On March 27, Secretary of State. Condoleezza Rice in a wide-ranging press conference, responded to a questions about race in the U.S. Given that, to my knowledge, she's never weighed in on the subject of race, I was surprised that she did it and did it rather emphatically.

Listen for yourself to what she said.

Here's the Washington Times article:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that the United States still has trouble dealing with race because of a national "birth defect" that denied black Americans the opportunities given to whites at the country's very founding.

"Black Americans were a founding population," she said. "Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That's not a very pretty reality of our founding."

As a result, Miss Rice told editors and reporters at The Washington Times, "descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that."

"That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today," she said.

Race has become an issue in this year's presidential campaign, which prompted a much-discussed speech last week by Sen. Barack Obama, one of the two remaining contenders for the Democratic nomination.

Miss Rice declined to comment on the campaign, saying only that it was "important" that Mr. Obama "gave it for a whole host of reasons."

But she spoke forcefully on the subject, citing personal and family experience to illustrate "a paradox and contradiction in this country," which "we still haven't resolved."

On the one hand, she said, race in the U.S. "continues to have effects" on public discussions and "the deepest thoughts that people hold." On the other, "enormous progress" has been made, which allowed her to become the nation's chief diplomat.

"America doesn't have an easy time dealing with race," Miss Rice said, adding that members of her family have "endured terrible humiliations."

"What I would like understood as a black American is that black Americans loved and had faith in this country even when this country didn't love and have faith in them — and that's our legacy," she said.

Well said.

What many don't know is that Ms. Rice's civil rights pedigree runs deep. Raise in Birmingham back in the days when it was called "Bombingham" (a reference to the frequent terrorist bombings which were designed to stop efforts at Black equality), she was known to refused to use the "colored" facilities, to walk rather than sit at the back of the bus and to despise the actions of Bull Connor. Sitting in her own church in 1963, she felt and heard the blast that took the lives of four little Black girls, including friend and classmate Denise McNair. Speaking at a Vanderbilt commencement, she said:

I remember the bombing of that Sunday School at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. I did not see it happen, but I heard it happen, and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my father’s church. It is a sound that I will never forget, that will forever reverberate in my ears. That bomb took the lives of four young girls, including my friend and playmate, Denise McNair. The crime was calculated to suck the hope out of young lives, bury their aspirations. But those fears were not propelled forward, those terrorists failed.

I'll just leave it at that.

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