Colin Powell: (White) House Negro?

By Keith Boykin, in politics
Wednesday, February 5 2003, 6:00AM

As Secretary of State Colin Powell goes to the U.N. today to make the case for war, many are wondering what happened to the moderate Powell who questioned the war a few months ago. Was Harry Belafonte right? Is Colin Powell simply a house negro?

Back in October and again last month, Belafonte took a swipe at Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, likening them to slaves in the big house. ‘‘You are serving those who continue to design our oppression,’’ he said of Powell and Rice. ‘‘That is villainy, and I insist you look at it.’’

After Belafonte's initial remarks, I did an interview on a national radio show where I defended Powell from some of the criticism about his racial credibility. In January, Powell earned more credit from African Americans when he distanced himself from the Administration's Supreme Court legal brief opposing affirmative action at the University of Michigan.

Unlike Rice, who tried to agree and disagree with her boss in the same sentence, Powell said emphatically that he hoped the University of Michigan would win. That won him praise and led to scorn for Rice.

And now the war on Iraq looms. Today Secretary Powell goes to the United Nations to deliver the U.S. case against Iraq in one of the most hyped U.N. speeches since the cold war drama of Jeanne Kirkpatrick or Adlai Stevenson. But this is a war, we have been told, that Powell never wanted.

For the past 6 months, the media have told us that Secretary Powell was one of the moderates in the Bush Administration who actually opposed the war with Iraq. Powell favored negotiation, we are told. Give the peace process more time, let the U.N. vote, get inspectors inside of Iraq, Powell allegedly argued.

Now that the peace process has had some time, the U.N. has voted and the inspectors are inside Iraq, the president is ready for war. Even the chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix admits that Iraq is not cooperating fully with the inspections, and Powell plans to show just how Baghdad is hiding something.

The belligerent buildup to this speech demands a "smoking gun," but Powell says he has none to deliver. Perhaps he's trying to downplay public expectations, but surely he knows the world needs proof before it prepares to launch a war against a containable menace while it ignores the threat of a nuclear-armed North Korea.

If Powell fails to deliver today, many of us will suspect that he has been a "house negro" all along.

© Copyright 2003 by Keith Boykin.