Former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on Sunday blamed Democrats for racism after she was asked about Donald Trump's controversial bigoted statements.

During an interview on CNN, host Fareed Zakaria asked Rice about some of Trump's most racist statements, like telling Democratic congresswomen to "go back" where they came from. And when he said there were good people on "both sides" at a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville.

"When you hear Trump, this is a repudiation of everything you were trying to do," Zakaria pointed out.

"The president needs to be a lot more careful," Rice agreed. "Race is a very delicate and raw nerve in America. We have the birth defect of slavery, we have the birth defect of a number of people being treated badly."

"But I tell you," she continued. "You need to be careful, Fareed. It's not all coming out of the White House. I hear a lot coming out of the left of these issues to, that I don't like the language that is being used about people, that because somebody looks a certain way or are of a certain color, they ought to think a certain way. And if they don't think a certain way, then they're really not black."

Rice asserted that "we need to all back off."

"And I think we will all be better off," she added. "I think this is a national project, not a White House project, not a congressional project."

"But by saying that," Zakaria pressed, "do you have a responsibility to not just pretend there is an equivalence here?"

"People have to make their own determination," she said about leaving the Republican Party. "I think there's an argument that we have a president of the United States and you've got to try to fight for the right things from whatever perch you have, within, without -- however you with to do it."

"The reason that I specify all of our responsibilities, is if we just point the fingers at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., we're not going to solve this problem," Rice opined.