The local African-American community is trying to determine this week the true motives of some of the black business owners who are touting the re-election of Republican Sen. Jim Talent.
But, however dubious, their actions pale in comparison to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s comparison of terrorists to the racist bombers that killed four black girls at a Birmingham, Ala. church in 1963. She brazenly compared the movement in this country to win freedom and opportunity for African Americans with the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Rice’s childhood friend Denise McNair was killed in the bombing. In a pre-recorded interview that ran on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, she equated that heinous crime to modern-day suicide bombers. Although the interview with Katie Couric consisted of mostly soft questions that allowed Rice to repeat the standard GOP talking points, she also sought to give the impression that she had something to do with the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham.
Rice has the gall to use the atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists to prop up the questionable actions of the Bush administration. The secretary of state has acknowledged that while other black Southerners were being lynched, tortured and abused – or organizing themselves to overcome these barbarities – her family was on the sidelines out of harm’s way and she was taking voice lessons and ice skating.
While she might have known one of the slain girls, her commitment to civil rights in America for black people has never been at the top of her “to do” list. George Curry reminds us that “Black middle-class families refused to confront America’s version of apartheid yet when the doors of opportunity flung open, they were the first to march through, riding on the back of poor people who were afraid to take the risks.”
Her latest comment is so egregious it calls for an apology. This apology should be directed to Black America. She should not seek the forgiveness of all Americans. Just her fellow black Americans.
Regardless of her doctrinaire political beliefs or her blind allegiance to an unwarranted war in Iraq and failed foreign policy, it’s a shameful act to draw any comparison to the hate and death suffered at the hands of racist whites and the state-sanctioned terror of the South to terrorists.
But it is obvious that Republicans will do anything to win political office. A despicable radio advertisement supporting an African-American GOP candidate for Senate in Maryland twists the legacy of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to serve that party’s interest. The ad also fraudulently compares today’s Democratic Party with that of avowed racists in the South in the 1960s.
Rice’s comments come as a U.S. intelligence report concludes that the Iraq conflict, which she strongly advocated as Bush’s national security advisor and continues to support, is actually increasing the terror threat.
It is time for African Americans to hold any black person accountable in the most severe ways when they use our heritage to better themselves or their employers – especially if this is done in the name of President Bush and his errant politics.