Saturday, November 27, 2004
By M. CHARLES BAKST
PROVIDENCE JOURNAL
It was a different era -- and language. In 1964, a Mississippi campaign aide was telling me how hard it was to win support there for President Lyndon B. Johnson, who espoused civil rights. He said the only way he could swing white voters to LBJ would be if he could find and circulate a photo of Barry Goldwater "dancing with a great big colored woman."
Last week's top news picture was of George Bush kissing Condoleezza Rice, whom he appointed secretary of state.
Kiss or no, the Republican president's naming a black woman to this high post suggests to me big change in America. (That her race and gender attract so little comment is even better.) True, I don't overestimate the development, and several black women I know had mixed or restrained views.
Rice will succeed a black man, Colin Powell; he succeeded a white woman. If you hate Bush policies and note Rice has been national security adviser, her elevation may alarm you.
Still, Brown University President Ruth Simmons, a Democrat -- "but not hardline" -- says you can disagree with Rice's politics and yet admire her abilities and the historic nature of her appointment.
Success
Simmons says, "The fact that one can have a secretary of state who's a white woman or an African-American man or African-American woman is an extraordinarily healthy statement about the way in which people can achieve success. That says powerfully it doesn't matter what your ethnic background is, or your religion, that people are seen on the basis of their talents and intelligence." She says young people need to see "the deck is not stacked."
Ann Hill, whom I met years ago when she was on the old Providence, R.I., School Committee, warned, "She's not a Colin Powell, and my feeling is that she's going to agree with the president whatever he says."
Banneker Industries president Cheryl Snead said she'd love to see Rice as U.S. vice president, but wasn't sure if she's right for a job with so much international negotiating. "I don't necessarily view her as one that will be a consensus builder."
Snead, who calls herself a political independent, brought her husband, Roland, Banneker executive vice president, into the conversation. He is a Republican who declared that Bush "isn't getting the kind of kudos he should be as far as race relationship building is concerned."
Rep. Anastasia Williams, D-Providence, said Rice may have earned the appointment but is a token in an administration that ignores everyday problems of black Americans. So Mr. Bush gets no break? Williams said, "We will give him a break if he looks at real people." She sees Rice as part of the Bush circle that responds to the concerns of wealthy Americans. "To decorate his cabinet with someone who looks like me does not necessarily mean they're there to represent me," Williams said.
I wonder how close Rice can come to representing everyone.
X M. Charles Bakst is the Providence Journal's political columnist.