The Tragedy of Colin Powell

In the cavalcade of heroes that we trot out each Black History Month, there is a special VIP section reserved for Negro Firsts. The belief is that each one is a barometer charting the falling pressures of racism in America. But the truth is that for every racial pioneer, there are hundreds, if not thousands of black also-rans who made the mistake of being ahead of history. Still, the job is not enviable: the First is generally required to perform a high-wire act in hurricane winds. And, in the last months of his tenure as Secretary of State, one starts wishing that Colin Powell had done so with the benefit of a net.

Since it is unlikely that he will return to the State Department even if a disaster for democracy occurs and Bush is returned to the White House, we are possibly looking at the twilight of Powell's career as a professional diplomat. Historians are trained to avoid snap, in-the-moment assessments, but at this juncture, Powell's tenure at the State Department appears to have no clear diplomatic legacy, save the dubious distinction of being First.

Last year, on the verge of the invasion of Iraq, Harry Belafonte denounced Powell as a House Negro. But it's not as simple as Powell being some species of sellout (Negro Domesticus) – because were that merely the case, Powell the political figure would not be nearly as tragic a figure as he ultimately is. Unlike Thomas and Rice, Powell felt no need to disrespect the in-the-street activism that paved the way for his present position (Thomas decried the "specious" social science underpinning the Brown v. Board of Education decision and has frequently criticized the Warren Supreme Court that decided it, struck down segregated transportation in Montgomery, Alabama and outlawed the anti-miscegenation laws that would have prevented Thomas himself from living in Virginia with his white wife.)

Rice – who grew up in Alabama – has taken great pains to point out that her family was not among that set of activist Christians who felt it necessary to march in the streets to end segregation (a statement that runs counter to her own father's political activism, which included his traveling the country giving speeches denouncing the war in Vietnam.)

Powell, on the other hand, wrote in his autobiography of the fury he experienced as a young soldier in Vietnam when King was assassinated and noted that even the radical voices of H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael were "like a fire bell ring in the night, waking up defenders of the status quo with the message that change had better be on the way."

Powell is the most popular of the black Republicans and has more support within black communities than any of the other institutionally-sanctioned black power brokers. He has benefited from the perception that he is not among the Negro-loathing mean-spirits of the G.O.P. – a grace that does not extend to his son Michael, who as Chairman of the FCC presided over the indictment and arrest of Janet Jackson's right nipple when he wasn't busy slackening the laws that inhibit corporate monopolization of the media. (Asked what he planned to do about the alleged "digital divide" that results in poor – presumably black – children having less access to computers, the Young Powell remarked to the effect "there's a Mercedes divide too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.")

But the House Negro indictment can't be dismissed out of hand, either. He took office as the most obvious gesture of racial reconciliation within an administration that required the disfranchisement of black voters in order to come to power. Powell's own foibles played into the House Negro perception – commissioning a Scottish coat-of-arms in recognition of his distant European ancestry, with seemingly little concern for the bitter racial circumstances under which that Scotch blood entered his ancestral line. And even more damning is the sad irony of a black Secretary of State leading the U.S. delegation's walk-out of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism.