Condoleezza: The Left Should Stop Telling Black People How to Think

In a conversation with The New York Times’s Peter Baker at the Aspen Security Forum this week, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the left has a certain amount of entitlement and arrogance when it comes to black people. Rice said that the goal for every American should be a country where people are judged on factors that have nothing to do with their skin color.

“I don’t really care if we’re colorblind, but I would like to get to the place that when you see somebody who is black, you don’t have preconceived notions of what they’re capable of, who they are — by the way, what they think, which is I think a problem of the left,” Rice said. “You look at somebody who’s black and you think you know what they think, or you at least think you know what they ought to think.”

Rice said that she did not deny the reality of systemic racism, but she said that the left’s proposed solutions were typically not viable ways to move past it.

“I am not one who believes you can just sort of ‘take on systemic racism,’ I don’t even know how to start,” Rice said. “I do think you can take on the impact of an educational system for minority kids that leaves most of them behind. I think you can take that on. But people might not like my answer. My answer is: Let’s do school choice in a big way.”

Rice went on to criticize the left’s cancel culture, saying there was a difference between tackling actual issues of racism and things that were of important historical value.

“I actually don’t know why anybody wants to defend the Confederacy and Confederate monuments,” Rice said. “I also don’t know why anybody wants to tear down a statue of Abraham Lincoln and slaves, which was actually funded by freed slaves. So this has gotten a little out of control, frankly, and I don’t want to be the Soviet Union where we’re trying to erase history.”

It’s hard to calculate how much better off this country would be if we had people like Condoleezza Rice (and Ben Carson…and Clarence Thomas…and Thomas Sowell) at the forefront of the black community instead of people like Al Sharpton and Ibram X. Kendi. People who preach a message of individual responsibility, belief in one’s self, and overcoming the odds through hard work, determination, and courage. The “blame the white man” game serves no one.