When Sen. Barack Obama spoke at the University of Charleston last week, he chose to focus on the economic impact of the Iraq war rather than respond to criticism of controversial sound bites from sermons by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

Identity politics spurred Wright-Obama condemnations via guilt by association, but it also prompted Obama's carefully crafted Philadelphia speech on the significance of race, which served as a clarion call to awaken America from a 40-year wandering in the wilderness of confused racial rhetoric, punctuated by moods of aspiration and exasperation.

No matter the outcome of the presidential campaign, Obama's speech was a defining moment in his campaign. Not since Martin Luther King Jr. has a leader emerged with the skill to articulate issues of black rage and white resentment in words that both communities could understand and affirm.

The political strategy that informed the theme of his Charleston speech may have been politically expedient for this venue, but Obama's audacity to speak so explicitly about race before a national audience has alerted us to recognize that if our pathology with race is to be healed, it must first be revealed.

The Philadelphia speech also attempted to explain the historical role of African-American preachers (in the linage of Nat Turner, Richard Allan, Henry Highland Garnett, Adam Clayton Powell and Martin Luther King), whose prophetic proclamations damned racial oppression and invigorated the freedom movement. Like Rev. Wright, their provocative words were often considered incendiary, unpatriotic and divisive.

People remember King's "I Have a Dream" speech, but tend to forget his radical critiques of capitalism and militarism which aroused the ire of J. Edgar Hoover to label him the most notorious liar in America. On April 4, 1967 (one year before his murder), in a speech protesting the Vietnam war, King declared: "I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government."

Obama's political rhetoric succeeded in reviving a national dialogue on race that had been on delay since the closing years of the Clinton administration. In 1997, President Bill Clinton established the President's Initiative on Race to encourage public dialogue on issues of equality and justice. He selected the eminent historian John Hope Franklin to lead its advisory board. The Initiative's work was mocked by critics of its political correctness and eventually faded into oblivion.

Ironically, mean-spirited attacks on the Wright-Obama connection aided the resurgence of race matters in public speech. Clearly, the revival of national dialogue on race was an unintended sponsor of Obama's "defining moment." Denunciation of the Wright-Obama connection amplified the Law of Unintended Consequences, which states that "for any action one might will or intend, there is always some unintended consequence or outcomes."

However, from the perspective of the black religious experience, the Law of Unintended Consequence manifests the paradoxical power of Providence to manage magnificence out of madness as witnessed in a Negro spiritual that declares, "Over my head I see trouble in the air ...there must be a God somewhere."

All too often, tragic events provoke desperate interventions and fear-based responses to the issue of race. Such reactive measures have inevitably proven to be short-lived and largely ineffective. Proactive approaches to constructive dialogue on race are desperately needed to obtain more favorable results. Such a venture was initiated during King Week 2007 on the campus of the University of Charleston - in the same hall in which Obama's speech took place.

On that occasion, Dr. Roosevelt Thomas, a scholar-practitioner of international reputation, lectured on "Building on the Promise of Diversity." A coalition of corporate sponsors and community partners provided resources for the King Day Conference, which ignited plans to continue the dialogue on diversity and empower leaders with tools to effectively manage diversity mixtures and solve community problems.

Dr. Thomas founded the American Institute of Managing Diversity (AIMD) as an innovative learning program designed to build leadership skills in managing diversity. Current efforts to establish a West Virginia Diversity Leadership Academy are proceeding under the leadership of AIMD in partnership with the Charleston Area Alliance and Jackson Kelly PLLC.

If the audacious claim is valid that the bonds that unite us are stronger than the differences that divide us, the scourge of "identity politics" might be transformed by the higher aspirations of the "politics of identity." Beyond the current political hype, the zeal for constructive change through critical conversations requires addressing the intriguing question of the hour: "Where do we go from here to create constructive coalitions on the national and local level to heal the racial divide?"

English, former pastor of First Baptist Church of Charleston, is a Kanawha County school teacher, an adjunct instructor at Wheeling Jesuit University and consultant in diversity management.