User:Zleitzen/Condi

Rice's rise within the George Bush administration initially drew a largely positive response from many in the African American community. In a 2002 survey, Rice, then national security adviser was viewed favorably by blacks by a margin of 41 to 12 percent. But two-fifths of all respondents reportedly did not know her well enough to rate her, and her profile remained comparitively obscure.[1] As her role increased, a number of African American commentators began to express doubts concerning Rice's stances and statements on various issues. In 2005 Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson asked, "How did she come to a worldview so radically different from that of most black Americans?"

Other writers also noted what they perceived to be a distance between Rice and the Black community, the "Black Commentator" magazine described sentiments given in a speech by Rice at a Black gathering, as "more than strange – they were evidence of profound personal disorientation. A Black woman who doesn’t know how to talk to Black people is of limited political use to an administration that has few African American allies". [2] When Rice invoked the civil rights movement to clarify her position on the invasion of Iraq, many African-Americans felt that her use of the rhetoric was cynical. [3] Rice was also described as being perceived as "very cold and distant and only black by accident".[4] In August 2005, American musician, actor, and social activist Harry Belafonte referred to African Americans in the Bush Administration as 'black tyrants.' Though heavily criticized, Belefonte's comments were subsequently described as "ringing true" expressing "what most people in the African-American community feel".[5] In 2004 Talk show host John Sylvester called Rice an "Aunt Jemima" and Colin Powell an "Uncle Tom". In response, African American commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson called the comments "silly, juvenile, racial cheap shots."

Rice has defended herself from such criticisms on several occasions. During a September 14, 2005 interview, she said: "Why would I worry about something like that? . . .[T]he fact of the matter is I've been black all my life. Nobody needs to tell me how to be black."

She has also been defended by African Americans across the political spectrum. Democrat Mike Espy, the first African American Secretary of Agriculture, claimed in 2005 that if Rice were to run for elective office, the black community's hearts would be with Rice. Other African American Democrats have also come out to support Rice. Andrew Young, former Atlanta mayor, U.S. Congressman, said in January of 2005 that Rice "deserves [their] support," calling her a "strong, wise Secretary of State with a bipartisan mandate". Democrat C. Delores Tucker, chair of the National Congress of Black Women, in 2005 voiced her opinion that Sec. Rice is "more qualified to be Secretary of State than possibly 80 percent of the persons that sat in that office" and stated that her friends in the black community "support her" and want to "let her know that we're with her and we don't like what is being done [to her]".