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Your son,
Chesa Boudin

Dear Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,

When I first decided to write you, I was ready to go for the jugular. I wanted to let you know, in no uncertain terms, just how much I disagreed with your political positions, abhorred your relationship with the Bush clan, and anything else I could think of. I decided I was going to look through every nook and cranny, leave no stone unturned in search of some faulty move, a misspoken word, or some sort of flaw that I would use to turn you out on paper. I downloaded whatever I could find on you: commencement addresses, interviews, speeches, and your famous remarks to the 9/11 commission. I even went to the bookstore and purchased some right-wing puff piece posing as a biography. Just as I was preparing to write, you were nearing the end of your tenure as national security adviser and nearing your Senate confirmation as the new secretary of state. And I was poised to give you what the black gay children call a 'read.'

But then a strange turn of events occurred. I was reading your biography on the flight to your second hometown, Denver, where I was giving two public talks: 'Same-Sex Marriage and Race Politics' and 'Gentrification, Prisons, and Anti-Black Racism.' My talks were attended by members of Denver's left-from liberal Democrats to punk-anarchist radicals. Here I was, black revolutionary that I am, giving talks to almost exclusively white audiences. Your name came up both times, and I didn't come anywhere near mentioning you in my talks. Two white people asked me the same question: 'What do you think about Condoleezza Rice?'

Why did they care what I thought about you? Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. These white people wanted me to do what I was planning to do with this letter: finger-point, neck-bob, and hand-wave. Call you a traitor or, worse, a 'Tom.' Dog your personal appearance. And in doing so, I would be met with thunderous applause. On both the right and the left, black people publicly scolding other black people for being culturally or politically backward is what's hot! On the right, there's Ward Connelly's crusade to end affirmative action in higher education in California and the success of writer John McWhorter's disturbing right-wing books that label virtually anything that black people do as pathological. In mainstream pop culture, it's J.L. King's sensational and tabloidish best-seller On the Down Low to Bill Cosby's public rants about poor black people. Even the left has not been immune from this trend. Lately, many prominent black leftist intellectuals have publicly scolded the black community for not being more involved in post-9/11 immigrant detention and antiwar organizing, as if policing and imprisonment, poverty, and HIV/AIDS as issues have significantly decreased or become insignificant for black people in America since September 12, 2001. Whether right or left, the message is, if you're black and have something shitty to say about somebody else black, you're likely to find an appreciative (and mostly nonblack) audience.

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