Condoleezza Rice in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS said America was born with a birth defect: slavery.
Rice, the former secretary ofstate under President George W. Bush, was on CBS's "Sunday Morning" show discussing her new book "Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom."
"We forget in the United States how long it has taken us to make 'We the People' mean people like me," Rice told host Jane Pauley while discussing the civil rights movement of the 1960s, or what she refers to as "the second founding of America."
"And indeed, I do think that America was born with a birth defect; It was slavery."
Rice's book touches on the struggles of democracy, including her own. She grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, the center stage of the Civil Rights Movement, and was the nation's first African-American woman to become secretary of state.
"When we were finally able to deliver the promise of the Constitution to people like me, little girls growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, when finally my father was able to vote without difficulty, yes, it's the second founding of America. The first founding wasn't quite complete," she told Pauly.
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