Obama condemns pastor's remarks, urges racial healing
Posted: 18 March 2008 2348 hrs

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PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania : White House hopeful Barack Obama on Tuesday condemned "profoundly distorted" sermons by his former pastor, but refused to disown the fiery religious leader and insisted that the United States was capable of overcoming its bitter racial divide.

In a wide-ranging speech entitled "A More Perfect Union," the Illinois senator said the remarks by his long-time Chicago preacher, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, were out of line with his own vision of the United States.

"I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy," Obama said, while acknowledging that he knew the fiery preacher to be a fierce critic of US policies.

"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," he said.

Wright's language "expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America."

The preacher's view saw "the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."

Wright's language assailing US and Israeli "terrorism," and calling on blacks to sing "God damn America," threatens to alienate both Obama's central appeal and voters in his Democratic nominating battle with Hillary Clinton.

The black reverend officiated at Obama's wedding and baptised his two daughters. The candidate used the title of one of Wright's sermons - "the Audacity of Hope" - for his own best-selling political memoir.

In his speech, the senator bidding to be the first African-American president said Wright "has been like family to me."

"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," he said, recalling that she had sometimes used racially-tinged language.

Obama said Wright, 66, had grown up in an era of savage racism, of segregation and legalised discrimination that barred blacks from quality education, decent housing and better jobs.

Rage still lingered in the African-American community, just as anger simmered among many working-class whites struggling to get by and suffering from the "greed" of their corporate bosses.

But Obama stressed it was time to right historical wrongs as he delivered his speech in the city where the US Declaration of Independence - stained, he
said, by the "original sin of slavery" - was signed.

Wright's "profound mistake" was to see a racism-corroded society as static, instead of recognising the "true genius" of America as a work in progress, he said.

"Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own," Obama added.

"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, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union." - AFP/de