Not my kinda black

Washington Post editorial columnist Eugene Robinson wrote a column today on Condoleeza Rice that one has to read to believe. His reasoning is preposterous but his thinking is dangerous and, sadly, probably shared in no little extent by many on the left.

Robinson begins by posing a question that is absurd:

Like a lot of African Americans, I've long wondered what the deal was with Condoleezza Rice and the issue of race. How does she work so loyally for George W. Bush, whose approval rating among blacks was measured in a recent poll at a negligible 2 percent? How did she come to a worldview so radically different from that of most black Americans? Is she blind, is she in denial, is she confused -- or what?

Robinson's premise is obviously 98% of blacks can't be wrong so what's wrong with Rice? First, a 2% approval rating. Sounds a bit dodgy - as dodgy as someone getting a 98% approval rating. He admits no possibility that Rice could be right and the black majority wrong.

It gets worse as Robinson goes in for some pop psychology:

It's as if Rice is still cosseted in her beloved Titusville, the neighborhood of black strivers where she was raised, able to see the very different reality that other African Americans experience but not to reach out of the bubble -- not able to touch that other reality, and thus not able to really understand it.

Ah so she was sheltered! By the way is there something wrong with striving?

Forty years later, Rice shows no bitterness when she recalls her childhood in a town whose streets were ruled by the segregationist police chief Bull Connor. "I've always said about Birmingham that because race was everything, race was nothing," she said in an interview on the flight home.

Perhaps Rice feels that a lifetime of bitterness doesn't accomplish much?

A friend of Rice's, Denise McNair, was one of the four girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. That would have left a deep scar on me, but Rice can speak of that atrocity without visible emotion.

There - emoting is key. See authorities Jackson, Sharpton et. al.

When Rice was growing up, her father stood guard at the entrance of her neighborhood with a rifle to keep the Klan's nightriders away. But that was outside the bubble. Inside the bubble, Rice was sitting at the piano in pretty dresses to play Bach fugues. It sounds like a wonderful childhood, but one that left her able to see the impact that race has in America -- able to examine it and analyze it -- but not to feel it.

"Pretty dresses and Bach fugues?" How about CHEAP SHOT?

I would have perhaps a shred of regard for Robinson if he had the courage to come out and say. "Rice is black and she got ahead by acting white." It's not about race and never has been.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline wallops Robinson's analysis here.