In America, the view is not only more parochial but considerably more convoluted. Among blacks he is an esteemed role model. As Eddie Williams, head of the Washington-based think tank Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, observed, “Our history causes us to take special pride in those who have made it.”
But it is not just black Americans who take pride in Powell; 83 percent of Americans see him in a favorable light, according to a Gallup poll taken in December, shortly after he was appointed secretary of State. When his predecessor, Madeleine Albright, got the job, only 36 percent of Americans approved of her. Warren Christopher, who preceded Albright, didn’t do much better; only 41 percent approved of him.
Why is Powell so admired? His military record, while admirable, hardly accounts for the scope of his appeal. Nor is his popularity connected in any real way to his political philosophy. In 1995, before he even stated a party preference, he was seen as a serious contender for the presidency. Interestingly enough, his popularity was higher among whites than blacks.
Clearly, what Americans love so much about Colin Powell is not so much the man as what he represents. To white Americans, he is a welcome alternative to such loudmouths as Jesse Jackson, who always seems to be brimming with racial outrage and complaints. Powell is not interested in making whites feel guilty. Instead, he embodies the American dream and is happy to show his gratitude to the country that made his success possible. He is, in short, a walking rebuttal to angry blacks who blame whites for their troubles.
His appeal to blacks is a bit more complicated. Part of it, as Williams suggests, has to do with Powell’s having “made it,” but it also has to do with his taking a stand on the matter of racial justice.
In his speech at the Republican National Convention last year, Powell spoke poignantly of the nation’s unfinished work on race, and he sharply questioned criminal-justice policies that have put 2 million Americans behind bars. (“Most of them are men, and the majority of those men are minorities,” he pointed out.) He has consistently acknowledged his own debt to affirmative action and made a point of speaking out (albeit selectively) on other racial issues.
Indeed, in some respects he resembles a modern-day Ralph Bunche, who in 1950 became the first black person to win a Nobel Peace Prize (for his mediation efforts in the Middle East). Like Powell, Bunche also served his country with distinction–in the Office of Strategic Services during the second world war, and in numerous other positions in the State Department and the United Nations. Also like Powell, he enjoyed wide interracial appeal. After his stint as a U.N. mediator in Palestine, Bunche returned to a ticker-tape parade in New York.
This is not to say that Powell is an updated Bunche. A longtime board member of America’s leading black civil-rights group, the NAACP, Bunch was an unabashed “race man.” He directed much of the research for “An American Dilemma,” Gunnar Myrdal’s classic examination of race in America. And he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. on Washington in 1963. He reportedly refused a position, under Harry Truman, as assistant secretary of State because Washington was then a segregated city. While Powell has not been shy when it comes to racial matters, he is no Ralph Bunche.
Several years ago, recalls Eddie Williams, Powell spoke at the annual Joint Center dinner. Powell joked in typically charming fashion, and the largely black audience loved him. Then his tone turned serious as he defended “constructive engagement” in South Africa, the policy that supposedly was coaxing the South African government toward reform without directly challenging apartheid. Though unhappy with his words, the audience let Powell have his say. Those in attendance understood that they were not his only, or even first, constituency. They understood, also, that the role of black political leaders has changed considerably since Bunche’s day. Thanks in large measure to the civil-rights movement that Bunche championed, the black privileged class has expanded, lessening the pressure on every black political figure to be an all-purpose spokesperson for his people.
But even if Powell is not a racial spokesman, the fact that he is secretary of State says something, not so much to the world’s political leadership, but to ordinary people across the globe who see black Americans predominantly as hip-hop rappers and jive-talking actors. What it says is that the image derived from popular culture is just a part of the reality. The full reality is not only important, but something even many Americans have yet to understand.
