CNN - Obama: We can move beyond some of our racial wounds

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Obama: We can move beyond some of our racial wounds

Sen. Barack Obama said Tuesday he chose to run for president because he believes "we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together."

Obama said that his belief that all people want to move in the same direction comes from his "unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story."

Obama emphasized his upbringing -- "the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas."

"I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible," he told an audience at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center.

"It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts -- that out of many, we are truly one."

Obama has mostly avoided focusing on race during his campaign. His speech comes after spending the weekend on the defensive over racially charged statements from his former minister.

He said that race only became a divisive issue in the campaign during recent weeks.

Obama admitted he had sat in church and heard his former minister Jeremiah Wright make controversial remarks.

"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."

The remarks that caused the most recent firestorm "were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity," Obama said.

Obama said that if he knew Wright only through the clips played on television and YouTube, he, too, would see reason to distance himself from the former minister.

"But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man," he said.

"As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me," Obama said, after describing his experience at the Trinity United Church of Christ.

Obama insisted he was not trying to justify Wright's comments.

"The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through -- a part of our union that we have yet to perfect," he said.

Obama said Wright's mistake was not that he spoke of racism in our society -- "it's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress had been made."

"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 is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union," he said.

Obama said playing the race card creates distractions the prevent change.

"This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected," Obama said.

Obama was looking to explain the Trinity United Church of Christ and its worldview to voters who are aware only of the Wright's headline-grabbing comments.

The senator from Illinois' biggest challenge is the same as that faced by Republican Mitt Romney, who gave a major speech during his presidential run to reach voters unfamiliar with his Mormon faith.

And Obama's most pressing task will be his attempt to take control of the campaign narrative after days of tough headlines.

"I would say that it has been a distraction from the core message of our campaign," he conceded to interviewer Gwen Ifill of PBS on Monday.

Some old sermons delivered by Wright came under fire after an ABC News report last week.

Obama was not, as some reports placed him, in attendance the day Wright delivered his controversial comments, according to his campaign. But it would be difficult for him to distance himself completely from the retired minister of the Chicago church where Obama has worshipped for two decades. Watch the latest on Obama's former minister

The title of Obama's 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope," came from a sermon delivered by Wright, who officiated the senator's wedding, baptized both of his children and was a spiritual adviser to his presidential campaign until Friday.

Sen. Hillary Clinton and her campaign have publicly steered clear of any criticism of Obama over the issue, saying it's one for the senator to address. But that restraint has not diminished the uproar over Wright's comments, which have become a YouTube phenomenon.

Obama -- who initially tried to downplay the remarks -- denounced them again Monday. "The statements that were the source of controversy from [the] Rev. Wright were wrong, and I strongly condemn them," he said on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, though he added, "I think the caricature that is being painted of him is not accurate."

Obama's recent move to distance himself from Wright has been lauded by some of his supporters -- and criticized by others. Watch what Obama says about Wright's comments

More than 50 black ministers from around the country participated in a 90-minute conference call Sunday with representatives of the Obama campaign, according to Dr. Frederick Haynes, one of the participants. Haynes said the pastors -- some of whom were angry with Obama -- felt something had to be done to address the concerns of African-Americans, particularly those in the black ministry.

Haynes, pastor of the 10,000-member Friendship-West Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas -- who considers Wright a "mentor" -- said there was a sense of "outrage," a feeling that Wright was "being lynched in the media" and reduced to sound bites by those "ignorant of black culture, black expression and the black church."