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PHILADELPHIA - SENATOR Barack Obama has delivered a sweeping assessment of race in America, bluntly confronting the divisions between black and white as he sought to dispel the furore over inflammatory statements by his former pastor.
In a major speech on Tuesday, the mixed-race Illinois senator once again decried his black spiritual mentor Reverend Jeremiah Wright's 'profoundly distorted' sermons but refused to disown the 66-year-old preacher who welcomed the young community organiser into his Christian flock 20 years ago.
Rev Wright, who has now retired from the Chicago church, resigned last week from an Obama campaign committee when videos emerged of him appealing to African-Americans to sing 'God damn America' and condemning US 'terrorism'.
In recent days, images of Mr Obama accompanied by the blistering sermons of Rev Wright, replayed again and again on television, threatened to damage a coalition of black and white voters that the senator has been trying to forge.
New polls suggested that non-stop airing of the sermons had dented Mr Obama's support, with independent voters who had been excited by his promise of change especially put off.
In the 37-minute speech, delivered in the run-up to the deadlocked Democrats' next nominating clash in Pennsylvania on April 22, Mr Obama appealed for the United States' divided communities to pursue a 'more perfect union'.
Drawing on his experiences as the son of a white mother and a black father, Mr Obama tried to explain to white voters the anger and frustration behind Rev Wright's words and to urge blacks to understand the sources of the racial fears and resentments among whites.
'I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother,' the candidate said, recalling that his grandmother had sometimes used racially tinged language.
'For the men and women of Rev Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away, nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years,' Mr Obama said.
For nearly a week, the senator has struggled to distance himself from the statements by Rev Wright. Mr Obama concluded over the weekend that he had failed to resolve the questions and told advisers he wanted to address the firestorm in a speech.
'Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course,' he said. 'Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
'The profound mistake of Rev Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static, as if no progress has been made.'
Mr Obama's speech was aimed not just at African-Americans embittered by centuries of discrimination, but also at struggling whites and immigrants ill-disposed to atone for past generations' sins.
'It requires all Americans to realise that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams,' he said.
The Wright controversy 'was a dagger aimed at the heart of his candidacy, the essence of which is national reconciliation', said Dr Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
He said the speech was 'masterful', but that Mr Obama had failed to address 'questions over his longstanding membership of the church and his close personal relationship with Rev Wright'.
A study by HCD Research, which monitored 709 individuals' responses to the speech, said a majority of voters did not believe it would lay the Wright controversy to rest.
Mr Obama's bitter rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Clinton, stood above the fray.
Campaigning in Philadelphia, she said she had not seen or read the speech, 'but I'm very glad that he gave it', underlining the 'historic' prospect of a woman or an African-American occupying the Oval Office.
NEW YORK TIMES, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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