PHILADELPHIA — From the earliest days of his career, Barack Obama has sought to assure black voters that a political leader of mixed race, coming from the outpost of Hawaii, could understand the resentments of an African American community shaped by slavery and segregation.
On Tuesday, Obama tried to explain that anger to voters who have been repelled by racially incendiary comments from his longtime pastor.
In a speech widely seen as his most important to date, Obama again denounced the comments by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., which have played continuously on television news shows and threatened to undermine Obama's campaign theme of uniting a fractured America. At the same time, the Democratic presidential candidate asked voters to understand the frustrations and anger that gave rise to the preacher's condemnation of America as racist and brutal -- "the U.S. of K.K.K.A."
"That anger is not always productive. . . . But the anger is real; it is powerful," Obama said. "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."
While asking all Americans to sympathize with blacks, Obama said he understood the anger that some whites feel over affirmative action or "when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced."
"It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. . . . But I have asserted a 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," he said.
A rare perspective
Speaking at a museum dedicated to the U.S. Constitution, Obama in effect offered his candidacy as the next chapter in a story of racial tension and reconciliation that has unfolded since the country's founding. The son of a Kenyan father and a white mother with Kansas roots, he spoke in sweeping terms about his unusual perspective on race, and more than ever elevated it as essential to his White House campaign.
It was a speech that seemed unlikely to come from a politician viewed as simply white or black. Obama rejected the most controversial of Wright's comments, while saying he could never renounce the man who had helped introduce the senator to Christianity, officiated at his wedding and baptized his children.
