I Apologize

I apologize for not understanding something. All my life, or as far back as I can remember, I thought that liberals supported Civil Rights, equal rights for women, and equal opportunities for all.

I thought that organizations such as the NAACP and NOW would be proclaiming to the world that a black woman has been nominated as Secretary of State. Not only is this nominee a woman who is black, she is qualified for the position.

I am writing about Condoleeza Rice, of course. She holds a doctorate in Political Science, is a published author, speaker, and serves as board member for several organizations. Not mentioned in the following biography, she speaks Russian, French, and Spanish, is a classical pianist, a figure skater, and a sports fan who aspires to be Commissioner of Football one day. She graduated high school at 15 and college at 19l. She is only a few months younger than I am and I am in awe of her accomplishments. She is what I might have been had I applied myself the way she did.

Here is her official White House biography:

Dr. Condoleezza Rice became the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor, on January 22, 2001.

In June 1999, she completed a six year tenure as Stanford University 's Provost, during which she was the institution's chief budget and academic officer. As Provost she was responsible for a $1.5 billion annual budget and the academic program involving 1,400 faculty members and 14,000 students.

As professor of political science, Dr. Rice has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the highest teaching honors -- the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.

At Stanford, she has been a member of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, a Senior Fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a Fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. Her books include Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (1995) with Philip Zelikow, The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin, and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984). She also has written numerous articles on Soviet and East European foreign and defense policy, and has addressed audiences in settings ranging from the U.S. Ambassador's Residence in Moscow to the Commonwealth Club to the 1992 and 2000 Republican National Conventions.

From 1989 through March 1991, the period of German reunification and the final days of the Soviet Union, she served in the Bush Administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, she served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1997, she served on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender -- Integrated Training in the Military.

She was a member of the boards of directors for the Chevron Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the University of Notre Dame, the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan and the San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors. She was a Founding Board member of the Center for a New Generation, an educational support fund for schools in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, California and was Vice President of the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula . In addition, her past board service has encompassed such organizations as Transamerica Corporation, Hewlett Packard, the Carnegie Corporation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Rand Corporation, the National Council for Soviet and East European Studies, the Mid-Peninsula Urban Coalition and KQED, public broadcasting for San Francisco.

Born November 14, 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama, she earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her master's from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded honorary doctorates from Morehouse College in 1991, the University of Alabama in 1994, the University of Notre Dame in 1995, the National Defense University in 2002, the Mississippi College School of Law in 2003, the University of Louisville and Michigan State University in 2004.

According to one blog I read, there are rumors that VP Cheney will step aside midway through this term so that his replacement could run for President in 2008. This same blog wants to see Dr. Rice in that position. While I think she would make an admirable VP, and a fine POTUS, I can't see the US electing a black woman at this point in time. And before anyone take issue with the fact that I specified "black" woman, I don't see a woman, no matter what her race, or how qualified she might be, being elected POTUS in the near future. And it's a damn shame.

I honestly thought that organizations such as the NAACP and NOW, and activists such as Rev. Jesse Jackson would be shouting from the rooftops that a black woman was nominated, and would be confirmed, as Secretary of State. I thought that she would be hailed as a role madel for black youth and women - "see? This is what you can become with hard work and education." Not only haven't I heard this, I have seen cartoons lampooning her as an "Aunt Jemimah" and as house n----- for the Bush Administration. I heard one woman call into a radio show and ask who Dr. Rice had slept with to get her positions and this nomination.

I admit that I don't watch network news, and I haven't had the chance to watch cable news lately, so maybe I've missed it. Please tell me that these organizations have acknowledged this woman and her accomplishments. Their websites certainly don't. Please tell me that I'm wrong in now thinking that liberals want to keep minorities "in their place." Please tell me that the Rice-bashing is a transference from the Bush-haters.

I thought that was the thinking of the "Old South" and racists and bigots. Not the enlightened intellectuals that liberals claim to be. If this is "enlightened thinking" then I'm glad I'm one of those stupid hillbilly Christian fundamentalists from Jesusland who voted for Bush.