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Posted on Wednesday 5 November 2008


At her Vanderbilt University commencement speech in 2004, Rice recalled the death of a schoolmate in an infamous church bombing:
    "I remember the bombing of that Sunday School at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. I did not see it happen, but I heard it happen, and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my father’s church. It is a sound that I will never forget, that will forever reverberate in my ears. That bomb took the lives of four young girls, including my friend and playmate, Denise McNair. The crime was calculated to suck the hope out of young lives, bury their aspirations. But those fears were not propelled forward, those terrorists failed."
"As an African-American, I’m especially proud," Sec. Rice said on Wednesday, "because this is a country that’s been through a long journey in terms of overcoming wounds and making race not the factor in our lives. That work is not done, but yesterday was obviously an extraordinary step forward."

An emotional former US secretary of state Colin Powell said Wednesday the presidential election victory of Barack Obama would go a long way toward repairing his country’s painful racial divides.

"It’s a historic day for the United States of America. President-elect Obama is a president for all America," Powell told journalists during a visit to Hong Kong, where he was invited to address a business school awards ceremony. The American people are responding with great emotion, and with great pride in our system, that we have seen this latest step in reconciliation with respect to our race relations," he said. "We have not completely reconciled within my society, within my country. But what Mr Obama represents is the best of America."

Powell, a Republican who made history as the first black secretary of state under President George W. Bush and the first African-American to lead the US military, publicly endorsed Obama, a Democrat, late last month.

"He has run a campaign that is inclusive, and has reached black Americans, white Americans, Hispanic Americans — every income level. He’s reached across generations from young people to old people," he said."The fact that he’s also black just has turned America on," said Powell, who then paused for a few seconds, before saying: "Very emotional."

Powell, the former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, recalled the desegregation of the US army by former president Harry Truman in 1948, and said the event had restored hope across America…
I thought of both of these Secretaries of State last night after the announcement that Obama had won. I’m conflicted about both of them, having been put in impossible situations by their President and Vice President. Everything Colin Powell advised was ignored, and then he was sent off to make a fool of himself at the U.N. The same with Rice, engaged in popularizing the war. She actually was more disappointing in that she told a whopper or two about the prewar goings on. But I felt both of them were "used" by Bush and Cheney to do their dirty work, and their real advice was never sought.

To be honest, it would be hard to justify accusing them of racism, since they used everybody in the same way. But it seemed different in that most of their other "stooges" were like-minded neoconservatives – more volunteers. But both Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice are solid and accomplished people. It is unlikely that either one of them will play out the lives they were meant to live because of the tarnish of the Bush era on their reputations. We’ll see.

I’m a little uncomfortable with all of this focus on Obama as the "first african american" President. While it’s true, that’s not how he ran his campaign or has lived his life. From my perspective, he’s our first populist President in a very long time. He has a vision, and I don’t think it’s a vision of America that is divided by race, or party, or class. It’s a vision of a society that transcends the various fault lines that are inevitable in our ethnic and racial heterogeneity. It will be interesting to see how he manages this dichotomy of "first black …" and his vision for our future. I would predict that his racial background will be more a part of what people say about him than of how he proceeds himself with his Presidency. I think Powell is pointing to that when he says that Obama is a president for ‘all America’. That’s what I think…

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