I cannot dismiss his complicity in the Iraqi Farce; the vial of anthrax gleaming for cameras. Old soldier of spit and polish and duty, following orders.
But he voted for Obama, for which I will always respect him.*
Colin Powell came from that generation of blacks still linked to the Party of Lincoln: the old Negroes who taught their Colored children that the Republican party had freed their grandparents and great grandparents; before their Black grandchildren flocked to the Democratic party (which had simply switched places with its counterpart). Colin Powell stands as a monument to the mire in which the so-called black intelligentsia (because I so call them that) finds itself: trying to reconcile the aims of self-empowerment with disdain of public assistance while still in the throes of inequality.
*"Why would you respect him because he voted for Obama, in spite of the fact that he was complicit in the unfounded aggression against Iraq?" Well, it's a black thing. Powell went against the will of his party and refused to miss being a part of a monumental and historic event; part of a dream being realized for the members of the race that had not long ago emerged from then-legal slavery. This was something on which WEB DuBois and Frederick Douglas, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. would agree.
In a way, Colin Powell was the counter-Black Panther, displaying and cultivating his blackness and achievement from within the system. But I wouldn't call him the anti-Black Panther. That title's reserved for Condoleeza Rice, the anti-Angela Davis; it's impossible even to say her name without sneering.
