Condoleeza Rice has just endured two days of hostile questioning before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which she was all but called a liar. Compounding the indignity, her grandstanding inquisitor Sen. Barbara Boxer was joined by former Klu Klux Klan official Sen. Robert Byrd, in filing a motion to postpone her confirmation vote until after the inauguration. So Dr. Rice will be left dangling, as it were, with all the connotations of lynching most definitely intended, and the nation will lack a Secretary of State until the obstructionism of the Democrats abates. There is no point to any of this other than to demonize and humiliate a women whom even her critics concede is superbly qualified for office. There will be consequences. It is worth remembering a little history, Democrats.

As a young girl in segregated Birmingham Alabama, Condoleezza Rice, like so many other black Americans, often experienced systematic racism rooted in old—fashioned hatred.  On a balmy September morning in 1963 that hatred manifest to sight, the vile portrait of pure evil.  A group of radical white supremacists bombed a Birmingham church in a black neighborhood killing four little girls.  One of those little girls, Denise McNair, was a friend to Condoleezza Rice. 

From her humble beginnings in the Deep South, to one of the President's most trusted confidants, Dr. Rice has overwhelmingly surpassed external expectations and diligently achieved internal aspirations to become the most powerful black woman in United States history.  If her nomination survives Senate confirmation, which is fully expected, she will hold our Nation's highest Cabinet level position: Secretary of State. 

In light of her countless laudable achievements and historical milestones, surely Dr. Rice is a beacon of pride for all who purport to support the black race — she is undoubtedly respected and revered by those who delight in the American dream fulfilled and on display — such a story will certainly be the fabric of hope and inspiration, woven throughout the hearts and minds of America's black youth for decades to come... No... so very regrettably and predictably, such is not the case...not as long as Democrats have anything to say about it.   

You see, the Democratic Party, the liberal 'mainstream' media and the rest of the cultural elites are having a very hard time handling Dr. Rice's rise to power.  They've waged a disgraceful, racist and cowardly back—door assault against her.  Why?  Little Ms. Condoleezza has wandered away from the plantation.  She refuses to slave in the cotton fields of 'progressive' ideology.  If she is allowed credibility and is perceived as an acceptable role model, then perhaps black Democrats, heretofore taken for granted, will begin to recognize her achievements as legitimate and honorable, and worse...begin to share her socially and fiscally conservative, Republican values.  If this happens...all is lost. 

In a manner that is objectively and demonstrably racist, liberal Democrats and the media have collectively assumed the persona of David Duke.  Here's but a snippet:  In his comic strip, Doonesbury creator and liberal Democrat Garry Trudeau depicted Dr. Rice as an un—educated idiot, and refered to her as 'Brown Sugar.' In his cartoon, liberal Democrat and syndicated cartoonist Pat Oliphant characterized Dr. Rice as a squawking parrot perched upon President Bush's finger, blindly, mindlessly and dutifully observing his every whim.  Her lips are exaggerated in a grossly bulbous and ethnically stereotypical fashion. And, with his masterpiece, liberal Democrat and Los Angeles Times editorial cartoonist Jeff Danziger reminds us all of the days when the KKK actually had some pull.  His cartoon portrayed Dr. Rice as, what can only be described as a tattered barefoot slave 'mammy' (probably Prissy from Gone with the Wind).  She sits in a rocking chair with her legs spread.  On her lap she holds an aluminum tube like an infant (ostensibly a tube of the uranium enrichment variety).  She attempts to feed the tube with a bottle and then, in the stereotypical vernacular of a 'colored,' says, 'I knows all about aluminum tubes. Correction. I don't know nuthin' about aluminum tubes.' 

Yet, we wait.  We wait for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to explode on the scene demanding that Trudeau, Oliphant and Danziger be skewered alive and peeled.  We wait for the NAACP, and the droves of other liberal Democrats who fancy themselves as America's (self appointed) 'black leadership' to demand that all three be fired and banished to Nebraska, Oklahoma or some other Red—State.  But, we wait in vain.  Instead, we hear the deafening and ever so telling clamor of indifferent silence.   They're cut from the same cloth you see — they play for the same team — the same rules don't apply — integrity be damned!  One need only imagine the utter pandemonium had a conservative Republican conceptualized and produced the same racist refuse.      

Still, on the larger front in the battle between Republicans and Democrats for the hearts, minds, souls and votes of black Americans, it's quite simple. The Democratic Party's survival is dependent upon blacks being dependent upon the Democratic Party.  Confusing?  Not really.  One of the Party's chief tenets, and that which is most central to its survival, is the perpetual maintenance of Black America's dependence on Big (Democrat controlled) Government — it's the Party's notion that another promised entitlement yields another black vote.  For the Democratic Party to live another day, save another tree, kill another baby...the backward fiction that a successful black—man is not really a black—man at all, must live on.  Once that is gone and the secret gets out — Checkmate! — Game—over.   

Perhaps the marked hypocrisy revealed in the Democratic Party's deplorable and racist treatment of Condoleezza Rice has done enough to reveal the man behind the curtain — to expose black America to the reality that they have been, for far too long, taken for granted — used — exploited by the Democratic Party.  Stanley Crouch, writing in the New York Daily News, predicted today that the black community is "on the verge of becoming much more politically splintered,"  mentioning both Condoleeza Rice's treatment by Democrats, and the Democratic Party's contempt for the religious values which animate so many African Americans as well as whites and every other racial group.

And as more and more black Americans begin to embrace the success oriented, values driven, economically sound principles held by the Republican party and shared by such great Americans as Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas and Colin Powell, then perhaps more and more black Americans will indeed resolve to break free and walk away from the Democratic Party's beguiling chains of bondage.  

J. Matt Barber is a non—practicing attorney, an undefeated heavyweight professional boxer (Matt 'Bam Bam' Barber), and a jazz drummer in Chicago, IL.  E—mail your comments to Matt, at jmattbarber@comcast.net