In speech today, Obama to delve into racial issues

The address grew out of last week’s brouhaha over remarks made by his pastor.

Chicago Tribune

MONACA, Pa. — Sen. Barack Obama, confronting ongoing questions about inflammatory sermons delivered by his former pastor, announced Monday he will deliver a “major address” on race and politics in Philadelphia today in an attempt to move beyond the controversy.

Obama has been struggling to deal with the comments of Rev. Jeremiah Wright for several days, since videotaped sermons surfaced in which Wright said, among other things, that blacks should sing “God Damn America” instead of “God Bless America.”

Obama pointedly ended a speech at a community college in western Pennsylvania on Monday morning with the words “God Bless America” — an uncharacteristic closing for him.

At a press conference later, he repeated condemnations he made of Wright’s remarks shortly after the videos were widely broadcast last week. But he also said “the caricature that is being painted of him [Wright] is not accurate.”

Obama has portrayed Wright as a close spiritual adviser, crediting Wright with leading him from a secular lifestyle to church membership and taking the title of his book “The Audacity of Hope” from one of Wright’s sermons. Obama has been involved with Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Wright was pastor until his recent retirement, for nearly two decades. Wright presided at Obama’s marriage to his wife, Michelle, and baptized both of their daughters.

Obama has put himself forward as a candidate who can move beyond America’s racial divisions, and the controversy over Wright has challenged that image.

Throughout his campaign, Obama has directly addressed race only on rare occasions and sought to prevent his campaign from being consumed by the topic.

Aides said Obama’s decision to deliver a speech on the subject was driven by the Wright controversy, as well as other developments that have heightened attention to racial issues. Those include recent comments by Geraldine Ferraro, the Democrats’ unsuccessful 1984 vice presidential candidate, suggesting that voters and the media were giving Obama a race-based affirmative-action break at the expense of Hillary Clinton, as well as a racially polarized vote in the Mississippi primary.

After performing well with white voters in early contests and winning over white voters in high-profile primaries in Wisconsin and Virginia, Obama has recently faltered with white voters, particularly the white working-class voters who are a core constituency of the Democratic Party.

“It was a good time, the right time to talk about the issue of race, politics and how we bring our country together,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist.

Obama declined to answer a series of questions from reporters Monday regarding his understanding of Wright’s teachings on white America and why he chose Wright’s church as a source of moral guidance for his own family. But Obama said he would “absolutely” cover the questions in his speech.

In an interview with PBS’s “NewsHour” on Monday, Obama suggested that Wright’s tone in speaking of white America was partly a generational difference borne out of the bitter experiences of discrimination in an earlier era.

“When you look at somebody like a Rev. Wright who grew up in the ’50s or ’60s, his experience of race in this country is very different than mine,” Obama said in the PBS interview.

“We benefit from the difficult battles that were [taking] place,” Obama continued. “But I’m not sure that we benefit from continuing to perpetuate the anger and the bitterness that I think, at this point, serves to divide rather than bring us together.”

Axelrod said Obama would deliver a “very candid” and “personal” speech on race in America that would cover the controversy over Wright’s remarks but also address broader issues of race in America.