Much attention is paid to Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia yesterday that touched on the issue of unresolved racial tension in America.

Obama, who is currently the leading contender for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination, has largely been hailed for the speech in which he explains his relationship with his pastor, the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

According to an analysis from U.S. News & World Report, Obama’s speech was “overwhelmingly positive, with several sources calling the speech an historic discussion of racial issues by a presidential candidate—and comparing it to John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion.”

Commentators thought, though, that Obama’s focus on race was risky, given that it could serve to alienate working class white voters.

Wright, formerly of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, suggested in one sermon that the United States brought the Sept. 11 attacks on itself and in another said blacks should damn America for continuing to mistreat them, according to the Associated Press.

Video of Wright’s comments has been circulating on the internet in recent weeks, leading pundits to numerous discussions about Obama’s long relationship with Wright and the possible implications of the pastor’s inflammatory comments on the Illinois senator’s racial outlook and presidential aspirations.

The Obama speech comes about a week after Geraldine Ferraro, a former presidential candidate who held an honorary post in the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, stepped down from the post after being criticized for saying that Obama owed his campaign success to his being black.

See the video and text of Obama’s speech here.