Obama in speech: It's time to move past 'racial stalemate'

PHILADELPHIA -- Americans must move past a "racial stalemate" to solve long-term problems, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Tuesday in what his campaign billed as a major address on race and politics.

Speaking at the National Constitution Center near Philadelphia's Independence Hall, where the nation's founders in 1787 drafted a Constitution that counted each slave as three-fifths of a person, Obama used the lingering controversy over comments made by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, to illustrate what he said was a central struggle with race relations in America.

The controversy reflects "the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through — a part of our union that we have yet to perfect," Obama said. "And 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."

Attention has been placed on sermons by Wright, a Chicago minister whom Obama has identified as a key spiritual adviser. Wright is the retired pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which Obama attends, and his sermons included scathing denunciations of the nation's foreign and domestic policies.

Obama repudiated the statements, and Wright resigned Friday from the senator's African American Religious Leadership Committee. But Obama again made it clear Tuesday that he would not — and essentially, could not — break completely with Wright.

"As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children," Obama said. "He contains within him the contradictions — the good and the bad — of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," Obama said. "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother … 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 who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

Obama said race "is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America — to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

Outlining high — and low — points in black-white relations in America since it was founded, Obama said lingering anger in both the black and white communities "have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation."

"Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition," Obama said. "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.

"This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years," he said.

Obama said Americans faced a choice.

"We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the O.J. (Simpson) trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of (Hurricane) Katrina — or as fodder for the nightly news," he said.

If Americans choose that route, "I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction — and then another one, and then another one. And nothing will change," Obama added.

"That is one option. — or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, 'Not this time,' " he said.

Instead, he urged Americans to overcome old racial divisions and focus on addressing such long-term issues as health care, unemployment and education.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, Tuesday said race and gender issues have created "pitfalls and detours"in the campaign, despite the excitement they also have engendered. "

We will be nominating the first African American or the first woman. That is something all Americans can and should celebrate," she said.

In a speech Tuesday that focused on her efforts to end the Iraq war, Clinton argued she was the candidate who should make history.

"In the end, the test is not the speeches a president delivers; the test is whether the president delivers on the speeches," she said.

While the speech may represent a difficult moment for Obama, it may be welcome for a nation that has avoided talking about some of the most historically significant issues raised by this year's campaign between Obama — vying to become the first African-American in the White House — and Hillary Rodham Clinton, vying to become the first woman, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center for Communication.

"It's as if at every point we could have had an intelligent discussion about race and gender, we've pulled back," Jamieson said.

Up until this point, Jamieson added, Obama may have believed that downplaying his mixed race was in his best political interest. Now, given the controversy over Wright, addressing the issue head-on is "tactically, the right thing to do."

Political analyst Charlie Cook said that in his moment of political difficulty, Obama moved to his greatest strength.

"His forte is the lofty, high-minded speech," Cook said.

Contributing: Kathy Kiely in Philadelphia; Randy Lilleston in McLean, Va.