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archived: 23 - 29 Oct, 2005 Back Next UPDATED: October 25, 2005 CONDI'S BELATED CONDOLENCES Amidst strenuous denials of her glaringly obvious political ambitions, Condoleezza Rice posed for the cameras and paraded her hitherto invisible past support of civil rights before the world's media. This political theatre is ironic in the extreme, because her father, John Rice, was one of the wealthiest African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama, where he used his influential position as an ordained Baptist minister to oppose the political activism of marches and sit-ins advocated by Dr. Martin Luther King whose strategy of confrontation led to the social changes of the era. Speaking at a memorial service swiftly cobbled together to mark the 42nd (a very odd number to commemorate) anniversary of a racist bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, Condoleezza Rice made her first public remarks in support of the civil rights movement just this past weekend. Why did Condi wait 42 years after the event being commemorated to make her feelings known? That is a very good question. The answer may have something to do with her childhood upbringing and her family’s peculiar political preferences. When John Rice first registered to vote in Alabama, he proclaimed his preference for the Republican Party. His family soon became conspicuously conservative Republicans in Birmingham. Condi’s family gave their community the distinct impression that they were rock-ribbed Republican holdovers from the Reconstruction Era, exactly like the families of Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas and J. Kenneth Blackwell. In recent years, the nine percent of the African-American community who consistently vote Republican have been a fertile breeding ground for numerous obedient minions populating the Bush administrations, both father and son. In Birmingham this past weekend, accompanied by a fawning Jack Straw, the British Foreign Minister, a lifelong devotee of civil rights who like all foreign nationals believes that every African-American was deeply involved in the movement, Dr. Rice was assured of major international press and media coverage. In the 1960s, it is a matter of public record that Condoleezza Rice and her family of staunch right-wing Republicans did not visibly support the civil rights movement. Nor is there any record of their public support for: The Civil Rights Act or The Voting Rights Act. Neither did they Rice family make any public attempt to oppose the general practice of lynching which was legal in parts of the American South called the Black Belt until 1968 when it was struck down by the liberal Johnson-Humphrey administration. Between the years of 1882 and 1968, two hundred and ninety nine (299) African-Americans were lynched in Condi’s home state alone, and her family did not lift one finger, neither did they raise one voice in public to protest the practice of lynching. Even to this date, Rice has never uttered one word in public against lynching, and she was silent on the topic in Birmingham this weekend. However, there is more irony and even the unmistakable whiff of hypocrisy in her political persuasion. Rice has been on the record as a stalwart opponent of gun control for many years. During her tenure as Provost at Stanford, she was the most visible opponent of affirmative action on campus. This latter position was noticeably hypocritical, for she is America’s single most shining example of the success of affirmative action. She has never supported environmental preservation, but she has been a highly paid board member of Chevron Petroleum. For the American of even average intelligence, it is painfully obvious that Condi Rice is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative Republican who has ruthlessly exploited the system by selling out to the highest bidders and opposing the liberal social agenda of Dr. Martin Luther King and his legion of followers. This weekend, Condoleezza Rice ironically invoked the most sibilant phraseology of Dr. Martin Luther King's, "I have a dream," speech. For Dr. Rice, this was the first public pronouncement in her entire life of support for Dr. King or the civil rights movement. Even in the dire days after her childhood playmate Denise McNair was killed by the bomb of white supremacists in Birmingham, Condi Rice and her entire family did nothing to protest her friend’s tragic death or to support the civil rights movement or its leader, Dr. King. While images of Rice and Straw amongst black schoolchildren and American flags extolling the movement may play well in foreign capitols, there is little doubt that the majority of the politically savvy Afro-American community will not allow themselves to be hoodwinked into accepting her as a candidate they could support for the presidency. Eschewing all questions about her political future, Rice is eagerly clawing her way to the top of the heap of potential contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, a political process that does not involve Afro-Americans en masse because so few of them are registered Republican. Revealing her penchant for self-serving hypocrisy, Rice already has a website to promote her presidential candidacy. Rice's overt political machinations mark the beginning of a new phase of neoconservative strategy to extend its power beyond the presidency of George Bush. Today, top-ranking Republican political operatives are feverishly working on a game plan they hope will lead to Condoleezza Rice’s installation as the 44th president of the USA, an event that might predate the 2008 election due to the disastrous erosion of public support for Bush and Cheney. Sources
The Condi Show (including
some guy called Jack Straw) hits the road – but with no end in sight
How Segregation and an
Indomitable Family Shaped National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
Americans for Dr. Rice __________________ Since 1968, Michael Carmichael has been a professional political consultant. Beginning as a Student Coordinator for Robert F. Kennedy, he has worked in five US presidential campaigns as well as over 100 major American political campaigns for federal and state offices. In 1985, he founded The Oxford Centre for Public Affairs in the United Kingdom. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement Limited, a global public affairs organization based in the United Kingdom. He has appeared as a public affairs expert on the BBC, European Business News, NPR and many European television broadcasts examining American politics and culture. In addition to his column for The Political Junkies, he is a regular contributor to the Moving Planet weblog. See: www.planetarymovement.org and http://planetmove.blogspot.com/
Last Update: 03/23/2006 |
