You want a real, authentic black person, one who grew up poor and succeeded despite poverty and racism. Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice.
Barack grew up in an upper middle class house hold, raised by white people.
Early life Rice was born in
Birmingham, Alabama, the only child of Angelena (née Ray) Rice, a high school science, music, and oratory teacher, and John Wesley Rice, Jr., a high school guidance counselor and Presbyterian minister.[SUP]
[5][/SUP][SUP]
[6][/SUP] Her name, Condoleezza, derives from the
music-related term,
con dolcezza, which in Italian means, "with sweetness". Rice has roots in the
American South going back to the pre-
Civil War era, and some of her ancestors worked as sharecroppers for a time after emancipation. Rice discovered on the
PBS series
Finding Your Roots[SUP]
[7][/SUP] that she is of 51% African, 40% European and 9% Native American or Asian genetic descent, while her
mtDNA is traced back to the
Tikar people of
Cameroon.[SUP]
[8][/SUP] Rice grew up in the
Titusville[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP] neighborhood at a time when the South was racially segregated.
[h=3]Early education[/h]
Condoleezza Rice as an undergraduate student at the University of Denver
Rice began to learn French, music, figure skating and ballet at the age of three.[SUP]
[9][/SUP] At the age of fifteen, she began piano classes with the goal of becoming a concert
pianist.[SUP]
[10][/SUP] While Rice ultimately did not become a professional pianist, she still practices often and plays with a chamber music group. She accompanied
cellist Yo-Yo Ma playing
Brahms's Violin Sonata in D Minor at
Constitution Hall in April 2002 for the
National Medal of Arts Awards.[SUP]
[11][/SUP]
[h=3]High school and university education[/h]In 1967, the family moved to
Denver,
Colorado. She attended
St. Mary's Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school in
Cherry Hills Village,
Colorado, graduating in 1971. After studying piano at the
Aspen Music Festival and School, Rice enrolled at the
University of Denver, where her father was then serving as an assistant dean.
Rice's initial college major was piano, but after realizing she did not have the talent to play professionally, she began to consider an alternative major.[SUP]
[10][/SUP][SUP]
[12][/SUP] She attended an international politics course taught by
Josef Korbel, which sparked her interest in the
Soviet Union and
international relations. Rice later described Korbel (who was the father of
Madeleine Albright, a future U.S. Secretary of State), as a central figure in her life.[SUP]
[13][/SUP]
In 1974, at age 19, Rice was inducted into the honor society
Phi Beta Kappa, and was awarded a
B.A.,
cum laude, in
political science by the University of Denver. While at the University of Denver she was a member of
Alpha Chi Omega, Gamma Delta chapter.[SUP]
[14][/SUP] She obtained a
master's degree in
political science from the
University of Notre Dame in 1975. She first worked in the
State Department in 1977, during the
Carter administration, as an intern in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. In 1981, at the age of 26, she received her
Ph.D. in political science from the
Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Her dissertation centered on military policy and politics in what was then the
communist state of
Czechoslovakia.[SUP]
[15][/SUP]
