Here we go again. Condoleeza Rice’s handpicked nominee for administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development and director of foreign assistance (the previous administrator had to leave due to an prostitution scandal) is - SURPRISE - a racist. Or at least she was in 1987.

[Henrietta Holsman] Fore, a 1970 Wellesley graduate, told a college audience in 1987 that she tried to retain black employees as the president of a small wire-products firm near Los Angeles but that blacks preferred selling drugs to working in a factory. She also said that Hispanic workers were lazy, that white workers resented working with machines, and that Asians, while very productive, preferred professional or management jobs, according to accounts at the time in the Boston Globe and the New York Times. A number of students walked out of her lecture in protest.

Two years ago, during her Senate confirmation hearing for her current position as the undersecretary of management at the State Dept., Sen. Barack Obama was skeptical, according to the Washington Post but she still slid through. He and Sen. Robert Menendez are now saying that they will not support her confirmation unless she exhibited some kind of commitment to diversity during her tenure at the State Dept.

She’ll come up with something that sounds good, and she’ll be confirmed, again. There have got to be qualified Republicans somewhere out there who have not publicly made racist statements in the past and can be nominated for these positions. I mean, is that too much to ask?

[WP]