Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama warned on Tuesday a "quiet riot" was building among African-Americans, comparable to that which boiled over in violence in Los Angeles in 1992.
Obama, vying to become America's first black president, said despair and anger that sparked rioting in Los Angeles 15 years ago, was exposed again, after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005.
"Many of the folks in this room know just where they were when the riot in Los Angeles started," Obama said in a speech at Hampton University, Virginia.
"Most of the ministers here know that those riots didn't erupt overnight; there had been a 'quiet riot' building up in Los Angeles and across this country for years," Obama said.
"If you had gone to any street corner in Chicago or Baton Rouge or Hampton -- you would have found the same young men and women without hope, without miracles and without a sense of destiny other than life on the edge."
Obama, running second in most national polls to 2008 Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, does not often make strident calls on racial issues part of his regular campaign trail speech.
But the battle for African-American voters is seen as one of the decisive issues in the campaign for the Democratic nomination.
Obama said in remarks distributed by his campaign that that "quiet riots" that take place every day across America happened when "a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates."
"Much of what we saw on our television screens 15 years ago was Los Angeles expressing a lingering, ongoing, pervasive legacy -- a tragic legacy out of the tragic history this country has never fully come to terms with."
"That despair quietly simmers and makes it impossible to build strong communities and neighborhoods.
"And then one afternoon a jury says, 'Not guilty' -- or a hurricane hits New Orleans -- and that despair is revealed for the world to see."
The Los Angeles riots in 1992 raged for four days, after a jury acquitted four white police officers who had been captured on video tape beating black motorist Rodney King.
Obama said the conditions that led to the Los Angeles riots were still prevalent in America.
"Look at what happened in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast when Katrina hit. People ask me whether I thought race was the reason the (federal government) response was so slow. I said, 'No, this Administration was colorblind in its incompetence'."
"But everyone here knows the disaster and the poverty happened long before that hurricane hit.
"This disaster was a powerful metaphor for what's gone on for generations."
As the monstrous hurricane approached New Orleans, many of the southern city's well-heeled white residents fled, but thousands of poor, black residents were stranded, unable to flee as floods engulfed the city.
