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Condoleeza on Poverty, Race nd Katrina

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Tuesday, 13 September 2005

QUESTION: If I can jump off from what Arthur was asking you, the storm response which left so many poor black people so virtually in need of help, those images were beamed around the world. That can't have been good for America's image abroad, especially at a time when you and Karen Hughes are trying to work on the issue of spreading the word of American support for democracy. Could you talk about the images and what they said to the world overseas? QUESTION: If I can jump off from what Arthur was asking you, the storm response which left so many poor black people so virtually in need of help, those images were beamed around the world. That can't have been good for America's image abroad, especially at a time when you and Karen Hughes are trying to work on the issue of spreading the word of American support for democracy. Could you talk about the images and what they said to the world overseas? SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don't know what the images said to the world. I know what the images said to, you know, to me and to Americans, which is that this is a vestige of the Old South. This is the part of the country I'm from. But it is a place where there are pockets -- by no means all of the Old South, but pockets -- where race and poverty come together in a very ugly way. And it is not a matter of whether the United States should want to do something about that, but the United States should want to do something about that. And perhaps in New Orleans there will be a chance to deal with a part of the South where people, for whatever reasons, did not get the benefits of education, didn't get the benefits of job training, and where, when it's rebuilt, it should be rebuilt in a different way than it was at the time that this happened. My grandfather managed to get himself college educated two generations ago. That's why my family is where it is. He did it despite issues of race in the early '20s. But not everybody managed to do so. For some people, there wasn't a teacher that got them out or a grandfather that got them or a minister that got them out. And so yes, there is a social issue and a social problem to be dealt with there. But I also hope that around the world it's noted that on matters of race, the United States is about 100 percent ahead of any place else in the world in issues of race. And I say that absolutely fundamentally. You go to any other meeting around the world and show me the kind of diversity that you see in America's cabinet, in America's Foreign Service, in America's business community, in America's journalistic community. Show me that kind of diversity any place else in the world, and I'm prepared to be lectured about race. There are still places that race and poverty are a huge problem in the United States and we've got to deal with that. But I think we will be making a mistake if we let people jump to the conclusion that the United States has therefore not dealt with issues of race, particularly if you look at how issues of race are dealt with in most of the world. And so at the same time when I'm talking to my colleagues, I say yeah, we have a problem when race and poverty comes together, we really do. And it's a vestige of our history. It's a vestige of particularly the Old South in this case. But don't misread that there has been no progress on issues of race in America. QUESTION: On that, the glass is half empty part of your answer, where race and poverty come together, what do you see as the federal responsibility to correct that or to address it now? SECRETARY RICE: I don't have any really good answers to this and I'm not particularly well positioned to talk about a federal response. You know, with all due respect, I went to school in international relations. I hope there are people who are really capable of looking at the complexities and the relationship of open economies that are more demanding than ever in terms of skills and job skills to give a 21st century answer to how people get prepared for the economy that we face, which I really think is at the core of this. The one part of my experience that I can draw on and that I'm absolutely certain of is this comes fundamentally to an issue of education, because there I am an educator. And I do believe that finding ways for people to fully access education -- and that means making sure, as the President has worked through No Child Left Behind -- that kids aren't -- the kids really are capable of reading at third grade level when they're in third grade, and that that's true whether you're in California or Louisiana. But that's extremely important that the ability of people to access good secondary education for their kids so that they have a chance at higher education is really critical to where this all comes out. And I'm not someone who has, frankly, spent as much time as others thinking about the relationship of federal to state responsibilities for those things, but if I were starting to look for a sourcing for how you change the dynamics, I'd start with education. QUESTION: Well, not as an expert but as a member of the Administration and as an American citizen, do you feel that the Administration has done enough to address the issue of poverty in this country, or do you think that this disaster should be viewed as a wake-up call, calling