Rice on Race
Via Power Line comes the news that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice commented on the issue of race in America last week in her meeting with the Washington Times editorial board. She had quite some interesting things to say: she speaks about this difficult subject, and the role race played in her life, in quite a moving manner.
“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…
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.
Scott Mirengoff also recommends this article, so do I.
Her remarks are incredibly poignant, IMO. Rather than resenting the history of black enslavement, she chooses to simply point out that blacks helped build America, and not by choice, and they got a very raw deal out of it (even after emancipation, since they then truly didn’t have an even playing field to start on.) This encourages us as white Americans to reflect on that reality, without the accompanying feeling that we’re being told that we bear individual guilt over those past injustices. It also, I would think, would make a black American incredibly proud rather than feel that they should be encouraged to dwell on victimhood.
I understand Black Americans hardship and respect them and their heritage. In todays world we hear more of the Black Americans having issues on Race then White Americans. I heard one Black American women indicate that it was the Black Americans being uncomfortable about their own race. I watch Black American shows and the shows are always mentioning their color. A lot of black American songs mention their color. I think Balck Americans need to focus on White and Black being one group and stop looking at the differenes. If we raise our children with out pointing out differences maybe they will not see the differnces. Not all White Americans had it easy. My family was very poor. My family had many struggles. We need to stop looking at Whites, Blacks or any other color and learn to love each other for what we are. I am a White American. I do not look at other colors as being any differnet then a person with red hair, a person with glasses, a person that is larger and so on. We all have our difference and Thank God for that. What a boring place we would be other wise. Please stop introducing our children to negetivity and stop showing our children the strength we can have in America. If not for our children ut our grandchildrens , children.