Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - Face The Nation

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - Face The Nation

Post by johnkarls »

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The NY Times’ “The 1619 Project” and “1620: A Critical Response To The 1619 Project” have become an explosive political issue in America as dozens of states have banned, or are considering banning, the teaching of “The 1619 Project” in their public schools.

Quite a few e-mails have been received inquiring where I stand. [BTW, I do NOT have a vote at each month's meeting on the topic for the following month’s meeting.]

The following weekly e-mail to be sent pre-dawn tomorrow (June 12) explains in its second section entitled “Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on 'Face The Nation' June 6" how I have been responding so far.

Though not mentioned in tomorrow’s e-mail since most of our 195 members already know my bona fides as a life-long civil rights proponent – I had three simultaneous careers:

(1) attorney & investment banker;

(2) lifelong civil-rights proponent who -

(a) spent the summer of 1966 before my last year of law school on the first U.S. Governmental Task Force formed to desegregate the de jure dual-school systems in the 11 states of the Old Confederacy & in the 6 slave states that remained in The Union – during the course of which I and my African-American partner were, at one point, “within 60 seconds of being assassinated” according to the North Carolina State Police [this was 2 years AFTER the assassinations in Mississippi of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner who had been working on the “Freedom Summer” campaign of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to register African-Americans to vote – and 3 years BEFORE the assassinations of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy];

[A more-detailed account of the North Carolina imbroglio is available in the 12-paragraph first section of viewtopic.php?f=150&t=2006&p=2741&hilit ... 4e40#p2741.]

(b) co-founded in the 1970’s the first homeless shelter in Fairfield County CT;

(c) was one of 178 individuals, most of whom were CEO’s of major corporations, who stepped forward to replicate in 51 American cities what Eugene Lang had done in 1981 when he promised Harlem PS 121 children their college tuition if they stayed in school and then provided each “Dreamer” with a tutor and a mentor through high school graduation [my own “I Have A Dream”® program served 200 children in public housing projects];

(d) served as volunteer national treasurer for Gene Lang’s national “I Have A Dream”® Foundation;

(3) vis-à-vis my wife of 33 years who was co-author of the nation’s most popular high school World History textbook (McGraw Hill with National Geographic illustrations), my real job (vs. my “day job” as an attorney) was to read every year 12-15 thick biographies and historical tomes to present “overlooked nuggets” to my wife for possible inclusion in the next edition, of which there were six during the 33 years [and since “old dogs” do NOT “learn new tricks” there have been another 500 thick biographies and historical tomes since our marriage ended 20 years ago to add to the 400 read during the 33 years.]


---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: “1620: A Critical Response To The 1619 Project” by Peter Wood – July 14 Mtg
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: To Be Sent Pre-Dawn on Sat, June 12, 2021
To: To Each of Our 195 Members One-By-One
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To Each of Our 195 Members One-By-One – for reasons explained in the 4 postings in Sec. 2 of www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org


Dear Friends,

Our next meeting is Wed July 14 – 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm MST via Zoom.


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OUR FOCUS BOOK

“1620: A Critical Response To The 1619 Project” by Peter W. Wood (Encounter Books 11/17/2020 – 272 pages – Hardcover $xx.xx* or $15.65 Kindle from Amazon.com).

* Amazon has no copies available and the book appears to be out of print -- accordingly, any of our 195 members who RSVP for our meeting can receive an Adobe.pdf file of "1620: A Critical Response To The 1619 Project."

Book description, author bio and book-review excerpts are available at viewtopic.php?f=644&t=2070&sid=d725ddff ... c68360f78f.


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FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE CONDOLEEZZA RICE ON “FACE THE NATION” JUNE 6

The NY Times’ “The 1619 Project” and “1620: A Critical Response To The 1619 Project” have become an explosive political issue in America as dozens of states have banned, or are considering banning, the teaching of “The 1619 Project” in their public schools.

