We're waiting for that snowy day in hell when Toni Morrison officially announces that "so and so is the first black Republican..."

I don't think that Powell and Rice really count as politicians. They've never been elected to anything, just appointed.

Government is politics.

The appearance is that Bush does not listen to Powell, so Powell's value as a standard bearer in the black community is low. Also, neither Powell or Rice are involved in domestic issues and therefore aren't engaged in black community politics. They meet foreign heads of state, not local black politicians to discuss how Treasury policy or Transportation policy affect local black communities.

Neither are tokens, but both are also outsiders to the black community leadership. They have no consitutuencies, no favors they owe or owe other black leaders. In other words, they have no proof that they serve the interests of the black community.

I think there presence is helpful in that younger blacks will grow up thinking it is acceptable for blacks to be in the GOP, but that benefit is long off.

If Republicans want black votes they'll need politicians engrossed in the black community who have proved their commitment to that community in fat, not just theory.

You need rank-and-file black politicians at the local level to show people that the party is getting results, but Republicans have yet to attract those politicians in any great quantity, which allows Democrats to assume that base and thus overlook their needs for those of other groups.

Hermain Cain being elected Senator from Georgia would a good start for the GOP.

You don't need a degree in Political Science to understand how voting for Democrats in percentages that rival those of Russians voting for Stalin has made Blacks politically irrelevant. Democrats can't lose them and Republicans can't gain them, so nobody really notices. Blacks will gain their rightful place in American politics when they stop acting like schoolteachers or homosexuals who have nowhere else to go.

Oooo-- electing both Cain and Obama would give quite a fight over who gets to be the "third black Senator". Sometimes the sitting Senator retires early so that its successor gets a slight edge in senority, but in these cases, we'd be having party switches.

The problem for black voters is that they've been herded into gerrymandered ghettos. This makes it easy for a Maxine Waters to become a Congresscritter, but never have a chance statewide, where you have to appeal to a variety of interests instead of just making sure enough of the base turns out. (We are seeing the same sort of thing on a national level with Kerry and Mass. voters.)

As for Powell-- you don't get to be Chairman of the JCS without a talent for politics, and having a counterweight as Sec't State can be more useful than an Albright or Christopher.

Remember what Harry Belafonte said about Rice and Powell. But I think he was just jealous.

There's a good practical reason, notwithstanding the good points other people make in this thread, why nobody is paying any attention to the "black vote" this year and everyone is concentrating on Latinos.

There are now more Latinos in the U.S. than there are blacks.

And soon there will be more Asians.

"You need rank-and-file black politicians at the local level to show people that the party is getting results"

This is the problem with democratic black voters, they are awaiting salvation from government action, like some cargo cult. Powell and Rice are showing blacks that results come from your own initiative. Go out and get results, don't wait for government to bring it to you.