Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, defending President Bush's record on racial issues, said yesterday that the hurricane disaster that disproportionately struck poor blacks in New Orleans "gives us an opportunity" to rectify historic injustices that she experienced as an African-American growing up in the South.
"When it's rebuilt, it should be rebuilt in a different way than it was at the time that this happened," Ms. Rice said in an interview at The New York Times, adding that "maybe now on the heels of New Orleans" there could be an effort to "deal with the problem of persistent poverty." [Click here to read a transcript.]
Ms. Rice spoke about a wide range of foreign policy issues, but seemed to speak most vehemently when she was asked what she told foreign leaders wondering about racial discrimination and poverty in the United States at a time when the Bush administration was promoting democracy around the world.
"You go to any other meeting around the world and show me the kind of diversity that you see in America's cabinet, in America's Foreign Service, in America's business community, in America's journalistic community," Ms. Rice said. "Show me that kind of diversity anyplace else in the world, and I'm prepared to be lectured about race."
When talking to foreigners about the hurricane victims, Ms. Rice said, she tells them: "Yes, we have a problem when race and poverty come together. We really do. It's a vestige of our history. It's a vestige of the Old South in this case. But don't misread that there has been no progress on issues of race in America."
Ms. Rice, who was born and spent her childhood in Birmingham, Ala., and who flew to Mobile two weekends ago to visit hurricane victims, rarely ventures into domestic political matters but has spoken many times over the last 10 days of those affected as victims of generations of poverty and racial discrimination.
"This is a part of the country I'm from," Ms. Rice said. "It is a place where there are pockets - by no means all of the Old South, but pockets - where race and poverty come together in a very ugly way."
But Ms. Rice rejected as "poisonous" any suggestion that President Bush himself would discriminate racially against any victims of the hurricane and said that his record on education, including aid to historically black colleges and the setting of standards for schoolchildren, demonstrated that he believed passionately in racial equality.
"I find it very strange to think that people would think that the president of the United States would sit deciding who ought to be helped on the basis of color, most especially this president," she said. "What evidence is there that this is the case? Why would you say such a thing?"
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