Interview With Colin Powell

The Telegraph has a great interview with Colin Powell. The whole thing is worth reading, but this part from the end was by far the most interesting to me.

The day before our meeting, I had told a black Washington driver that I was hoping to meet Colin Powell. He laughed, and told me to ask him if he realised that, in the end, the white man always thinks you’re “just a nigger”. So that is what I ask Colin Powell as we stand up to depart.
He pauses and smiles. “When I joined the army, it was only five years after the last segregated regiment had disbanded. There was a lot of discrimination. Seventeen years ago, when I joined the National Security Council, I could still detect a little of that.
“Not now. Now I’m criticised for what I do wrong, not for who I am. This country has moved so far.”

Read the whole thing.
Powell also said that he was “absolutely not” going to seek public office in the future.