Rice: Race Still Issue Because Of U.S. "Birth Defect"

Washington Times:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that the United States still has trouble dealing with race because of a national "birth defect" that denied black Americans the opportunities given to whites at the country's very founding.

"Black Americans were a founding population," she said. "Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together -- Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That's not a very pretty reality of our founding."

As a result, Miss Rice told editors and reporters at The Washington Times, "descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that."

Read the whole story: Washington Times

Comments

[BardEric]

VERY helpfull Ms Rice....But then your definition of helpfull (read: empowering Dubya) is a bit different than mine...What "opportunities" have YOU been denied? Howmany AF?AM Secretary Of States have there been again?!?

[tbone99]

Um Condi - sorry but there were people here before y'all "founded" it.

[ann1]

Did she really address this?

[Gmoney1]

Well let's see how Fox, MSNBC and CNN play this one - maybe they will tell Bush to reject, denounce and disown Rice - I can't wait to hear the spin on this one - Let's hear it Pat Buchanan, Tucker, O'Rielly, Russett and Chris Matthews - Birth Defect , now let's see - I wonder if Hillary and Bill will go after her as a non- patriotic individual who does not love her country like Bill, Hillary and McCain does -

[transendentilist]

So being a Hillary supporter is being in the closet??? Give themselves away? I don't see anyone trying to hide who they support. Your post is just idiotic babble.
So now, one of the chief archetects or sales lady for the Iraq war is noble?? Courageous? Man you Hillary haters are piece of work.
You definately are no dem. That's for sure.

[BeamMeUpScotty]

You may have a photographic memory but you have been a miserable Secretary of State and an accessory to an illegal war and the murder of 4,000 U.S. soldiers and countless innocent Iraqi's. Instead of taking the high ground and denouncing the immoral Iraq war (an oil fought for oil, not democracy), you will roast in Hell along with your pals Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, etc. While I expected illegal, immoral and unethical conduct from the aforementioned, I didn't expect a gig in the White House would so tempt and tarnish your soul. As a woman raised in the church, you KNOW better.

[Themo]

Rice is about 75% correct on her commentary of race. What she mgiht have said to make it complete is to say that both blacks and whites must give more than they receive. That way there would be an abundance of good will. Include the yellows and the browns and this world would be overflowing with good will. Goodness will betget goodness. We must make it happen.
As to her comments on the middle east issues, hindsight is 20/20. Someone said before the invasion, " You break it, you fix it". How prophetic.

[SisterJ]

I have always disagreed with calling Condi Rice 'incompetent'. Why can't she just be 'evil' like Cheney?

She has, in fact, been a little too competent when it comes to Bush's strategy; delivering his nonsense all over the world. With a straight face.

And although it reeks of the Nuremberg defense, she does come from a line of folks who take "doing my job" very seriously. She was taught to seek the highest office, no matter what the cost. But being 'in the house' has cost too many souls... see Rice, Powell, and Clarence Thomas.

We won't really achieve equality until we can turn down those positions, and honor our principles above the perception of achievement. But that step is for the next generation of black people to take.

Dr. Rice did pave the way, in a sense. Most people hate her for her politics, and not just because she's a black woman in power. So, on that level, "we" have arrived...

BTW, this is not her first reference to America's "birth defect". See 2003:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030703-14.html

[Tane]

She just earned some points in my book.

I suggest you read the whole article and recommend listening to the audio of the interview. You should be able to click on the audio link above the video in the article to hear her interview - she did an amazing job of describing the paradox of the black story.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080328/FOREIGN/746301768/1001

"Black Americans were a founding population," she said. "Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That's not a very pretty reality of our founding." She describes the Civil Rights Movement as the second Founding, which I thought was a great description....

"America doesn't have an easy time dealing with race," Miss Rice said, adding that members of her family have "endured terrible humiliations."

"What I would like understood as a black American is that black Americans loved and had faith in this country even when this country didn't love and have faith in them — and that's our legacy," she said.

We may have made some progress in the last 40 years, but we have a long way to go and addressing the issue with informed understanding and candor is a good start towards uniting this country. Divided we cannot make effective change.

[nightwind928]

If America is ever to truly experience equality between the races then the idea of making this generation of whites, feel somehow responsible for the issues of slavery and Jim Crow, has to stop. No one in my family ever held or owned slaves nor did many other anglo and hispanic families. History is replete with injustices to many people who helped forge America ( Native Americans, Chineese Immigrants, Japaneese detainees during w.w.II to name only three)
Today,everyone but a few idiots freely admit that the idea of slavery is barbaric and wrong, but that was almost 200 years ago. Today the richest woman in America is black (Oprah) and quite likely, the next president of the United States will be as well. There are countless black judges, attorneys, doctors, teachers and business owners etc.. Even Condi Rice is a testament to how far we have come as a nation to resolving the issues of race here at home. Is the situation perfect? No. but dredging up the sins of past history and pointing the finger at a section of the population who, in 2008, had nothing to do with it, as a reason for todays problems doesn't fix anything and continues to divide people at a time when working together is the only real solution to fix the issues that affect us all.

[SmellyOne]

Some of you people scare me.

Why are so many here dragging their political feelings into this conversation and the ad hominim attacks against an intelligent woman who was stating the facts in it's simplest terms??

[JMEB]

Exactly.
Some people are so blinded by partisanship, they'd reject a cure for cancer if it were invented by someone from the other party.
Rice's comments on race were insightful. The fact that she's sucked as SoS doesn't change that.

