By Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice has excelled as a diplomat, political scientist, and live performance pianist. Her achievements run the gamut from supporting to supervise the cave in of communism in Europe and the decline of the Soviet Union, to operating to guard the rustic within the aftermath of Sep 11, to changing into in basic terms the second one lady - and the 1st black lady ever -- to function Secretary of nation.
But till she was once 25 she by no means discovered to swim.
Not simply because she wouldn't have enjoyed to, yet simply because whilst she used to be a bit woman in Birmingham, Alabama, Commissioner of Public security Bull Connor made up our minds he'd fairly close down the city's swimming pools than provide black voters access.
Throughout the 1950's, Birmingham's black center type mostly succeeded in insulating their young ones from the main corrosive results of racism, offering a number of help structures to make sure the subsequent iteration may reside larger than the last. yet by way of 1963, whilst Rice was once making use of herself to her fourth grader's classes, the placement had grown intolerable. Birmingham used to be an atmosphere the place blacks have been anticipated to maintain their head down and do what they have been informed -- or face violent effects. That spring bombs exploded in Rice’s local amid a chain of chilling Klu Klux Klan attacks. Months later, 4 younger ladies misplaced their lives in a very vicious bombing.
So how used to be Rice in a position to in attaining what she eventually did?
Her father, John, a minister and educator, instilled a love of activities and politics. Her mom, a instructor, constructed Condoleezza’s ardour for piano and uncovered her to the effective arts. From either, Rice realized the worth of religion within the face of problem and the significance of giving again to the community. Her parents’ fierce unwillingness to set limits propelled her to the venerable halls of Stanford collage, the place she speedy rose throughout the ranks to develop into the university’s second-in-command. knowledgeable in Soviet and japanese ecu Affairs, she performed a number one position in U.S. coverage because the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. lower than a decade later, on the apex of the hotly contested 2000 presidential election, she got the fascinating information – simply almost immediately sooner than her father’s loss of life – that she could move directly to the White apartment because the first woman nationwide safeguard Advisor.
As cozy describing lighthearted relatives moments as she is recalling the poignancy of her mother’s melanoma conflict and the heady problem of going toe-to-toe with Soviet leaders, Rice holds not anything again during this remarkably candid telling. this can be the tale of Condoleezza Rice that hasn't ever been informed, now not that of an ultra-accomplished global chief, yet of a bit woman – and a tender girl -- looking for her position in a occasionally antagonistic global and of 2 unprecedented mom and dad, and a longer relations and neighborhood, that made all of the distinction.
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Additional resources for Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family
Sample text
Currently, these changes are held back by interconnected barriers at different levels, from the level of individual identity to societal norms, as we have begun to illustrate in this paper. In particular, persistent workplace assumptions about work and ideal workers reinforce and reproduce gender inequities and prevent reciprocal changes between men and women. The intensification and invasiveness of work in the contemporary global context exacerbates these processes. For this reason, solutions to issues of gender inequity in reconciling paid work and family will not be achieved byattention to the situation in Europe alone.
Note 1. This was the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 'Family 2002' module that has been drawn upon in a number of chapters in this volume. For a description of the ISSP programme, see lowell et a1. (1993). 2 Evolutions and Approaches to Equitable Divisions of Paid Work and Care in Three European Countries: a Multi-level Challenge Richenda Gambles, Suzan Lewis and Rhona Rapoport Despite growing numbers of women in the labour force, and varying national policies and workplace policies developed to support the reconciliation of paid work and family life, progress towards gender equity remains uneven and painfully slow across Europe.
However, the growth in women's employment has been mostly in terms of part-time work (OECD, 2001). , 2003). Workplaces As in the UK, the tendency has been to encourage, rather than legislate for, workplace change. There is much discussion of flexible work arrangements, but policies are most likely to be developed in large organisations, especially in the public sector or where women's labour is needed, and are also more likely to be taken up by women, leaving workplace cultures and structures unchanged (Den Dulk, 2001).
