A while back, I posed a question on a message board: is there a black person more reviled by black people than Clarence Thomas? The overwhelming answer: no.
But what surprised me was how much Condi Rice seemed to be challenging Justice Thomas for that dubious title; there’s real contempt there for her — of a limbic, primal nature. Marcus Mabry’s bio of Rice, Twice As Good, includes an anecdote wherein the staff of Essence magazine revolted when she was considered for the cover of its “power” issue. I knew she wasn’t popular among Negroes, but I thought it was just a passive dislike, and not a livid, I’ll-quit-my-job-if-you-big-up-that-lady kind of loathing.
Is this just (most) black people’s reflexive response to Negro Republicans at work? That’s certainly part of it. She’s also a woman — and the kind of woman that people tend to automatically be suspicious of: cerebral, inscrutable, ambitious. Case in point:
The sexist implication: Condi just needs some good dick.
Anyway, I’m digressing.
Last week, Rice made headlines when she called racism America’s “birth defect.” And Negroes were, well, perplexed.
Here’s the quote:
“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.”
“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.
Race has become an issue in this year’s presidential campaign, which prompted a much-discussed speech last week by Sen. Barack Obama, one of the two remaining contenders for the Democratic nomination.
Miss Rice declined to comment on the campaign, saying only that it was “important” that Mr. Obama “gave it for a whole host of reasons.”
But she spoke forcefully on the subject, citing personal and family experience to illustrate “a paradox and contradiction in this country,” which “we still haven’t resolved.”
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.
There’s nothing particularly bold about any of that. But black conservatism is often simplistically assumed to be the domain of self-hating handkerchief heads who aspire to whiteness. And nevermind that the pro-affirmative action Rice — who is also “mildly pro-choice” — is probably more of a moderate than a social conservative. (She’s ducked questions about her stance on gay marriage.)
Obviously, a host of Bush administration initiatives have been ill-conceived and arguably criminal, and Rice has been the public face of a lot of that policy. But to hit Rice with the sellout sword — and to be surprised that a black child of the Jim Crow South would take issue with American racism — means folks are too invested in ideas about “authentic blackness” to actually pay attention.
