Condoleezza Rice Addresses GSE

Speaking at the Harvard Graduate School of Education yesterday, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice argued that many nations in the developing world are rapidly becoming multi-ethnic democracies, creating a need for these nations to address the issue of racial inequality and the question of what it means to be a citizen.

The lecture served as the second segment of Rice’s three-part lecture series at Harvard, entitled “American Foreign Policy and the Black Experience.”

Rice, who served as the Bush Administration’s chief diplomat from 2005 to 2009, noted that the issue of race and its socioeconomic ramifications has increasingly become a priority for democratically-elected governments in Latin America and Africa.

“I personally went to Brazil in 1993 and when you talked to Brazilians they said that they didn’t ‘have a race problem,’” Rice said. “But you noticed that all the field hands were African, the hotel staff was mulatto and the government was Portuguese. This made you think, ‘maybe [Brazil does] have a race problem.’”

But Rice also illustrated how Brazil has recently begun to address its problems with racial inequality, noting that outgoing Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was the first president to publicly acknowledge this issue.

Rice asserted that, in addressing this issue of racial inequality, multi-ethnic democracies throughout the world are modeling their policies on initiatives implemented by the United States, such as affirmative action in college admissions and corporate hiring.

“It has become apparent to me that while the American multi-ethnic experiment was originally unique to the United States, it is now spreading in very important ways,” Rice said.

Following the event, several students in the audience said they were impressed with Rice’s speech.

“I know of her political background but I never thought of her as an academic,” said post-doctoral student Jennifer Silva. “It was really interesting to hear her speak.”

But Silva also felt that the lecture was not as expansive as it could have been.

“We hear more and more that we live in a winner-take-all society and that has implications for race,” Silva said. “So I would have liked to hear more about the economic aspects of political power.”

Rice’s third and final lecture in the series, titled “Why Democracy Matters: Education, Empowerment and the American National Myth at Home and Abroad,” will be held tomorrow in the Longfellow Building at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.