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    Dr. Rice in the House
    Dr. Rice in the House
    Dr. Rice in the House
    Ebook148 pages1 hour

    Dr. Rice in the House

    By Amy Scholder

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    About this ebook

    We have been bombarded by images of the U.S. Secretary of State as the Great Diplomat, walking onto the tarmac of a foreign country as if she were a rock star, an intellectual giant, and the embodiment of the American dream all rolled into one. Meanwhile, she has spoken out against affirmative action, lied to the 9/11 Commission, defended a disastrous war in Iraq, and been the mouthpiece for an administration at its most shameful moments.
    Who is she, and why does she hold such a special place in the national imagination? How does the Right use her to front racist and sexist policies in the U.S. and abroad? Why does the Left repress criticisms and thorough evaluations of one of the most influential people in Washington? Here is a compendium of think pieces, visual art, and imaginative works inspired by Dr. Condoleezza Rice.
    Contributors include Amiri Baraka, Kate Bornstein, Ann Butler, Sue Coe, Wanda Coleman, Coco Fusco, hattie gossett, Rachel Holmes, Gary Indiana, Jason Mecier, Jill Nelson, Faith Ringgold, Paul Robeson, Jr., Sapphire, Astra Taylor, Kara Walker, and Haifa Zangana.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSeven Stories Press
    Release dateJan 4, 2011
    ISBN9781609800604
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      Book preview

      Dr. Rice in the House - Amy Scholder

      DR. RICE IN THE HOUSE

      A Preface

      Amy Scholder

      When Condoleezza Rice was appointed national security advisor in George W. Bush’s first term in 2000, she was part of the most diverse administration the US had ever seen. (She was among Colin Powell, Elaine Chao, Ann Veneman, Karen Hughes, Christine Todd Whitman, Gale Ann Norton, and others.) Democrats were shamed by the fact that one of the most reactionary presidents of the past hundred years could appear more racially and gender balanced in his cabinet appointments than his predecessors. The Republicans were shrewd. As they scored points with swing voters by seeming inclusive, they have implemented draconian policies that have chipped away at the gains made by the civil rights, women’s and lesbian/gay movements for social justice and equality. The Patriot Act, the Gay Marriage Amendment, and the dismantling of affirmative action are only a few of the reactionary crusades they have taken on. And there has been no one more fitting—and willing—to front these cynical politics than Dr. Rice. Her corporate and academic credentials proved that before becoming a government official, she could work her way into the white world and take her place at the table. And according to her, she has no one to thank but herself.

      As one of the world’s most powerful public figures, Condoleezza Rice, it would seem, would be the subject of a steady stream of articles, essays, investigative reports, and books published about her contribution to world affairs. Instead, she has become the focal point of countless articles and radio and TV talk shows, centered not on her work as national security advisor and secretary of state, but on Rice as a public figure about whom we want to know more personally. Americans in particular want to feel intimate with Condi. What does she have for breakfast? What is her exercise regime? How does she stay so slim? Who is she wearing? What do we make of her hair? (The answer to that question alone could take up volumes.) On Sunday, April 9, 2006, the New York Times ran a full-page, human interest story on Condoleezza Rice’s passion for playing the piano (. . . in spite of being extremely busy, Rice regularly plays piano with string-playing lawyer friends . . .). What else was Rice doing that week on behalf of the American public? And why is this the sort of reporting we see, even in the newspaper of record? When the coverage on Rice is not personal, it often puts her in the middle of the ongoing debates about race, class and gender in America. Being an African-American woman from Birmingham, Alabama has given her a credibility that liberals and conservatives alike find irresistible. And she actively perpetuates the myth that race and gender are no longer barriers to success.

      Obviously Condoleezza Rice holds a special place in the national imagination. And the spectacle of Condi has served the administration well, diverting difficult and more essential questions that should be posed to her or to anyone in her position. When she served on the Chevron board of directors (and then had a tanker named in her honor), how did she live with the knowledge of the environmental and human costs of drilling in the Niger Delta? Does she really believe in the morality of torture and rendition? Has the mass destruction sponsored by US foreign policy since 9/11 brought any nation—including ours—closer to the ideals of democracy?

      In this volume, there is thoughtful consideration of Condoleezza Rice by some of the most challenging and innovative writers, artists and scholars of our time—responses to Rice as a political force, as a cultural phenomenon and as a Black woman in a world dominated by white men. This is the first collection dedicated to Dr. Rice and her powerful influence. It also serves as an index of where the culture wars of the 1990s have ended up: it is revealing of our times to consider how a Black woman fronting right-wing forces is received and considered by the public and her peers.

