A lesson from Condoleezza Rice

Boston Globe | 11-20-02 | By Derrick Z. Jackson,

[Temple Owl]

A lesson from Condoleezza Rice

By Derrick Z. Jackson, 11/20/2002

WASHINGTON

CONDOLEEZZA RICE was reminded of her decision to become a Republican after the 1984 Democratic National Convention. She said the Democratic Party's speeches to ''women, minorities, and the poor'' really meant ''helpless people and the poor.'' In a profile in The Washington Post, Rice said, ''I decided I'd rather be ignored than patronized.''

The national security adviser to President Bush was asked if she thinks the Democratic Party still patronizes ''women, minorities, and the poor.'' Laughing, she declined to answer the specific question last week before the Trotter Group, an organization of African-American columnists. But her answer was as riveting as if she had actually gone on to trash the Democrats.

''The fact of the matter is, race matters in America,'' Rice said. ''It has, it always has ... It is not that I mind being associated with the group. I am African-American and proud of it. I wouldn't have it any other way. And it has shaped who I am and it will continue to shape who I am.

''I do not believe it has limited who I am or what I can become. And that's because I had parents who, while telling me what it meant to be African-American and exposing me to that, also allowed me to develop as an individual to be who I wanted to be.''

Rice said the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham that killed four girls, including friend Denise McNair, shaped her views on the war on terrorism. ''If you've been through home-grown terrorism,'' Rice said, ''you recognize there isn't any cause that can be served by it ... Because what it's meant to do is end the conversation.''

In profiles, Rice talks about being hollered at as a child by a white store clerk for touching a hat. Rice's mother told the clerk ''Don't you talk to my daughter that way!'' Her mother then said, ''Now, Condoleezza, you go and touch every hat in this store.''

That reminded me of around 1965 when I was about 10. I bought comic books and ice cream in a drug store in DeKalb, Miss. Later, my grandfather informed me that was the ''white folks'' drug store. He could have berated me for breaking white folks' rules. Instead, he smiled and said, ''Good.''

For me, not accepting racial barriers would mean going on to little things like being on the first integrated child championship bowling team at a particular alley in Milwaukee, then bigger things like sportswriting when there were few African-Americans covering pro teams for major newspapers.

For Rice, it meant parents who ''didn't say to me, `You know, it's really weird for a black girl from Birmingham, Ala., to want to be a Soviet specialist.''' Rice said that she liked Motown, the blues, and funk music like most of her friends, but her parents drove her to learn Brahms. Rice has often said bluntly that she had to master the white world better than a whole lot of white people to succeed.

''Sometimes when we say to our kids, `You are a minority,' we don't say it in a way that says it is part of who you are, we say it as if it's an impediment that cannot be overcome by hard work and access to education and all of those things,'' Rice said. ''And I just think the messages are wrong when there is only focus on what group you happen to belong to, rather than the group is part of who you are, but also, who you are is who you are as an individual.

''We don't talk about it very much, but, yes ... it is a very good thing for the rest of the world that when Colin Powell and I walk in with the president of the United States, we are there as secretary of state and national security adviser, because I think it says to people that there aren't boundaries in which black Americans are not supposed to play ... I think it's an extremely important message to our kids. That's why I talk so much about the individual. It's not to deny the group, but I really think it's important that we appeal to each individual's worth and capability.''

Such reflections do not make Rice's political views and America's global arrogance any more appealing to me. But those who dismiss her as a hotheaded cold war queen miss a chance to dwell on her focus and drive. Unlike many black conservatives who shout louder than white ''color-blind'' conservatives that race no longer matters, Rice has no problem saying race matters, and since it is so, black folks had better work to get the most out of their individual talents.

In a Newsweek interview last year, Rice said, ''It wasn't as if someone said, `You have to be twice as good' and `isn't that a pity' or `isn't that wrong.' It was just, `You have to be twice as good.''' One does not have to like Rice's politics to appreciate how being twice as good has made her the most powerful woman in the world.

[TheLion]

Think you missed the point I was trying to make. Rice is wonderful, talented, educated, articulate and a well poised lady. That is not in question.

What I can't stand is the left wing media turning her remarks into church burning nonsense. They are managing to squeeze the race card in here. How would you, as a conservative write an article about her?

[Jimmy Valentine]

"There weren't ''white folks'' drug store in 1965 because they were outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. BTW - I like fairy tales also."

Looks like the point of my post is the same as everyone else's to you on this thread.

[stainlessbanner]

...all of them claim to be doing justice and carrying on the "struggle" begun by the civil rights movement

The only thing they are carrying is fat coffers filled by ignorant folks!

Another great post, BCD - You need your own column, sir.

[Bill Davis FR]

the senate is no longer a good stepping stone to the whitehouse...a more likely path is the governorship...perhaps through the state of california as reagan did...

[lonestar]

There weren't ''white folks'' drug store in 1965 because they were outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

BTW - I like fairy tales also.

Obviously you weren't black and in Mississippi in 1965.

You still believe in fairy tales.

