Rush Limbaugh’s racist treatment of Condoleeza Rice is no surprise; but the unspoken implications of The New York Times Editorial on Nov.17, “The Friends of George,” should be. The editorial reflects a wrong and prejudiced preoccupation about Rice for her nomination as Secretary of State.

“Our concern about Rice” – the editorial says – “is not that she makes the president feel comfortable. It’s that as national security adviser, she seemed to tell him what he wanted to hear about decisions he’d already made, rather than what he needed to know to make sound judgments in the first place.”

In my understanding, Dr. Rice is a highly educated and qualified person to do the job and her attributes probably goes further than merely “willing to travel” or wanting an “exalted title.” But my disagreement with the editorial is for other reasons. And the fundamental one is the hidden implication that Rice is a “yes sir” person because of her racial condition – and this, besides being a nasty flaw, involves racist impulses.

In his book, Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol (1991) affirms that tokenism within the power structures serves three functions: It offers symbolism, enforcement, and scapegoat. As we can see, this is a valuable mechanism of power to protect the Bush administration against charges of racism, to impose a more severe imperial agenda, and to assign rewards and punishments depending on the circumstances, especially in these times when Rice will replace Powell. In line with this ugly power-tokenism amalgamation, the charge of “yes sir” attitude should not be a criticism, since that is precisely the fabulous attribute that, regardless of race or sex, President Bush was expecting from all his subordinates.

Otherwise, how do you explain that two officials of different races, Powell and Cheney, for example, played a “yes sir” role to support the infamous WMD story? “I am absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction and the evidence will be forthcoming,” said Powell (May 4, 2003). “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,” said Cheney (Aug.26, 2002). Dr. Rice, of course, is not the exception in the crowd: “We do know that there have been shipments into Iraq of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to nuclear weapons programs” (Sep.8, 2002).

Was not this perhaps the type of political discourse precisely that president Bush “wanted to hear” from his “knee-jerk loyalty” staff? If such subservient attitudes are not a patrimony of race or sex, where is, then, if not in the racial prejudice, the significance of the New York Times editorial’s preoccupation?

--Wilfredo Gutiérrez.
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See also:
 http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/17/opinion/edrice.html

 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/opinion/17wed1.html?oref=login&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position

 http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/137798/index.php

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