BARACK Obama yesterday made the most racially pointed speech yet of his presidential campaign, bluntly addressing anger between blacks and whites.
The Democratic hopeful confronted America's legacy of racial division head-on as he tackled black grievance, white resentment and the uproar caused by incendiary statements by his long-standing preacher.
Drawing on his half-black, half-white roots
, the would-be Democratic candidate expressed understanding of the passions on both sides in what he called "a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years".
"But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races," he said at the National Constitution Centre in Philadelphia, near where the Declaration of Independence was adopted.
Mr Obama covered divisions from slavery to the OJ Simpson trial to the recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina.
He also recognised his race has been an issue in a campaign that had taken a "particularly divisive turn" as video of his pastor spread around the internet and on television.
Mr Obama said the sermons delivered by the Rev Jeremiah Wright "rightly offend white and black alike." The sermons suggest the country brought the 11 September terrorist attacks on itself and say blacks continue to be mistreated by whites.
While Mr Obama rejected what Mr Wright said, he also embraced the man who inspired his Christian faith, officiated at his wedding, baptised his daughters and has been his spiritual guide for nearly 20 years.
"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," Mr Obama said, speaking in front of eight US flags.
"I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men … and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."
He said he came to Rev Wright's church because he was inspired by his message of hope and his inspiration to rebuild the black community.
Mr Obama said Rev Wright's comments had sparked a discussion that reflected complexities of race in the US that its people had never really resolved.
"We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country," he said. "But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow."
Mr Obama said anger over those injustices often found voice in black churches on Sunday mornings. "The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Rev Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning," he said.
Mr Obama argued that the anger often distracted from solving real problems and bringing change. But he said it also existed in parts of the white community that felt blacks were often given an unfair advantage through affirmative action programmes.
"If we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American," Mr Obama said, drawing a rare burst of applause in a sombre address.
He said one task of his campaign to be the first black president was "to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America."
FAMILY TREEHIS quest to be the first black president is only half the life story of Barack Obama. The senator is the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas – a fact he addressed when he visited the state on a recent campaign visit.
His maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, grew up in El Dorado, Kansas, and married his high school sweetheart, Madelyn. He served in the Second World War and was educated under the GI Bill, while his wife stayed in the state capital, Wichita, with their baby – Obama's mother, Ann. The family moved to Hawaii, where Ann met Senator Obama's father, Barack Hussein Obama snr, a graduate student. He left the family when Obama was two years old and returned to East Africa.
