Wed Mar 19, 12:22 AM ET
March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama tried to do for race what John F. Kennedy did for religion.
The Democratic presidential hopeful yesterday attempted in Philadelphia to quell a firestorm set off by incendiary sermons made in past years by his former pastor and adviser, and to challenge Americans to transcend racial prejudices.
While the speech Obama delivered is unlikely to win over those who oppose his candidacy because of his race, it may serve a similar purpose as Kennedy's address to Protestant ministers in Houston in 1960 -- dispelling concerns among some voters about his core beliefs, analysts and historians said.
Obama's speech ``made clear that his own views differed'' from those expressed by his longtime pastor, just as Kennedy made clear that a Catholic president would not answer to the Vatican, said Ted Sorensen, 79, an Obama supporter who helped Kennedy write the Houston speech that was a turning point in his race for the White House.
``The parallels with Kennedy instantly came to mind,'' said political scientist Stephen Hess of the Washington-based Brookings Institution who was a speechwriter for President Dwight Eisenhower.
In excerpts of past sermons, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, 66, for two decades Obama's pastor at Trinity United Church in Chicago, suggested that an oppressive U.S. foreign policy had incited the Sept. 11 attacks and that the government had a role in spreading the AIDS virus in the black community.
Wrong, Divisive
Obama, 46, who said he never heard such words from Wright, said in his speech delivered two blocks from the Liberty Bell, ``Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity.''
He added, however: ``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 -- a woman who helped raise me'' and who also had made racist remarks that made him cringe.
Obama said his own mixed heritage has taught him that ``we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together -- unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes.''
In his 1960 speech, Kennedy voiced similar hopes, saying he believed in ``an America where religious intolerance will someday end, where all men and all churches are treated as equals'' and where ``there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind.''
Big Differences
There are differences between then and now.
In 1960, Catholics comprised almost a quarter of the American electorate, and most experts believe that Kennedy gained as much with Catholic voters as he may have lost with some Protestants. Today, blacks comprise about 10 percent of U.S. voters and have overwhelmingly voted for Obama, while he has struggled in many states to carry white male voters.
And the assault on Obama, for his connection to Wright, from some Republicans and Democrats isn't likely to cease.
Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, said Obama -- by trying to justify Wright's comments as a legacy of bitterness among blacks who grew up in the era of segregation -- didn't go far enough to condemn the pastor's words.
It was ``an enormous missed opportunity to really assert as a very articulate and capable African-American leader how damaging Wright's expressions of hatred and animosity are to the African-American community itself,'' Reed said.
White Grievances
For Obama, confronting racism and discrimination is perhaps a harder-to-overcome task than Kennedy faced.
In his speech, Obama said whites, like blacks, have their grievances.
``Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race,'' because ``they've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor.''
``When they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed,'' he said, ``resentment builds.''
Harris Wofford, 81, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania who advised Kennedy on civil rights, said the barriers Obama has to overcome are higher and the message he was trying to convey more complicated than was Kennedy's.
`Old Fears'
Obama's speech ``was aimed at white people who are having a hard time in our economy and may be distracted by the old fears related to race,'' Wofford, who introduced Obama at the National Constitution Center, said in an interview.
It was also directed at black people who are ``seeing everybody telling them that these white workers are voting against a black man because he's black.''
Race is ``in some ways a far more significant issue than Catholicism was for JFK,'' agreed Hess. ``We fought a Civil War over this one. This was a much more complicated message.''
Sorensen said while Kennedy's address was critical in allaying the suspicions of many Protestants, there were some ``anti-Catholic bigots'' who were unconvinced. Today, he said, those who oppose Obama for his race ``are probably going to continue in their bigoted attitudes.''
To contact the reporters on this story: Indira Lakshmanan in Washington at ilakshmanan@bloomberg.net ; Heidi Przybyla in Philadelphia at hprzybyla@bloomberg.net
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