A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT:

Seeing blacks in lead boosts confidence (MARY MITCHELL, 3/27/03, Chicago SUN-TIMES)

While getting dressed for work, I noticed that the man on TV standing at the podium taking tough questions from cranky journalists was a black man.

I almost poked myself in the eye with a makeup brush.

This is huge. As huge as Secretary of State Colin Powell taking questions from members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the State Department budget on Wednesday.

As huge as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's role was in shaping America's policy toward Saddam Hussein.

Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations at the U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar, is the man whose words must reflect the truth about this war. [...]

He is the kind of leader that is critical to the military today.

African-American soldiers account for more than 35 percent of the Army's troops. Half the Army's enlisted women are black. In fact, African-American soldiers represent 21 percent of all military branches, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Many of these men and women did not expect to go to war. For most of them, the military was a refuge or a second chance.

At a time like this, blacks should not be tearing these people down, they should be holding them up for people like Jacqueline Atkins.

Although Atkins has exchanged e-mails with her son, Dequan Atkins, 25, she hasn't seen him since he enlisted in the Navy four years ago.

As far as she knows, her son could be in Iraq because he is stationed on a U.S. Naval ship. What she does know is that she really doesn't want him "over there."

"He got himself in the Navy. He was running with the wrong crowd. He made the decision. But he had to do something or he had to get out of the house," she said.

Now she is confused about why young men like him are involved in a war.

"I don't think they should be over there. There are people here who are homeless and people here who are suffering," Atkins said.

There won't be any peace for these mothers until their sons and daughters come home.

But leadership from honorable people such as Powell, Rice and Brooks should give them hope.

Try re-reading this one with "white" substituted for "black" and "Bush", "Rumsfeld", "Franks" substituted for "Powell", "Rice", "Brooks", so that the gist becomes: it's okay, though they'd be justified in opposing it otherwise, for white men to support the war, because white men are running it. Now tell me what mainstream publication would run the column? Posted by Orrin Judd at March 28, 2003 10:10 AM