Sarkozy makes gaffe on Rice roots WASHINGTON — Nicolas Sarkozy made a minor gaffe on his first U.S. visit as France’s president by wrongly suggesting that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has recent immigrant roots.
Sarkozy, in improvised remarks Tuesday to the French-American Business Council in Washington, cited Rice and her predecessors Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright as examples of people from immigrant backgrounds succeeding in the United States.
“Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Madame Rice, these are not longtime Americans. … For more than 20 years, your minister for foreign affairs has been an American from elsewhere,” Sarkozy said.
Rice’s parents were Americans, as were their parents and at least one generation before them. Biographies of Rice say her paternal great-grandparents were born into slavery in Alabama.
Powell, Rice’s immediate predecessor, was born in New York City. His parents immigrated to the United States from Jamaica. Albright was born in Czechoslovakia and left the country with her parents after World War II.
