about this and that, and that's what Americans are tired of because they recognize that when we divide ourselves in that way we can't solve problems."

Ferraro has responded by saying that her words were taken out of context by the Obama campaign and she actually likened what she said to her own attempt to become the first female vice president saying that if she was not a woman, she would not have been selected for that ticket.

"I was talking about historic candidacies and what I started off by saying (was that) if you go back to 1984 and look at my historic candidacy, which I had just talked about all these things, in 1984 if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would have never been chosen as a vice presidential candidate," Ferraro said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "It had nothing to do with my qualification."

Ferraro still stands by her statement and says that Obama's success in the Democratic campaign is due "in part" to his race.