Condoleezza Rice Talks Candidly About Race in America

March 28, 2008

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Yesterday Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat down with the editors and reporters at The Washington Times and talked candidly about race in America. Rice openly voiced her opinion –one which I happen to agree with her on– that the United States still has trouble dealing with race, and acceptance of various peoples because of a national “birth defect”, which Rice identifies to be the agent that has actively denied black Americans the same opportunities which whites were blessed with. Rice continues to explaining that the “birth defect” is is an issue that is deeply rooted in the country’s very foundation which when it took place, saw blacks as slaves, or property, not equals:

“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.”

Rice continued on to offer an explanation into what this has resulted in when assessing the current state of race relations in America:

“descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that.”
“That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today,” she said.

Seeing as though race has become a issue on the forefront over the past two weeks, Rice’s statements prompted the much-discussed speech last week given by Senator Barack Obama, on race in America. Rice declined to comment on the campaign, saying only that it was:

“important that Mr. Obama gave it for a whole host of reasons.”

However this topic led her into a discussion where she spoke forcefully on the subject of race in America, going as far as to cite her own personal experiences beginning at childhood, carrying on through her adolescent years, and ending now– as a grown women:

On the one hand, she said, race in the U.S. “continues to have effects” on public discussions and “the deepest thoughts that people hold.” On the other, “enormous progress” has been made, which allowed her to become the nation’s chief diplomat.
“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.

All this while maintaining her “no comment” mentality in regards to directly praising Barack Obama, who you can clearly see she agrees with through the bulk of context within her statements concerning race relations in the United States.

I must admit that I have never been a fan of Condoleeza Rice, and I wouldn’t even say I am a fan of her now. However I have to praise her for being candid on this topic, mainly because if we ever want to erase, or at least eliminate the majority of discrimination in this country honesty is mandatory. The covering up, not saying what’s really on your mind, and whispering in the ears of others is what has allowed the problem of racism to remain intertwined within our society. So as hard as it may be, I applaud Rice for her remarks, and her effort in helping end discrimination of race in this country.