It is a brave man who, in seeking to be elected US President, starts a speech with the idea that the nation was founded on the 'original sin' of slavery. But that is what Barack Obama did last week.

It would have looked braver had Senator Obama not been forced into addressing the issue by a controversy over statements made by Jeremiah Wright, his church pastor and friend. Rev Wright lambasted the US for ideological hypocrisy in terms deeply offensive to most Americans.

The fact that Obama's speech was a reaction to controversy meant that US media focused more on its effectiveness as damage-limitation than on the ideas it contained.

But those ideas, although rooted in the American experience, deserve close attention beyond US shores.

Senator Obama noted that, while polite society has declared racial epithets taboo, in private, black and white communities (mostly socially segregated) harbour deep resentments. On one side is the feeling that society is endemically racist. The white establishment cannot be relied upon to do anything to help the black underclass if it means compromising its own hold on power.

On the other side is the feeling that a narrative of victimhood is used by the black community to extract special privileges. The white working class, goes this view, faces the same barriers to advancement as non-whites, but is expected to surmount them by self-reliance alone.

That, Obama said, is 'racial stalemate'. At best, politicians view racial tension as an embarrassing side issue, at worst as a resource to be mobilised for votes.

The analysis rings horribly true of Britain too. Although public discourse conforms to liberal anti-racist orthodoxy, skin colour, sadly, still matters. It still affects people's life chances. Issues of race lie hidden in discussion of many policy areas: immigration, housing, education, crime. If they are not tackled overtly, it is because politicians daren't touch the subject for fear of stoking just the same resentments that Obama described and because none of our political leaders can draw upon the experience that Obama brings to the subject. Westminster, as much as Washington, is largely a club for white men.

It would be a tragedy if Barack Obama's speech, 'A More Perfect Union', were remembered only as a tactical bid to smother a controversy in an election campaign. It was the most incisive account of race politics in America - and beyond - for a generation. Delivered with dignity, authority and humility, it deserves a place in history as one of the most impressive pleas for a new beginning on race relations since the famous orations of Martin Luther King.