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CounterPunch
January
23, 2003
A Traitor to
Her Race
Condoleezza
Rice: the Devil's Handmaiden
by THE BLACK COMMENTATOR
Noah thought he had it bad. For 41 days and 41
nights, the Republican Party rained down racial obscenity upon
Black America, beginning with Trent Lott's December 5 birthday
greeting to Strom Thurmond and climaxing on Martin Luther King's
birthday, January 15, when George Bush declared the University
of Michigan law school's affirmative action program unconstitutional.
Bush capped off the holiday weekend with a visit to a Black church,
where he tempted the congregation with faith-based favors. The
Queen of the show, Condoleezza Rice, blew kisses to the crowd
- an image that should be etched in memory, raising as it does
the most profound challenge to historical Black political behavior.
If we cannot be moved to revulsion by
brazen acts of treason, then we cannot hope to exercise the power
of a coherent political force. Condoleezza Rice is the purest
expression of the race traitor. No polite description is possible.
As a people historically excluded from
high titles, Blacks have applauded every African American "first"
as a collective victory. This was a logical and correct response
to the solid wall of white refusal to tolerate the presence of
Black faces in high places. In such circumstances - which still
prevail today in vast swaths of American society - individual
advancement actually does represent a kind of collective triumph.
The rule applies, even in areas of endeavor having little effect
on the lives of Black people, in general. Indeed, the more exclusively
white the enclave or activity, the greater the shared victory
once the color line is crossed.
White people invented the rules of this
game, and can end it at will. Beginning in earnest less than
a decade ago, and at the urging of Right think-tankers bent on
maintaining white domination, the Republican Party adopted a
strategy of selective, high profile minority appointments. This
approach allowed the GOP to continue to cultivate its core racist
base, while reassuring white "swing" voters that they
had not allied themselves with a racist party. Of decidedly secondary
importance was the possibility of finding substantial support
among Black voters. Significantly, the GOP simultaneously downgraded
efforts to elect Black Republicans to Congress. For the party's
narrow purposes, an appointive Black strategy provided large
propaganda payoffs at minimal political cost.
His obedient
servant
During the six weeks between the birthdays,
Condoleeza Rice and, in a related role, Armstrong Williams, demonstrated
the destructive utility of the Black appointed (or self-appointed)
operative. Williams, the multi-media propagandist and political
consultant to the entire Hard Right infrastructure, orchestrated
a contrived confrontation-reconciliation between Black Republicans
and party leadership, thus providing a theatrical catharsis to
"heal" the wounds of the Trent Lott affair. (See "Armstrong
Williams' Big Move, January 16.) For this service, Williams will
be amply rewarded as prime contractor for the GOP's Black appointments
and candidate bankrolling apparatus.
Rice's special assignment, far removed
from her training as a Sovietologist and her National Security
job description, was to deflect Black anger when George Bush
launched his long-planned assault on affirmative action in higher
education.
Rice was more than willing, having logged
18 years service to the Bush family. However, the crude racists
of Bush's inner circle betrayed Rice and Bush from the start.
They had railed against "reverse discrimination" their
entire political lives, and were incapable of finessing the issue
or understanding the sensitive nature of Rice's mission.
Contemptuous of their own scripts, senior
Bush men spun a tale to the Washington Post ("Rice Helped
Shape Bush Decision on Admissions") that gave the impression
that Rice is even more hostile to affirmative action than Bush.
"The officials said Rice, in a series
of lengthy one-on-one meetings with Bush, drew on her experience
as provost at Stanford University to help convince him that favoring
minorities was not an effective way of improving diversity on
college campuses," said the January 17 piece.
This was bad spin for all concerned,
an inept maneuver that embarrassed the national security advisor
and made Bush seem soft and squishy on race, causing alarm among
his base in the White Man's Party.
Later the same Friday, according to a
Reuters report, Rice got permission from the President to issue
her own statement. In this version, it was Rice who had positioned
the President oh so delicately between the opposing pulls of
the Hard Right and Compassionate Conservatism. She was a helpmate,
not a harpy.
Rice's opinion was that "race could
play a role in college admissions, endorsing a civil rights principle
that President Bush has avoided," Reuters reported.
