Posted March 18, 2008 - In a major address designed to stanch criticism over his pastor’s racially charged comments, Sen. Barack Obama Tuesday told Americans that it is time to begin “working together …[to] move beyond some of our old racial wounds.”

He told a crowd at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia that the realization of American’s dream won’t come at the expense of anyone else’s and that playing the race card in politics will do little to help the nation progress. 

Instead, he said, “embracing the burdens of our past, without becoming victims,” and “taking full responsibility” for the course of our lives is the positive way to go. He emphasized the plights of different segments of the race and gender spectrum, from the struggles of Blacks to gain civil rights to a White woman struggling to break through the glass ceiling.

Even though Obama has made history as the most successful Black presidential candidate to date, he has always downplayed race in his campaign.

However, when racial remarks in sermons by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah White, recently surfaced, it brought race to the forefront of American debate and made Obama’s relationship with the Chicago minister the No. 1 topic on news programs for more than a week.

White’s vociferous pronouncement that, unlike Hillary Clinton, “Barack knows what it means to be a Black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich White people” sent  reverberations throughout White American, causing some to dub Obama a White-people-hater in sheep’s clothing. 

While not repudiating the minister and friend of more than 20 years – who Obama said led him to Christianity – the presidential frontrunner said that his pastor’s mistake was that he “spoke as if society was static, as if no progress had been made.”

But progress has been made, Obama insisted, noting the fact that he has been attract wide support from Whites, Blacks, Asians, Latinos and Native Americans, while running for the highest office in the land. “We have seen that America can change,” he said.

But Wright, who married the Obamas and baptized their children, " has been like family to me," despite his imperfections, Obama said.

Obama said the media and the broader public can choose to keep focusing on this single racial instance, or can come together and say “not this time” – focusing instead on issues like health care, jobs and the war, which affects all Americans, Obama said.  “This union cannot be perfect, but it can be perfected.”

See text from Obama's speech here and check out Pamela on Politics to get more insight.