Quite a few e-mails have been received inquiring where I stand. [BTW, I do NOT have a vote at each month's meeting on the topic for the following month’s meeting.]

I have been responding that not yet having read either “The 1619 Project” or “1620: A Critical Response To The 1619 Project,” my tentative views are identical to those expressed by Condoleezza Rice on “Face The Nation” on June 6.

For those of us who don’t recall her credentials, she served (inter alia) as Provost of Stanford University (1993-1999); U.S. National Security Adviser (2001-2005); U.S. Secretary of State (2005-2009); Stanford U. Political Science Professor 2009-2020 (while wearing a “second hat” 2010-2020 as Stanford Business School’s Director of its Global Center for Business and the Economy); and since 9/1/2020 as Executive Director of Stanford U’s Hoover Institution.

*****
Transcript of Condoleezza Rice’s Comments Re “The 1619 Project”

[The full transcript of Condoleezza Rice’s June 6 interview on “Meet The Press,” which also addresses a half-dozen other topics, is available https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript ... 00-10abd1h.]

JOHN DICKERSON: [Reference to another of the half-dozen other topics omitted], there's also a debate in America about how we teach America's history. You knew one of the students who died at the Birmingham Baptist Church. Explain for me how you see that part of American history, also the Tulsa massacre and other parts of America's civil rights history and also America's exceptionalism that you were tasked with promoting across the globe.

FMR. SEC. RICE: American history was in part shaped at its very beginning by this birth defect of slavery. Do I wish that the anti-slave forces had won out? Absolutely. But they didn't. And then we had after the Emancipation, we had a Reconstruction which gave way to Jim Crow. I was born in Birmingham, Alabama. I was eight before my family could go to a movie theater, to a restaurant. I didn't have a white classmate until we moved to Denver when I was 12. So, yes, I know America's troubled past and that troubled past continues to have an impact going forward on how we see each other. When I hear the talk about structural racism, it really gives me pause and it gives me pause because it doesn't tell me what to do. If we could talk about the impact of race on various aspects of our life. I have family members who were victims of sickle cell that was an orphan disease for a long time, and it affected mostly Black people. What do we think about medical outcomes that clearly are still disproportionate? Can we finally agree that our K-12 education system is really serving poor kids and- and minority kids very badly? Can we agree that we actually have a choice system? Because if you are of means you will move to a district where the schools are good, you will go and by the way, the houses will be expensive. So that's a choice. You can send your kids to private schools. So those are choices. So who really doesn't have a choice? Poor kids and many of them are minority kids. So there are these impacts of race that I think are worth examining. I want kids to know about Tulsa. I also want them to know what that Black community did to overcome that horrible massacre. I want them to know about '63 in Birmingham, but I want them to know that the mayor of Birmingham today is a Black man who grew up in a poor community. So I want them to see the forward progress of America as well on these issues. And I want us as a country to do it together because I don't want this to be black against white, my weaponization of my identity against yours.

JOHN DICKERSON: And just one quick point of clarification. Your point about structural racism is not that it doesn't exist, but that the term itself doesn't get you as far as you would like?

FMR. SEC. RICE: Well, I just- JOHN, I've ceased to- to use it because I don't know what it means anymore, and I think it's become a barrier to- do I think that there are impacts of race that are clear in American life? Absolutely. But, you know, the other problem with it is it sounds so big and impenetrable, as if we have to jettison the system somehow. And with all of its problems having been all over the world and having seen how people deal with difference, I will tell you that America deals with difference better than any country I've ever visited.


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JULY 14 MTG INFO –

Wed July 14 – 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm MDT via Zoom.

Please RSVP by hitting your Reply Button and typing RSVP.

There is nothing further you need to do such as any special Zoom training. We will send all RSVP’s a few days in advance a URL and meeting name/password.


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We also look forward to seeing/hearing each of you on Wed July 14!!! Please be well!!!

Your friend,

John K.

PS -- To un-subscribe, please press "reply" and type "deletion requested."

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