Wright: New dialogue on race needed

WASHINGTON, April 28 (UPI) -- The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Monday called for a new dialogue on race in the United States that doesn't engage in "denial or superficial platitudes."

Only then can reconciliation begin, Wright, former pastor of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.

"Maybe this dialogue on race -- an honest dialogue that does not engage in denial or superficial platitudes -- maybe this dialogue on race can move the people of faith in this country from various stages of alienation and marginalization to the exiting possibility of reconciliation," said Wright, whose past sermons have stirred a firestorm that engulfed Obama.

Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, is a congregant at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, where Wright retired as pastor.

During a question-and-answer session, Wright denied his sermons indicate he is unpatriotic because of remarks damning the United States. He asked questioners in turn whether they had heard his whole sermon.

"They are unfair accusations taken from sound bites, and that which is looped over and over again on certain channels," Wright said. "I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve? "

Wright said attacks on him are actually attacks on the black church by people "who know nothing about the African-American religious tradition.