upon the Administration to do more? SECRETARY RICE: Well, New Orleans didn't get built in the five years that the President was President. The race and poverty issue in New Orleans did not -- QUESTION: I'm not talking about -- SECRETARY RICE: No, no -- QUESTION: I'm not really talking about race and I'm not talking about New Orleans. I'm just talking about poverty. SECRETARY RICE: Poverty. The kind of poverty that the people there experienced didn't get built in the last five years. This has been a persistent problem in the United States in certain pockets of the South. And I know that repeated administrations have tried through various efforts, including through job training and access to -- concerns about access to education, to try and deal with persistent poverty. I really do hope that there will be maybe now on the heels of New Orleans an effort by this country -- and not just the federal government but state and local officials as well, as well as the private sector, and I mean nongovernmental organizations and I mean the private business sector, to address how we might deal with the problem of persistent poverty. Yeah, in that sense it gives us an opportunity. When I did taping for the BET telethon, I said that, you know, I hoped New Orleans would be rebuilt in terms of its spirit of, you know, great music and great food and all those things, but that this time it would be rebuilt with greater economic opportunity for people. Because when you have something like this happen, you do have a chance to do it differently. And I really -- I think you ought to try to do it differently this time. QUESTION: Why is it, do you think, that 77 percent of black people (inaudible) Kanye West that George Bush doesn't care about black people? SECRETARY RICE: Probably because they've heard it from people who weren't questioned about the assumptions there. Look, I find it very strange to think that people would think the President of the United States would sit deciding who ought to be helped on the basis of color, most especially this President. It's just -- it's (a) not true and it's (b) poisonous that somebody would say that. And I hope that people would be challenged on the assumption if they're going to say it. Now, what evidence is there that this is the case? Why would you say such a thing? What makes you think so? Because you have a President who has cared about minority home ownership. You have a President who has cared about community colleges. You have a President who has increased funding for historically black colleges. You have a President who, under the No Child Left Behind, has increased federal funding dramatically and insisted on standards for children. And the kids who do, by the way, get warehoused and where there’s a gulf between third grade reading and third grade -- being in third grade and being able to read at third grade, a lot of those are minority kids. So I don't believe it. I don't know why people say it. And I would hope that people would seriously examine their assumptions. QUESTION: But only 11 percent of blacks voted for President Bush last year and 9 percent in 2000, so clearly even before Katrina there was an issue of President Bush getting his message out to the black community; don't you think? SECRETARY RICE: Well, you know, the President said when he spoke to the Urban League that there was an issue of the Republican Party and black voters and that he thought some of that responsibility was actually borne by the Republican Party. We could go through a lot of the history of, you know, the post-'64 period and how that all played out. That is a story that I know very, very well. And yes, I do think that it's sometimes difficult -- there is sometimes a problem of getting the message out from a President who, if you look at how he did among black voters in the state that he was governor, you have a very different picture. And that says to me that, in that case, familiarity has given you a very different picture of this President and his concerns about blacks. But I know President Bush and he talks about issues of race because he -- because the kind of lack of opportunity that still afflicts -- that afflicts a lot of poor people but still afflicts disproportionately blacks as -- and poor, is something that he is concerned about. It's why he's put the money into historically black colleges. It's why he's been concerned about community colleges. It's why he's been concerned about No Child Left Behind. You know the phrase that actually attracted me to him more than anything else didn't have anything to do with foreign policy. It was actually "the soft bigotry of low expectations." I've seen it. Okay? I've seen what happens when people don't think black kids can learn and they decide just therefore to just shuffle them from classroom to classroom. I've seen it at Stanford where you get black kids who are clearly completely and totally qualified and still you get people assuming that they got there by other reasons and so, well, they're not too really worried if they get Cs instead of Bs. So I know. I know that I had a high school teacher who told me that maybe I was junior college material. So I know about the soft bigotry of low expectations and it's not in this President. It is however pretty deeply ingrained in our system and we're going to have to do something. http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/53036.htm

 

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