Presidential Hopeful Senator Obama is tackling a large elephant in the room today: racism.

This is not a candidate endorsement - this is something which is timely, pertinent, and happening right now in Philadelphia

AP News Feed

Posted on Tue, Mar. 18, 2008
Obama to deliver Phila. speech on race
By Angela Couloumbis
Inquirer Harrisburg Bureau

CENTER TOWNSHIP, Pa. - In a speech at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia this morning, Sen. Barack Obama is planning to address inflammatory statements the pastor of his Chicago church has made about race, religion and the Sept. 11 attacks.

Since last week, Obama's Democratic presidential campaign has been on the defensive over the senator's close association with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

"I'm going to be talking not just about Rev. Wright, but about the larger issue of race in the campaign, which has just ramped up over the last few weeks," Obama told reporters yesterday after a town-hall forum in this Pittsburgh suburb.

Live blogging from Larry Eichel of Inquirer:

Larry Eichel reports.../Obama on race

The scene is quite the zoo at the National Constitution Center where Barack Obama is about to give a speech that shapes up as one of the most important of his campaign. His subject -- race, politics, and national unity. The speech comes, of course, in the wake of the controversy over the past remarks of his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. The event is being held in the center's auditorium, which only seats about 250 people. There's a huge crowd of reporters here trying to get in, There's talk that even the overflow room may not be big enough for everyone who wants to cover the talk. And there are a few invited guests, although we haven't seen many of them yet. It appears that former Pennsylvania Sen. Harris Wofford, a veteran of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and an Obama supporter, is going to introduce the candidate.

You know this is a big deal, Michelle Obama is here, sitting in the front row. They almost always campaign separately, as do the Clinton.

Wofford's prepared introductory remarks include the following: "We've waited a long time for a leader whom the country needs as badly as we needed John Kennedy in 1960 and Robert Kennedy in 1968. And today, I'm more convinced than ever that Barack Obama is that leader."

The speech hasn't started yet. Among the faces in the crowd are state Sen. Anthony Williams, Philadelphia City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, City Councilman Bill Green, U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy.

...Obama has taken the stage. He begins the way one might expect, with a tribute to the Constitution and the setting, noting how the founders and successive generations struggled with the institution of slavery and the issue of race. And he talks about his own personal story, "the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas...I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible..."

Then he gets to the subject at hand.

"On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. 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...

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. .....Now, he turns to the question on the minds of many voters. Why would someone like Barack Obama associate himself with someone like Rev. Wright? His answer: Wright introduced him to Christianity and, he says, has done many good works.

"As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me.

....."Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve 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......