Obama reaches out for racial tolerance after pastor’s fiery speech

PRESIDENTIAL hopeful Barack Obama bluntly addressed anger between black and white people yesterday in the most racially pointed speech of his presidential campaign.

Obama 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 pastor.

Drawing on his half-black, half-white roots he asserted: “This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.”

Obama expressed understanding of the passions on both sides in “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,” said Obama in a speech at the National Constitution Centre, not far from where the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

Obama, whose speech covered issues from slavery to recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina, also recognised his race has been a big issue in the campaign that has taken a “particularly divisive turn” in the last few weeks as video of his pastor spread online and on television.

Obama said the sermons delivered by the Rev Jeremiah Wright “rightly offend white and black alike”.

Those sermons from years ago suggest the US brought the September 11 terrorist attacks on themselves, and say black people continue to be mistreated by whites.

While Obama rejected what 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,” said Obama.

“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 who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”