*Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State to President George W Bush, was asked in a recent interview if she believes that systemic racism exists today in the United States.
“I would like to have a better definition of systemic racism so that we can actually address it,” she responded during a Zoom interview with New York Times journalist Peter Baker at the Aspen Security Forum.
The African American Republican conceded that “something is in the system” when it comes to racial disparities in education and policing, “but I think we have to break it down,” she added.
Rice called slavery a “birth defect” that continues to affect the country, but continued, “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,. 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.”
Watch below or click here to view on Twitter:
“Is there systemic racism?” Asks @peterbakernyt. Yes, @CondoleezzaRice responds, but we have to break it down into more detail. Listen to her full answer and tune in LIVE: https://t.co/BPJS3x933w #AspenSecurity pic.twitter.com/wLCRpfnMQK
— Aspen Security Forum (@AspenSecurity) August 4, 2020
Elsewhere in the chat, Rice said, “I am not one who believes you can just sort of ‘take on systemic racism,’ I don’t even know how to start. 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.”
In June, the 45th president called school choice the “civil rights issue of our time.”
Rice also expressed support for removing Confederate monuments and renaming some military bases, but suggested that the movement can go too far, like when activists demanded that the Emancipation Memorial in Washington D.C. be taken down.
“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.”
We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!
