Update: Barack Obama Discusses Race, Politics In Stirring Speech In PA

March 18, 2008 12:23 p.m. EST

Philadelphia, PA (AHN)-Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama delivered a stirring speech on Tuesday discussing race and politics in the U.S. today, including defending his relationship to controversial church minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Obama, whose relationship to Trinity United Church of Christ and its retired leader Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has come under scrutiny after reports surfaced that Obama was present during controversial sermons Wright delivered to the Chicago church where Obama has worshipped for some 20 years.

Obama, who is speaking at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center, is expected to both distance himself from Wright's more inciting words, but also further explain his close relationship to the retired minister, whom he has known for many years.

The Obama campaign is hoping that the opportunity to address the race issue head on, including clarifying his relationship to the often controversial minister, will help Obama put to rest the barrage of media scrutiny that has been pointed at the Illinois Senator in recent weeks.

During his speech, Obama, who called himself the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas, sought to quell racial tensions and put the Reverend's comments into perspective as a man who directly experienced the bitterness of segregation during the civil rights movement.

Barack Obama did attempt to separate himself from the Reverend's more divisive comments, while still affirming his decades-long relationship with the man who Obama said "helped introduce me to my Christian faith, who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor."

Obama refused to downplay the significance of his relationship with the pastor or how the issues or race and equality affect both his political campaign and personal life.

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," Obama said. "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."

"These people are a part of me," Obama told the crowd. "And they are a part of America, this country that I love."