Colin Powell knew where he fit in American history .
The former U.S.secretary of state — who diedOct . 18 , 2021 , at 84 — was a pioneer : the first calamitous national protection advisor in U.S. chronicle , the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and also the first blackened man to become secretaire of state .
But his " American journey " — as he key out it in the title of a 2003 autobiography — is more than the news report of one military man . His death is a moment to think about the chronicle of Black American military personnel and women in the military and the place of African Americans in government .
But more deeply , it also speaks to what it means to be an American , and the tensions that Colin Powell — as a nationalist and a Black man — faced throughout his life and career .
I ’m ascholar of African American studieswho is currently writing a Word of God on the expectant civil rights intellectual W.E.B. DuBois . When I hear of Powell ’s passing , I was immediately reminded of what DuBois referred to as the " bivalent - consciousness " of the African American experience .
As DuBois put itin an 1897 articleand later in his classic 1903 book " The Souls of Black Folk , " this " singular wiz " is alone to African Americans : " One feels his two - ness — an American , a Negro ; two souls , two thoughts , two unreconciled strivings ; two warring apotheosis in one dark body , whose dogged strength alone maintain it from being charge asunder . "
This concept deeply describes Colin Powell as a soldier , a career military human being and a politician .
What It Means to Serve
On the control surface , Colin Powell ’s lifespan would seem to refute DuBois ' expression . Colin support as someone who many citizenry could sharpen to as an example of how it is possible to be both ignominious and a full American , something DuBois regard as an endure tension . There is a narration that Powellused the armed services to top raceand become one of the most powerful humans in the nation . In that mother wit , he was the ultimate American success story .
But there is a danger to that narrative . Powell ’s story was exceptional , but he was no incarnation of a colorblind , post - racial America .
The U.S. Army has long been seen as a route for Black Americans , especially young Black men , out of poverty . Many chose to turn their service into a career .
By the time Powell , theBronx - raisedson of Jamaican immigrants , link the U.S. Army , there was already a majestic history of African Americans in the U.S. military — from the " Buffalo Soldiers " who served in the American West , the Caribbean and South Pacificafter the U.S. Civil War to theTuskegee Airmenof World War II .
Powell was part of that military history . He joined in 1958 , a decade afterdesegregation of the Armed Forcesin 1948 .
But the military was — and still is — an institution characterized by structural racial discrimination . That was true when Powell join the Army , and it is true today .
As such , Powell would have had to wrestle with his inkiness and what it meant in the military : What did it intend to swear out a country that does n’t answer you ?
As a military man during the Vietnam War , Powell also stood aside from many smuggled political leaderswho condemned U.S. actionin Southeast Asia .
While Muhammad Aliwas asking whyhe should " put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from habitation and pretermit bombs and bullet on dark-brown people " at a sentence when " so - shout Negro hoi polloi in Louisville are treated like weenie and denied simple human rights , " Powell was making his way up the military ranks .
It helps explain why , despite Powell ’s undoubted accomplishment , his legacy as a smutty loss leader is complicated . His identity operator — being of Jamaican inheritance — posed questions about what it means to be an African American .
His life story in the war machine prompted some to ask why he would serve a country that has historically been uncongenial to nonwhite people in the U.S. and around the world . The veteran activist and Isaac Bashevis Singer Harry Belafonte likened Powell in 2002 to a " menage slave " in oneparticularly disputative remarkquestioning his trueness to the U.S. system .
Powell acknowledged the realities of racial discrimination in the U.S. , while at the same time consider it should never swear out as an obstacle nor cause Black people to question their American - ness . In aMay 14 , 1994 , commencement speech at Howard University , Powell told graduates to take superbia in their inglorious heritage , but to use it as " a groundwork Edward Durell Stone we can build up on , and not a place to withdraw into . "
And then there are his political affiliations . He was Ronald Reagan ’s national security measure adviser and George H. W. Bush ’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at a time when the domesticated policies of both presidents were devastating Black America , throughmass incarceration of dark men and womenandeconomic policiesthat ransack service in lower - income areas .
That was before one of the most consequential and controversial mo in Powell ’s political living .
In February 2003 , Powellargued before the United Nations Security Councilfor military activity against Iraq — a speech that erroneously claimed that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of aggregated destruction . He had n’t , and the war that Powell help oneself steer the U.S. into mark his bequest .
A Complicated Existence
Powell ’s two - ness , to use the DuBois set phrase , manifested afterwards in his decisiveness in 2008 to endorse Barack Obama as presidential candidate over his fellow Republican and military gentleman , John McCain .
In Obama , Powell see " a transformational pattern " in America and on the existence stage .
In endorsing Obama , Powell choose the historic signification of the U.S. having its first Black president over trueness and service to his champion and political party .
His drift from Republicanism further after Donald Trump seized the reins of the party . He became progressively vocal in oppose Trump , who saw Powell — as did many of Trump ’s supporter — as something of a betrayer .
That thought ignore the chronicle .
Powell was a patriot who embodied DuBois ' " two warring ideals in one dark-skinned trunk . " For Powell to have reached the altitude he did required dogged strength and perhaps far great effort to hold it together than his clean predecessors .
In America , being smutty and a nationalist is — as DuBois hinted at more than a 100 ago , and as Powell ’s life testify to — a very complicated , even abominable , affair .
