Perhaps we have finally reached a turning point in which the Gordian Knot tying African Americans to the Democratic Party may finally be severed. The spectacle of white male leftists demeaning Condoleeza Rice as an Aunt Jemima, a black mammy out of Gone With the Wind, and a thick—lipped (!) bird (don't they have beaks?) may be the slap in the face necessary to wake up the majority of black people from their slumber in the tender arms of the left.

J. Matt Barber, a pundit whom I had never encountered before, but whom I now want to follow, wrote a scathing editorial in a Canadian paper, denouncing the Democratic Party as modern slave masters, bent on keeping blacks subservient to and dependent on the favors of the welfare state.

The analysis is not new, but the vigor of the argument is extraordinary. Barber writes:

...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.

I was, quite frankly, equally outraged by the treatment accorded Justic Clarence Thomas during his confirmation hearings (and afterward, too). But there is something slightly different about Dr. Rice. Maybe it is the fact that she is female. Trashing a woman is simply not nearly as acceptable as trashing a man, as Hillary Clinton knows and counts upon.

But there is much more. Condoleeza Rice is simply breathtaking in her record of achievements. Polymath does not begin to describe it. She plays the piano, and could have had a concert career. She accompanies cellist Yo Yo Ma, another dazzling genius, with ease and comfort. She learned figure skating as a child, and could have had a championship career in that field. She graduated high school at 15, joined the Stanford faculty, spent neatly twenty years there, and became the youngest Provost (chief academic officer, the one who must keep all the other faculty geniuses in line) in the history of not just Stanford, but all major universities, at the tender age of 39.

You just cannot get smarter, more energetic, more intellectually diverse (an expert on Russian literature, not so incidentally), or all out more admirable than this woman.

And now leftists not fit to clean her toilet belittle and demean her, based on her race. This is just too much to bear. I am just a white guy, but this is just burning a hole in me, so angry am I.

For complex reasons, black women are the members of that community most wedded on average to a quest for achievement, achieving higher levels of education, employment, and overall success, especially if they avoid the pitfall of single motherhood. I have to believe that most black women experience the assault on Dr. Rice as an assault on themselves, at least at some level. This has got to be resonating among the members of churches and social organizations.

Maybe the response won;t be immediate. I suspect that frightened white liberals will continue their attacks on Dr, Rice after she is confirmed as Secretary of State, and as she goes on to a record of achievement likely to be consistent with her outstanding track record.

Sooner or later, the blowback will come, and America will recognize that there is a home to outright racism in America, and that it is within the Democrat camp.

Thomas Lifson  11 20 04