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Washington: Presidential nominee Barack Obama lamented the rhetorical skirmishes that have recently turned the Democratic presidential campaign into a contest over race and gender.
"The forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again," he said at a town hall meeting in a high school in Indiana.
Obama did not mention by name his rival Hillary Clinton, or the recent string of barbs traded between the two campaigns. "I'm not here to cast blame or point fingers," he said.
More distance
In the last week, Obama distanced himself from his longtime pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, for saying Clinton, being a woman of privilege in a country run by whites, could never understand blacks.
During the same week, Clinton accepted the resignation from her finance committee of former Representative Geraldine Ferraro after her statement that she believed Obama would never had gotten this far in the presidential race if he had not been black.
"We've got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country," Obama said, noting "pent-up anger and mistrust and bitterness." But, he added, "I continue to believe that this country wants to move beyond these kinds of things."
Noting his own ethnic background - his mother was white and his father black - Obama said: "As somebody who was born into a diverse family, as somebody who has little pieces of America all in me, I will not allow us to lose this moment."
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