PHILADELPHIA -- Under fire over incendiary remarks by his longtime pastor, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama reflected on the legacy of race in American politics in a major Democratic presidential campaign speech that mixed history, inspirational language and political damage control.

Mr. Obama again repudiated statements by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright while sounding notes of compassion and confrontation over the racial attitudes of all Americans. Speaking in Philadelphia's Constitution Center, he invoked the memory of the Founding Fathers, saying, "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."

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At another point in his 40-minute address, Mr. Obama said: "As William Faulkner once wrote, 'The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past.' "

Mr. Obama sketched a history of America's struggle with race, from the Founding Fathers' failure to resolve the dilemma of slavery, through Jim Crow and more recent efforts by politicians to capitalize on the racial attitudes of white and black Americans.

While reiterating his condemnation of the intolerant remarks of his longtime pastor, Mr. Obama embraced him as well, drawing a portrait of a complex individual responsible for a wide array of good works.

In sermons now widely circulated on the Web and on news programs, Mr. Wright has said the 9/11 terror bombings represented "the chickens coming home to roost" for U.S. foreign policy. In other speeches, he has blamed the United States for inventing the AIDs virus, and said that, instead of saying "God Bless America," his listeners should say "God Damn America" over its record of discrimination.

Mr. Obama said those views "expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country -- a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."

But while repudiating some of his pastor's words, Mr. Obama emphasized, "The man I met more than 20 years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another, to care for the sick and lift up the poor."

He likened Mr. Wright, who baptized his two daughters, to a member of his family. "He contains within him the contradictions -- the good and the bad -- of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. ...

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

Mr. Obama's oratory ranged well beyond the specifics of the Wright controversy. He used the incident as a launching point for a broader discourse on racial attitudes that have been an unacknowledged impediment to progress on a wide variety of issues. He spoke of the sometimes-unstated anger of black Americans at a legacy of discrimination, but added that a failure to speak openly about racial issues casts a shadow on white America as well.

"In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience -- as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything; they've built it from scratch. ...

"So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; 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; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time."

Mr. Obama described the three decades of American politics as a partial reflection of those dynamics. "Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation," he said.

"Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends," he said. "Talk-show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism, while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism."

Mr. Obama said the fears and resentments on all sides had helped stall progress on common issues --from health care to the economy. "This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years," he said.

While his speech was an often-sober survey of the nation's racial landscape, it offered hopeful perspectives a well. Noting his legacy as a son of a Kenyan father and white American mother, Mr. Obama said: "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."

In a speech whose title echoed the U.S. Constitution, "A More Perfect Union," Mr. Obama said the mistake of those who despair of racial progress, like Mr. Wright, is that they don't recognize that "this union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected."

Speaking just a few blocks away in Philadelphia, Mr. Obama's Democratic nomination rival, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, welcomed Mr. Obama's decision to discuss the racial issues, although she said she couldn't discuss specifics of his speech because she hadn't read it.

"Race and gender are difficult issues, and therefore we need to have more discussion about them," she said. "So, obviously, the more that Senator Obama and I talk try to about it, or try to put it in some context, the more people will feel free to do so as well, and I think that's helpful for the country."

Questions about Mr. Wright's militant statements had been a constant but low-profile staple of the Obama campaign almost since its inception. But the level of controversy increased dramatically last week, when videos circulation of some of the clergyman's rawer, more accusatory rhetoric.

Mr. Obama has spoken before of racial injustice. But at the same time, his campaign has often projected the image as being above race. Yesterday's speech changed that focus, presenting one of the most far-reaching meditations about race ever offered by a major presidential candidate.

It had the immediate, pragmatic goal of trying to free his campaign of the Wright controversy. But it had a broader, more profound aim of prodding voters to think and speak more openly about the connection between race and the issues facing all Americans. The outcome of his candidacy in Pennsylvania and in future contests will provide a limited but crucial measure of whether it met those goals.

A CBS polls released yesterday, but conducted before Mr. Obama's speech, found that the controversy has had a strong negative impact on his campaign. While most voters said the issues didn't make any difference to them, a third said it led them to a less-favorable view of the candidate. Among independent voters, a traditional strength for the Illinois senator, 36 percent said the matter gave them a more negative view of the candidate.

Initial reactions to the speech ranged widely. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Harris Wofford, who introduced Mr. Obama before the crowd of about 200, called it a profound statement of the nation's problems, and he likened it to Abraham Lincoln's "house divided" speech at the Cooper Union.

Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, who has returned to the Wright controversy often in recent days, was unimpressed, and again criticized Mr. Obama in a commentary on his program yesterday afternoon.

Much of the conservative reaction in early remarks on the Internet was negative, but conservative intellectual Charles Murray -- no stranger to controversy himself from his writings about race and IQ -- was effusive. "Has any other major American politician ever made a speech on race that comes even close to this one?" Mr. Murray wrote on the National Review's Web site. "As far as I'm concerned, it is just plain flat-out brilliant -- rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we're used to from our pols."

Mr. Obama, striving to be the first African-American nominee of a major party, will doubtless return to the subject of race in the future. But his campaign said his next major speeches this week, in North Carolina and West Virginia, would focus on the nation's military and the war in Iraq.