[lonestar]

In some small towns and rural areas, much informal segregation remained after 1964. But Jackson's anecdote doesn't demonstrate that he was the victim of segregation. No one at "the white folks drug store" prevented Jackson from entering the store and making a purchase. Perhaps the store was locally known as "the white folks" store, but contrary to the idea of Jackson's grandfather, this did not mean the store was unwilling to sell to blacks.

This reminds me of an article I read about how desegregation had hurt black-owned businesses and caused neighborhoods to deteriorate when blacks started to shop at the "white folks" stores.

[Tuco-bad]

Of course you don't, especially from a guy like me who can't put together a reasonble argument.

Your argument is one of intimidation.

[Tuco-bad]

As someone who grew up in the South and worked as a drug store soda fountain waitress in a small town in the South one summer, let me simply say you are wrong.

Was it after or before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed?

BTW - We are discussing the issue of legal segregation.

[discostu]

Whatever dude. You're living la vida red herring, go have your paranoid fantasies in the bathroom like all the other nut jobs.

[Tuco-bad]

No. Dr. Rice said she had bought a comic book and an ice cream there, and had not been refused service. Thus she was not segregated in her purchases. However, what you may not be aware of is that "pickaninnies", black children, were often given leeway and allowed to buy in "white only" drug stores before 1964 as long as they remained standing and didn't sit at the counter. The white only waitresses wouldn't serve grownups or sometimes even teenagers, but often would serve children coming to the end of the counter and quietly requesting to buy an ice cream cone and take it outside to eat it. This was a common practice where I worked, and the white waitresses liked to prove they were kind by acquiescing to the little children while giving the older children and adults who knew better only a cold stare of dislike.

Rice cites the incident as occuring in 1965.

[discostu]

Of course even then, as now, a business had the right to refuse service. Any business can still be segregated, they just can't be obvious about it. That's the only change the CRA actually accomplished, segregation went from being official policy to understood behavior. Big freaking deal.

[Tuco-bad]

Looks like the point of my post is the same as everyone else's to you on this thread.

What has Rice done, other than playing the piano for Bush, to merit her election to senator or vice-president?

[Tuco-bad]

There weren't ''white folks'' drug store in 1965 because they were outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

BTW - I like fairy tales also.

Obviously you weren't black and in Mississippi in 1965.

The issue being dicussed is legal segregation.

[Tuco-bad]

go have your paranoid fantasies in the bathroom like all the other nut jobs.

Seems you're the one who fantasizes about Rice.

As Nimitz signaled Halsey during the Battle of Luzon Bay in 1944, "The world wonders?"

[Sal]

...but in the space of one year the entire paradigm of segregation greatly changed.

The virtual paradigm of segregation was changed instantly by the law. The actual paradigm of segregation was changed gradually by people doing what the law allowed--sometimes at great personal risk. It took courage.

And BTW I'm pretty sure that was Rice's point. It sounds like she didn't know the possible danger, but her family reinforced her actions after the fact as GOOD, thus reinforcing the value of courage in standing up for your rights as a human being.

Your original response implied that Dr. Rice made the story up. All your follow-on arguments (up to #50 anyway) are legalistic nit picks. She may not have been breaking the law, but she was breaking the rules. She did NOT make up the story.

You are setting up strawmen all over the place to try to bring Rice down. It ain't working. The difference between the virtual and the actual--and the ability to understand that difference--is the difference between unintelligent intellectuals and the intelligence of realists. IMO.

[Tuco-bad]

She may not have been breaking the law, but she was breaking the rules. She did NOT make up the story.

How could you possibly know Rice did NOT make up the story?

[NeoCaveman]

She may not have been breaking the law, but she was breaking the rules. She did NOT make up the story.
How could you possibly know Rice did NOT make up the story?

We'll take her at her word. After all she is NOT the one who promised to leave the forum, and didn't.

[discostu]

Any fantasies I might have about Dr Rice are the perfectly normal fantasies any normal male MIGHT have for an attractive woman. Not paranoid ravings of someone determined to take down a successful woman based on little more than inuendo and suggestion.

And you're still in red herring land. None of this has ANYTHING to do with the CONTINUED existence of segregation LONG after the CRA. It existed, you know it, I know it, everybody with 2 brain cells to rub together knows it (and note I'm not using the common qualifier of "the south", I know better, segregation happened all over America but thanks to the Civil War everybody blamed the south while forcing their black to use different bathrooms). The story is not a fable, there's no indication in that story that the segregation was legal, not even an indication that it was full on segregation, simply that it was "the white drug store". All your attempts to classify it otherwise won't change it.

[Sal]

Save your breath. You are dealing with a liberal "intellectual" to whom reality--the actual--means nothing. Your and others ACTUAL experiences mean nothing in the face of his ivory tower, divorced from reality, "idealistic" "intellectualism". What IS means nothing. (If is even is...)

Actually Tuco has performed an excellent service today by helping us all to understand in a personal way the difference in both style and understanding between intelligent realists and the liberal intellectuals who want to rule our lives because they know better and "screw your actual experience to the contrary because I can twist the subject to whatever I want and spin your actual experience right away". People are starting to understand the difference.

That was manifested in this last election IMO. Spinning is beginning to be understood as what it is--BS. And people are beginning to flush it away.