Politics aside, Colin Powell was a Black man in America | Michael Harriot

The former secretary of state worked for administrations most Black people opposed, yet many African Americans respected him

Perhaps the most revealing analogy for blackness can be found in the first section of the standard obituary. Most of these life synopses follow a straightforward template, with the first paragraph spelling out the bare facts. This person was born. This person was alive for this number of years. This person is no longer alive.

The second paragraph usually summarizes the person's most notable accomplishments, good or bad. Ronald Reagan ended the cold war in the second stanza of his postmortem poem. Fox News founder Roger Ailes's obituary notes that he turned the American presidency into the television show that eventually produced Donald Trump. But before former secretary of state Colin Powell's obituary notes that he left office as one of America's least successful diplomats", one fragment of one sentence explains why the four-star general was so well regarded by many, in life and death. Buried in the first paragraph is the reason a man who played an integral part in perpetuating the lie that led to a catastrophic war is lauded by Black progressives like Hakeem Jeffries and Karen Bass, who opposed the things Powell actually did.