HONOLULU -- A Korean journalist in Seoul last weekend asked visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice how she coped with a bureaucracy staffed largely with white men.
Rice neither sidestepped the query nor brushed it away, but took it head-on. She reminded the questioner that neither of her predecessors, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright, had been white men, then asserted: "I'm a package, I'm black and female and me. I think I act as Condi Rice, and that's a person who is female and black and grew up in Alabama and lived in California and was a professor."
She noted that her ancestors had been slaves but that "we're making a lot of progress in the United States." Rice concluded that her appointment was "a testament to what can happen in a democracy over time."