Member-only story
Colin Powell Was the Living Myth of Integration
The late statesman was embraced by White societies in ways unfathomable for most Black people
On Monday, former soldier, general, and statesman Colin Powell died at 84 years old of complications from Covid-19. Despite being vaccinated against the coronavirus, Powell was immunocompromised due to struggles with multiple myeloma, a cancer of disease-fighting plasma cells that is twice as likely to affect Black people than White people, according to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.
Powell did everything White people demanded from Black personhood in order for them to consider Black folk fully American. Yet he died of the same ailments that have ended the lives of so many of his people, a willing outcast from the elements that gave him power. Powell’s life and death expose the myth White people tell about what it takes to be both Black and an American.
For White people, Colin Powell represented the dream of integration. The Black son of immigrants attended public schools until his undergrad years, finding his fervor in the ROTC at the City College of New York. He shipped out to the rice paddies and jungles of Vietnam, twice. He returned as a war hero, twice. Upon coming home, Powell continued his education and rose throughout the ranks of…