In fact, the actual White House brief
on the Michigan case did not rule out any and all uses of race
in college admissions; Bush's statement to the nation on King's
birthday had been crafted to make it appear that he had taken
a position of blanket opposition. Now, by introducing Rice's
clarification of her "own" opinions, as if in juxtaposition
to the President's, the fiction of Rice's independence was allowed
to take root - in the absence of any evidence of real differences
between the two.
Here's how the Reuters story read:
"I agree with the president's position,
which emphasizes the need for diversity and recognizes the continued
legacy of racial prejudice and the need to fight it,'' Rice said
in a written statement.
But, she added: "I believe that
while race-neutral means are preferable, it is appropriate to
use race as one factor among others in achieving a diverse student
body.''
White House officials insisted that Rice
was not at odds with Bush.
"I could not be more supportive
of what the president did. And the way that he did it, the strong
statement that he made about the importance of educational diversity
with racial diversity as an element,'' Rice said earlier in the
day.
Rice had never been "at odds with
Bush." Together, they had corrected the initial spin from
Bush's mean old boys, who had made Rice appear like a Black anti-affirmative
action dominatrix. Instead, Bush appeared to be acting in harmony
with an independent-minded Black woman whose opinions he happened
to share.
What is most disturbing about this manufactured
drama starring a hireling and her boss is the institutional performance
of the corporate media which, acting on its own imperatives,
succeeded in correcting the initial White House spin blunder
while elevating Rice to a totally undeserved status.
Instead of a national discussion on affirmative
action, or the merits of the case that is headed to the U.S.
Supreme Court, attention was focused on the opinions of a woman
who represents no one besides her patrons. Better the old days,
back in the Forties, when Joe Louis was asked to speak for Black
America. At least he fought his own battles in the boxing ring.
Rice, the foreign policy servant, was treated like an authentic
Black leader - a triumph of the GOP's Black appointive strategy,
and a collective insult to every African American.
Ralph Neas, president of the liberal
People For the American Way Foundation, couldn't resist getting
into the act, if only to boost the opinions of another Black
Bush appointee who represents no one but himself. "It is
very good news that Condoleezza Rice agrees with Colin Powell's
long-standing belief that it is appropriate to use race as one
factor among others in achieving a diverse student body,'' Neas
said.
Neas undoubtedly meant well, but he did
Black people no favor. Then again, his remarks were certainly
echoed in Black barbershops and beauty parlors throughout the
nation, over the long King weekend. Republican Black appointive
politics, bearing no relation to democracy or Black self-determination,
has achieved a status in much of the public mind equal to the
real politics of elections.
As confirmation, the affirmative action
opinions of both Rice and Powell were elicited on NBC's "Meet
the Press" and CBS's "Face the Nation," respectively,
Sunday morning. Rice said that Bush "has come out in exactly
the right place." Powell repeated his support for the University
of Michigan's affirmative action program. Headlines filled the
news cycle.
Virtually all of Black elected and institutional
leadership as well as every Democratic presidential contender
except the shifty Senator Joe Lieberman support the Michigan
program. Yet Sunday belonged to the two, politely dueling appointees.
As an operative fact, the corporate press conspires with the
White House to present appointed Blacks as an alternative - more
newsworthy - leadership of Black America. It matters little that
Powell's views on affirmative action happen to be closer to those
of Black elected leaders and activists with proven constituencies.
Powell was not chosen by Blacks, but by Bush. His opinion counts
for no more than that of Condoleezza Rice.
No place sacred
The old, reflexive Black applause for
members of the race who are chosen for high office, now works
against us with a vengeance. The GOP understands the game and,
with the enthusiastic connivance of corporate media, plays it
with increasing skill. Authentic Black opinion, sensibilities
and leadership are relentlessly devalued, even at the First Baptist
Church of Glenarden, Maryland on the day set aside for remembrance
of Dr. Martin Luther King.
The Associated Press recorded the surprise
presidential visit:
Though warmly greeted, Bush's applause
paled in comparison to the cheers that followed Rice's introduction.
She smiled and blew kisses to the crowd from her seat behind
Bush.
Authentic Black leadership has done little
to impress upon the people that Rice is the devil's handmaiden,
an eager accomplice in Bush's crimes. It is one thing to bear
insults with dignity. It is quite another to cheer about it.
The
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can be reached at: publisher@blackcommentator.com
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