Barack Obama was at Columbia University (1981-1983) in New York for two years. He came there from Occidental College in Los Angeles. He got a degree in political science at Columbia and spent another year in the city working before going to Altgeld Gardens in Chicago.
Coming to New York allowed Obama to start all over again. He became a new person. He was now Barack, not Barry.
It seems he took everything Regina told him at Occidental to heart: he left his drinking and bitterness behind, he applied himself to his studies and was bent on making the world a better place. Even the terrible scale of New York’s troubles did not make him lose hope.
From his own account he worked hard and kept to himself. He said he was like a monk. Few remember him. Those who do say he seemed older than his years, somewhat laid back but in control.
He kept a journal in those days, yet he says little about Columbia beyond what he saw written in its public toilets. It seems a bit strange after telling us so much about Occidental. Maybe it did not help to advance his story in “Dreams from My Father”, yet even now he says little about it.
What he does tell us about those years is mainly about New York and the time his mother and sister came to visit.
He went with them to see “Black Orpheus” (1959), a corny film with great music set in Brazil that tells an old Greek love story with black people. His mother loved it when it first came out and wanted to see it again. Obama could not sit through it: it pictured blacks as simple, happy people, as if they were little more than children.
He turned to look at his mother’s face in the faint blue light of the film and saw how she loved its simple picture of blacks. He wondered if this was why she married a black man. How sad. He was at that age when he could begin to see his parents as ordinary people, faults and all.
But Obama had his own storybook picture of blacks. When he went to Harlem, world-famous as it was, it did not live up to the picture he had of it. It was far worse than he imagined.
In 1982 he wanted to travel to Kenya to to see his father. The only time he can remember seeing his father before was when he came to Hawaii one Christmas when Obama was ten. He gave him a basketball. His father turned out not to be the bigger-than-life character of his mother’s stories.
A friend of his had gone to Kenya and spoke highly of the experience: he said Africa is to blacks what Israel is to Jews: going there gave you a deeper sense of who you are. You had to go.
But just before Obama was about to leave for Africa, his father was killed in a car accident. He did not go.
See also:
- Obama’s book “Dreams from My Father”, but he says so little about Columbia and this period that I had to find out more on the Internet, so not all of this is from his book.
- Barack Obama
- New York
- Harlem
- Brazil
- Black Orpheus
do you know any information about this subject in other languages?
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No. It was hard enough just finding it in English!
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How did Mr. Obama finance his education and his trip to Kenya and other countries?
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He did not go to Kenya then – his father died a week or so before he was going to leave. Not sure where he got the money for that.
As to Columbia, if you are smart enough – and Obama certainly was – they will find a way to keep you in school with a mix of student loans, grants and part-time work. At least they used to. That is how I made it through Columbia and my family was less well-off than Obama’s.
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is it really any of OUR business how he funded his education or how he traveled. my concern is as long as he continues to fulfill his duties as president, thats all that matters.
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Scott Thompson listed his degree as being in accounting and computer science at a time when
computer science was hosted at math, electronics or business departments. Patti Hart listed
her business degree as marketing and economics. But Obama also listed his political science
degree as national security for which there was only one senior year course and one graduate
seminar. Likewise his fellow travelers have managed to hawk their defunct soviet degrees.
Degrees meaningless are when they can bestow and deny them so frivolously.
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“He went with them to see “Black Orpheus” (1959), a corny film with great music set in Brazil that tells an old Greek love story with black people. His mother loved it when it first came out and wanted to see it again. Obama could not sit through it: it pictured blacks as simple, happy people, as if they were little more than children”
wow, I dont agree with this at all…the female lead was anything but happy, she was being pursued by someone who wanted to kill her. The threat of violence was imminent up until she died…
Has anyone been to Rio right before carnival? Its unbeleivable, when I got there for the first time, it was more than the film could ever convey…there is an explosion of celibration, and Cariocas do it like no one else in the world
a kind of pseudo politness is part of Brazilian charactor, people can be fooled because it is very violent underneath…but, they take an opisite aproach than New York where there is a pseudo rudeness..if a new yorker came to Chicago, which is a tough town, and ran his pseudo angry rudeness, he would be beat up ..
In Brazil, you see extremly violent criminals get interviewed and they all of a sudden take on a pseudo polite demeaner becaue it is part of the culture
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The film was actualy made by the French, but, it was based on a play that had been written by Vinicious de Moraes with music by Tom Jobim…
This is a typical example that people outside of Brazil dont really get what is happening down here…and , black militant activists get real frustrated trying to deal with Brazil…beleive me, that isnt my opinion, I read their frustrations on Brazil blogs
it gets tired sometimes hearing opinions about Brazil from outside
I asume this thread is referring to Obamas take on the film, but, Abagond may have used the world “corny”…
This movie let me know how incredible Brazil might be…no less than Dizzy Guilespi (know who he is?) said it let him know there were brothers and sisters from a long way away that were his family
although I didnt know when i saw it at 11 , that Brazil would be one of the most incredible destinations and place to live in the future, the movie marked me and paved the way later for me to decide to go to Brazil after i just got tired of the rude burn out of manhattan after 8 years fighting for my career…I never looked back..and Brazil was more than I ever expected
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@ thwack: Comment deleted for using a racial slur.
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@no offense
I think it is quite reasonable to inquire as to he funded his education or how he traveled. He had more financial resources than the average person, black or white. Here is one mysterious funder of Barack’s education. I looked for an Abagond post on Barack at Harvard for this comment but couldn’t find one. So I am posting it here. I think it is apropos in looking back at all of Barack’s betrayals of his base and ask if he wasn’t merely some kind of operative for the CIA to which his family is alleged to have had connections.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP8gIzfvy7c&w=420&h=315)
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