Obama Urges End to Racial 'Stalemate,' Criticizes Former Minister's Incendiary Rhetoric

PHILADELPHIA — Democratic candidate Barack Obama, drawing on his own complex racial identity Tuesday, urged Americans of all colors to end the country's "racial stalemate" and tried to explain to whites the black anger behind the incendiary statements of his former minister, the source of a political firestorm threatening his presidential campaign.

"We have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism," Obama said in perhaps the most pointed speech of his campaign for the Democratic nomination. "Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, 'Not this time.'"

In a packed auditorium at the National Constitution Center, not far from where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, Obama invoked the U.S. Constitution's call for "a more perfect union" as he addressed America's racial divide in eloquent but stark terms, in part to quell the controversy over his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected," Obama said. To form "a more perfect union ... requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams," he added from a stage bedecked with eight American flags.

The Illinois senator decided over the weekend to deliver such a speech after news outlets and the Internet called attention to some of the sermons the recently retired Wright delivered during his ministry at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, including statements that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were retribution for U.S. foreign policy, that the U.S. government was the source of the AIDS virus and that America has supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans.

Obama said some of Wright's statements were not simply controversial but instead "expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic." He also said some of the sermons delivered by Wright "rightly offend white and black alike." But he also embraced Wright, saying, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community."

Obama has been a member of Wright's church for more than two decades. Wright officiated at his wedding and baptized his two daughters. And in his speech Tuesday, Obama described Wright as the "man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith," a man committed to restoring hope in the black community.

Acknowledging that Wright's comments have raised questions among voters, Obama said, "I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television sets and YouTube, if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way." But, he added, "the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man," recalling Wright's service in the Marine Corps, his lectures at universities and seminaries and a ministry that provided housing to the homeless, day care services, scholarships and help to prisoners and those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

Recalling the history of racial injustice in the United States, from slavery to Hurricane Katrina, Obama said anger over those injustices often finds voice in black churches on Sunday mornings. "The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning," he said.

The uproar over Wright could cost Obama the support of some white voters in Pennsylvania's presidential primary on April 22, an important showdown with rival Hillary Clinton, who trails in delegates but is hoping that a strong showing in the final weeks of the Democratic Party's presidential voting will underscore her argument that she is the most electable Democrat against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in the fall general election.

Wright's sometimes fiery rhetoric could hurt Obama among "people who all along have had some discomfort about voting for a black candidate," said Edwin Dorn, a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. "What (Wright's words) do for those people is to say, 'Aha, my suspicions were right all along.'"

Whether Obama succeeded in putting the Wright controversy to rest was unclear, however.

"His explanation of Wright may or may not resonate," said Jeffrey Tulis, a University of Texas government professor and author of several books on political rhetoric. On the other hand, Obama delivered "the best speech by a president or a presidential candidate in my lifetime," Tulis said. There is, however, a question of "whether the country is capable of hearing what he has to say," he added.

Paul Levinson, head of the communications and media studies department at Fordham University in New York, said Obama, in his speech, "offered the freshest, most perceptive analysis of racism ever given by a major presidential candidate."

That may be due, in part, to Obama's complex racial heritage, said Leonard Baynes, a St. John's University law professor and director of the Ron H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development. "'Transcending race' is not magical," said Baynes. "It only happens when we have tough conversations and understanding of each other. In his speech ... Barack Obama, with his unique racial heritage and connections to so many communities, may have started us on this path."

Indeed, in a speech that aides said was written by the senator himself, Obama addressed not only the anger of blacks - "The anger is real; it is powerful," he said - but the resentment whites often feel toward blacks. "Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company," he said. "But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism."

Obama, the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas, acknowledged that his life story "hasn't made the most conventional candidate" for president. "But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many we are truly one."

"This is where we are right now," he added. "It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. But I have asserted firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds."

Cox reporter Ken Herman contributed to this report.