While former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned President Trump to be “a lot more careful” on race issues, she was clear that the left is also at fault for the current division in the nation.

Rice, who under former President George W. Bush, was appointed as the first woman – and the first back woman – to serve as national security adviser, spoke about the “raw nerve ” of racism in America during a CNN appearance Sunday.

(Video: CNN)

“For all the right reasons, for groups that were disadvantaged, groups that had been left out, needed voice, but we have to be careful that it doesn’t become just a set of grievances. Or a narrative that is one that pits one ethnic group against other ethnic groups, because in that case, you are going to see the rise of white identity. And that’s something that I think we really don’t want to see,” she said on “Fareed Zakaria GPS” Sunday.

Zakaria rolled out the left’s usual talking points about the president’s alleged racism, pushing the narrative by falsely representing what he has said, and then asking Rice about the “contrast” to the Bush administration.

“When you hear Trump, this must — this is the repudiation of everything you and Bush were trying to do,” he said.

“The president needs to be a lot more careful in the way that he speaks about these things, because race is a very delicate and raw nerve in America,” Rice responded. “We have a birth defect of slavery, we have a birth defect of a number of people being treated badly, so you need to be careful.”

But she was not about to let Zakaria off the hook so easily.

“But I’ll tell you, Fareed, it’s not all coming out of the White House. I hear a lot coming out of the left on these issues, too, that I don’t like the language that is used about people, the notion that because somebody looks a certain way or is of a certain color, they ought to think a certain way, and if they don’t think a certain way, then they’re really not black,” Rice said.

“You know, come on, we need to all back off. We need to watch our language toward one another,” she added. “We need to start to apply that Golden Rule. Don’t say something about somebody that you wouldn’t want to be said about you. And I think we’ll all be better off.”

Rice reiterated her point, making sure the CNN host understood that the blame does not belong solely on Trump.

“I think this is a national project, not a White House project, not a congressional project, it’s a national project,” she said.

Once again, Zakaria attempted to get the soundbite he needed from Rice, who was on hand to promote her book “To Build a Better World: Choices to End the Cold War and Create a Global Commonwealth.”

“But by saying that, you have so much moral authority given who you are and what kind of jobs you’ve had. Do you have a responsibility to not just pretend that there is an equivalence here? ” he asked, citing the current political climate in England.

“Well, there, it’s not really bad policy. They’re objecting to something quite different,” Rice replied before turning to the president’s language and the responsibility everyone has for the division in America.

“Look, I think there’s an argument that we have a president of the United States and you’ve got to try and fight for the right things from whatever perch you have, within, without, however you wish to do it,” she said.

“I don’t like a lot of the language that this president uses. I especially don’t like the language about immigrants. Because in so many ways, immigrants are an easy target,” she went on.

“But the reason that I emphasize all of our responsibilities is if we just point fingers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we’re not going to solve this problem. This is a very deep, now, set of divisions in America, in which we’re all looking at each other through a lens of our own narrative and our own grievances, and that is going to backfire in a multi-ethnic democracy, that is not held together by race or ethnicity or nationality or religion, for that matter,” Rice said.

“But we’re held together by an idea,” she concluded. “And we had better get back to that unifying idea or we’re going to be in very deep trouble.”

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Frieda Powers

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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.

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