      When I began gathering contributions for this book, the Republicans had just been ushered into a second term, and mass media were yet to challenge the Bush administration and, in particular, the foreign policy carried out by the secretary of state. We may wonder what Rice thinks about voters’ unwillingness in the mid-term elections to stay the course of the current administration’s policies in Iraq and around the world, which she so skillfully fronts. One thing we know for sure is that we can’t take anything she says or does at face value.

      ODE TO CONDOLEEZZA

      Coco Fusco

      Madame Secretary, I send you greetings not only from me but also from all the soldiers under my command. We are all so very proud to support your leadership in our nation’s foreign affairs. Knowing that today is your birthday, I thought it fitting to send you this videotaped message. It’s a poem. I wrote it—well, actually I adapted it for you. I hope you like it.

      002

      Scene from performance of A Room of One’s Own: Women and Power in the New America photo by Kambui Olujimi

      ODE TO CONDOLEEZZA

      When our country’s cause provokes to arms,

      How your sweet music every bosom warms!

      When in our world tumultuous wars arise,

      Music your soft, persuasive voice applies;

      When our cabinet is pressed with cares,

      You exalt them with enlivening airs.

      Foreign leaders, all such skeptics—

      are undone by your insightful rhetoric.

      Envious radicals how they scorn,

      Hapless liberals are left forlorn.

      ’Tis your quiet force that stops all terror,

      Not those filibusters or Congressional errors.

      Your music the fiercest chief can charm,

      Islam’s severest rage disarm.

      Your melodies soften pain to ease,

      And make despair and madness please.

      Our joys below it can improve,

      When sense you impart to government’s moves.

      All others to your grace aspire;

      Your sounds lift soldiers’ spirits higher,

      And angels lean from heaven to hear.

      Of other brave women may no pundit tell,

      To Condoleezza greater power is given;

      Bin Laden plunged us into hell,

      She lifts our souls to heaven.

      Happy Birthday, Madame Secretary!

      IT’S NOT ABOUT THE HAIR

      Jill Nelson

      Condoleezza Rice is hard to fathom. She insists on placing herself and her life experience almost wholly outside the context of African-American life in the last half of the twentieth century. Rice would have us believe that the crucial and transformative events that touched the lives of all Americans, particularly those of us who came of age in the 1950s and 60s, were not relevant to her life. The movements that profoundly changed the lives of not only Black Americans, but all Americans, particularly the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, the Women’s Movement, and even the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, apparently skipped over Rice, with her taking no or little notice.

      The core of the narrative of Rice’s formative years is one absent the collective struggle born from the recognition of the collective oppression and disenfranchisement of African Americans and women. If Rice’s life were a movie, the theme song would be Frank Sinatra singing, My Way, and the screen would be awash with images of a determined Rice making it through adversity on a path composed of a strong family, intelligence, and sheer determination.

      Rice posits her youth and her adult achievements in a way that is almost ahistorical, as if the context and content of the times she lived in had no effect upon her, positive or negative. This is a stunning departure both from what we know from the historical records about Negro life in America—particularly in Birmingham, Alabama, where Rice grew up, a town whose response to the mere prospect of integration was so violent that it was nicknamed Bombingham—in 1954, the year Rice was born. Her refusal to acknowledge the suffering and trauma of such race violence is more disturbing when one considers the fact that a childhood playmate of hers was killed in Birmingham’s most heinous incident, the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. And Rice’s assertions that she just sort of ignored racism and was therefore unaffected by it, another aspect of her I did it my way with the help of a strong, educated, middle class family is nearly unbelievable. If it is true it is not only deeply troubling, but downright frightening. Do we really want one of the closest advisors to a president who prides himself on being disengaged and out of touch to be equally so? Yet that appears to be exactly who we’ve got.

      It’s bizarre that as an African-American woman born in New York City in 1952, two years before Rice’s birth in Birmingham, I apparently had and have gained more understanding of the profound (and important) impact the Civil Rights Movement had, not only on my life, but all Black lives and on most other American lives as well. Unlike Rice, I didn’t go to church down the street from the church (Sixteenth Street Baptist Church) where Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins were blown up by a racist’s bomb in 1963, a few weeks after the historic march on Washington, but I was frightened, hurt, and outraged by this event, and the many others like it—the murders of civil rights activists Chaney, Schwerner, Goodman, and Viola Luizzo; the assassination of Medgar Evers, head of the NAACP in Mississippi; and on and on and on.

      It’s difficult to believe that at twelve and a

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