[mawrm]

I gotta say this - Condi Rice is a brilliant woman and it is a tragedy that she fell into the neo-con way of viewing things. While parts of the neo-con view might have been healthy and attractive during the Cold War era (she was an expert in Soviet matters), she would have been best served to leave that crowd at the end of it. I've been quietly following her over the years and there are times she makes such astute observations as this one you wonder if you're hearing it from the same person.

[LarBear]

mawrm...(You say) "I gotta say this - Condi Rice is a brilliant woman and it is a tragedy that she fell into the neo-con way of viewing things."
Yeah, sigh, that is so sad this brilliant woman fell into behaving and working for Neo Con Nazis... Same with G W Bush and Cheney... None chose this... They just "fell into" violating the Constitution, Torturing, Illegal spying on Americans, Gitmo, etc...
Ohhhh, woe is me.... So sad... No choice for them... They just fell into it... IT made them do IT....

[SonofLiberty1]

Condi Rice should have stuck with the piano, at least you can't hate someone who plays well!

As a Secretary of State she is First Rate....

A First Rate Jerk!

[WillPower]

She's brilliant and she disagrees with you on foriegn policy. Did you ever think that maybe you're not brilliant and she's right?

[biwee]

The Godmother of the Israeli murders at Qana has never been right about anything. Where is your mind???

[starboymikey]

Did you ever think that maybe you're not brilliant and she's right?
__________­__________­__________­__________­__________­_

Frankly, no.

[NewRiver]

Nope, mawrm's liberal nuanced intellect doesn't allow him/her to go there, but I agree with you Will.

[Stuttle]

No wonder our country is in so much trouble when our leaders speaking can't even get the history of this country correct. Native American Indians greeted Africans and Europeans when they came to our shores. The first slaves on this land was the Native American Indian. And the only reason we were called Indians is because Columbus was LOST!

[moderationsmuse]

I love it when people say stuff like this.... Let me make a suggestion. Try thinking this through a little more.
Humans are natives of "this planet." And they migrate around a lot. So, the "Indians were here first" stuff is kind of nonsensical -- however politically correct it might currently be.
We have Canadian geese flying around our apartment building, but we're not trying to shoo they away! I think human beings have a few more rights than birds.
When the Europeans first reached this hemisphere, there was plenty of land for both the colonists and the Indians to share. The problem of the advent of the Colonies was not a scarcity of land, it was (as we like to say nowadays) a "clash of cultures." One culture was semi-nomadic and the other was political (i.e. a polity, a creator of cities). The Colonists "owned" land and had a system of jurisdictions while the Indians lived more fluidly.
So, Stuttle, your Columbus Day just got more nuanced. The Indian culture ultimately lost in this confluence, but it's really hard to argue that the United States was somehow a bad idea. The original visitors were migrants. First various prehistoric peoples and later "modern" peoples of Europe. But both came here from elsewhere. And people still come here. People still migrate, period. Ask, say, the French who are not dealing so well with their Arab migrants.
One planet. Seen that way, there's NO migration. Is there?

[bar1ed]

she doesnt believe in boycotts ---- Rosa Parks must be rolling in her grave !

[rudyinbama]

And she was born in Birmingham, Alabama in '54.
She must have been too busy practicing piano to notice what was going on.

[WillPower]

Didn't notice what was going on? What, that many of her friends had children out of wedlock, got caught up in drugs and crime and look to the government for monthly checks or maybe got themselves killed?

Instead she worked hard and rose to the top ranks of government and probably could be elected President if she chose to run. I'd vote for her. She's advanced farther than any other black person in the history of the country (at least tied with Colin Powell) and many of you on the left unbelievably treat her like an Uncle Tom. It's revolting.

Maybe you'd like her if she just stayed a Democrat and grabbed a microphone and bitched about how the government doesn't care about poor people instead of doing something productive.

[samuraijack]

Dammit Dick Cheney! Who told Condi she was black???!!!

[khampton]

Why after 7 years would she now decide that we are in living in a seriously "deformed" nation? It truly surprises me that people are in denial about the history of these United States of America. Racism is not something that one can just "get over" as I've been hearing lately. It's something that exists still, either blatantly or not. There are still hate crimes being committed. For example the kidnap, rape and torture of a young black woman in VA. Main stream media does not cover these issues. It decides to play snippets and splices of a sermon given by a pastor who was repeating something that was said by Ambassador Peck. No one cared to do the research and find out the truth for themselves. Everyone was quick to form a lynch mob and attack this man for speaking the truth. I am disappointed in my fellow Americans for being so easliy swayed when the truth, if you wanted it, was only a mouse click away. In this age of technology, it would have been so easy to do. Instead we took the easy way out and swallowed what was fed to us with a splintered spoon. We should all be ashamed.

[brooklyncitizen]

We have only short term memory....how can people object to Wright's comments in light of events such as the Katrina aftermath? If that wasn't a wake-up call to race I don't know what was....apparently even Obama's speech was not sufficient to explain the state of this racist Union.

[khampton]

I couldn't agree more. Only, I don't think it's short term, I think it's selective

[donaldw6]

Only a few months ago, six black schoolboys in Jena, Louisiana were imprisoned and facing impossibly long prison terms for a fistfight stemming from nooses hung in the tree in front of the schoolyard. The nooses had been hung to intimidate the boys, who had asked permission to sit underneath the tree the day before. Only the national spotlight of publicity prompted review of these juveniles' cases and eventual progress in treating the issue fairly. The incident, along with several others involving nooses, even elicited a condemnation from President Bush.Those of us fortunate enough to live and work in more progressive sectors of the country may be tempted to ignore the persistent problems in many regions and neighborhoods of the country. We have so many problems to solve, and we certainly can't afford to misunderstand or underestimate any of them.