A lesson from Condoleezza Rice

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

[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.