E.R. SHIPP A look at Condi through a prism of race

It's her hair. It's not a typical perm or Afro or locks or even some combination. She is June Cleaver, a time long gone -- but a time when black folks were not at the table at which she sits. They were, at best, awaiting orders for cutlery or a glass of iced tea or mint juleps.
So there she was, talking about how her boss, President Bush, was "tired of swatting flies" and, while she was talking about global matters, I kept seeing myself swatting flies, literally. At my mother's church, Macedonia Baptist, a homecoming is held each August. In my adolescent years, I recall theatrically swatting flies from the al fresco spread of the ladies' best cuisine so I could attract the attention of one of the young ministers.
Like Rice, I am a Southerner. She's from Alabama, I'm from Georgia. She was a single child in an upwardly mobile, well-connected family. I was one of six children from the wrong side of the tracks but in a family no less gospelly connected.
But for the grace of God she might have been one of those girls killed by the domestic terrorist who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963: Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins. If Conyers, Ga., were such a focal point, I, at Macedonia Baptist, or my classmates at Rock Temple AME, might have been those child martyrs.
Powerful
She grew up to become perhaps the most visible, powerful, accomplished black woman in America. White folks marvel at themselves for not noticing that she is black -- which, of course, means that they have noticed that she is black and that they are not. Meanwhile many blacks look at her without any real sense of attachment.
That I am no particular fan of Condoleezza -- or that other we-don't-notice-he's-black-Bushite, Secretary of State Powell -- is a surprise to those who think that there's some affinity among blacks that transcends politics.
The Rev. Al Sharpton's campaign was a perfect example of how false that assumption can be, that blacks will back blacks. He is peeved that so many black folk supported other candidates as the Democratic presidential nominee. It comes as a shock to him, perhaps as it does to some whites, that blacks can count and no matter how you added it up, he wasn't going to be the nominee.
You're more likely to find Sharpton at a prayer vigil for Whitney Houston's sobriety than at the Democrats' bargaining table. And he, like hundreds of others, mostly women, were in fact at a vigil organized by Houston's mother, gospel singer Cissy Houston, and held at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. I cannot imagine that many people praying for Condoleezza Rice to have a successful turn before the 9/11 commission.
Girlfriend is out there on her own. The hairdo and her devotion to President Bush say it all.
XE.R. Shipp is a columnist for the New York Daily News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.