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the president: hello, howard! (applause) h-u! audience: you know! the president: h-u! the president: (laughs) thank you somuch, everybody. please, please, have a seat. oh, i feel important now.
got a degree from howard. cicely tyson saidsomething nice about me. (laughter) audience member: ilove you, president! the president:i love you back. to president frederick, theboard of trustees, faculty and staff, fellow recipientsof honorary degrees, thank you for the honor ofspending this day with you. and congratulationsto the class of 2016!
four years ago, back whenyou were just freshmen, i understand many of you cameby my house the night i was reelected. so i decided to return thefavor and come by yours. to the parents, thegrandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, all thefamily and friends who stood by this class, cheered themon, helped them get here today -- this isyour day, as well. let's give them a big roundof applause, as well.
i'm not trying to stir upany rivalries here; i just want to see who'sin the house. we got quad? annex. drew. carver. slow. towers. and meridian.
rest in peace, meridian. rest in peace. i know you're allexcited today. you might be a littletired, as well. some of you were up allnight making sure your credits were in order. some of you stayed up toolate, ended up at hochi at 2:00 a.m. got some mambo sauceon your fingers.
but you got here. and you've all workedhard to reach this day. you've shuttled betweenchallenging classes and greek life. you've led clubs, playedan instrument or a sport. you volunteered,you interned. you held down one,two, maybe three jobs. you've made lifelong friendsand discovered exactly what you're made of.
the "howard hustle" hasstrengthened your sense of purpose and ambition. which means you're partof a long line of howard graduates. some are on thisstage today. some are in the audience. that spirit of achievementand special responsibility has defined this campus eversince the freedman's bureau established howard just fouryears after the emancipation
proclamation; just two yearsafter the civil war came to an end. they created this universitywith a vision -- a vision of uplift; a vision for anamerica where our fates would be determined not byour race, gender, religion or creed, but where we wouldbe free -- in every sense -- to pursue our individualand collective dreams. it is that spirit that'smade howard a centerpiece of african-americanintellectual life and a
central part of ourlarger american story. this institution has beenthe home of many firsts: the first black nobelpeace prize winner. the first blacksupreme court justice. but its mission has been toensure those firsts were not the last. countless scholars,professionals, artists, and leaders from every fieldreceived their training here. the generations of men andwomen who walked through
this yard helped reform ourgovernment, cure disease, grow a black middle class,advance civil rights, shape our culture. the seeds of change -- forall americans -- were sown here. and that's what i wantto talk about today. as i was preparing theseremarks, i realized that when i was first electedpresident, most of you -- the class of 2016 -- werejust starting high school. today, you'regraduating college.
i used to jokeabout being old. now i realize i'm old. it's not a joke anymore. but seeing all of you heregives me some perspective. it makes me reflect on thechanges that i've seen over my own lifetime. so let me begin withwhat may sound like a controversial statement-- a hot take. given the current state ofour political rhetoric and
debate, let me say somethingthat may be controversial, and that is this: america isa better place today than it was when i graduatedfrom college. let me repeat: america is byalmost every measure better than it was when igraduated from college. it also happens to be betteroff than when i took office -- -- but that'sa longer story. that's a differentdiscussion for another speech. but think about it.
i graduated in 1983. new york city, america'slargest city, where i lived at the time, had endured adecade marked by crime and deterioration andnear bankruptcy. and many cities werein similar shape. our nation had gonethrough years of economic stagnation, the strangleholdof foreign oil, a recession where unemployment nearlyscraped 11 percent. the auto industry wasgetting its clock cleaned by
foreign competition. and don't even get mestarted on the clothes and the hairstyles. i've tried to eliminateall photos of me from this period. i thought i looked good. i was wrong. since that year -- sincethe year i graduated -- the poverty rate is down.
americans with collegedegrees, that rate is up. crime rates are down. america's cities haveundergone a renaissance. there are more womenin the workforce. they're earning more money. we've cut teenpregnancy in half. we've slashed the africanamerican dropout rate by almost 60 percent, and allof you have a computer in your pocket that gives youthe world
at the touch of a button. in 1983, i was part of fewerthan 10 percent of african americans who graduatedwith a bachelor's degree. today, you're part of themore than 20 percent who will. and more than half of blackssay we're better off than our parents were at our age-- and that our kids will be better off, too. so america is better. and the worldis better, too.
a wall came down in berlin. an iron curtainwas torn asunder. the obscenity ofapartheid came to an end. a young generation inbelfast and london have grown up without ever havingto think about ira bombings. in just the past 16 years,we've come from a world without marriage equality toone where it's a reality in nearly two dozen countries. around the world, morepeople live in democracies.
we've lifted more than 1billion people from extreme poverty. we've cut the childmortality rate worldwide by more than half. america is better. the world is better. and stay with me now -- racerelations are better since i graduated. that's the truth.
no, my election did notcreate a post-racial society. i don't know who waspropagating that notion. that was not mine. but the election itself --and the subsequent one -- because the first one, folksmight have made a mistake. the second one, they knewwhat they were getting. the election itself wasjust one indicator of how attitudes had changed. in my inaugural address, iremarked that just 60 years
earlier, my father mightnot have been served in a d.c. restaurant -- atleast not certain of them. there were no black ceosof fortune 500 companies. very few black judges. shoot, as larry wilmorepointed out last week, a lot of folks didn't even thinkblacks had the tools to be a quarterback. today, former bull michaeljordan isn't just the greatest basketball playerof all time -- he owns the team.
when i was graduating, themain black hero on tv was mr. t. rap and hip hop werecounterculture, underground. now, shonda rhimes ownsthursday night, and beyoncã© runs the world. we're no longer onlyentertainers, we're producers, studioexecutives. no longer small businessowners -- we're ceos, we're mayors, representatives,presidents of the united states.
i am not sayinggaps do not persist. obviously, they do. racism persists. inequality persists. don't worry -- i'mgoing to get to that. but i wanted to start, classof 2016, by opening your eyes to the momentthat you are in. if you had to choose onemoment in history in which you could be born, and youdidn't know ahead of time
who you were going to be-- what nationality, what gender, what race, whetheryou'd be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faithyou'd be born into -- you wouldn't choose100 years ago. you wouldn't choose thefifties, or the sixties, or the seventies. you'd choose right now. if you had to choose a timeto be, in the words of lorraine hansberry, "young,gifted, and black" in
america, you wouldchoose right now. i tell you all this becauseit's important to note progress. because to deny how farwe've come would do a disservice to the cause ofjustice, to the legions of foot soldiers; to not onlythe incredibly accomplished individuals who have alreadybeen mentioned, but your mothers and your dads, andgrandparents and great grandparents, who marchedand toiled and suffered and overcame to makethis day possible.
i tell you this not to lullyou into complacency, but to spur you into action --because there's still so much more work to do, somany more miles to travel. and america needs you togladly, happily take up that work. you all havesome work to do. so enjoy the party, becauseyou're going to be busy. yes, our economy hasrecovered from crisis stronger than almostany other in the world.
but there are folks of allraces who are still hurting -- who still can't find workthat pays enough to keep the lights on, who still can'tsave for retirement. we've still got a big racialgap in economic opportunity. the overall unemploymentrate is 5 percent, but the black unemploymentrate is almost nine. we've still got anachievement gap when black boys and girls graduate highschool and college at lower rates than whiteboys and white girls.
harriet tubman may be goingon the twenty, but we've still got a gender gapwhen a black woman working full-time still earns just66 percent of what a white man gets paid. we've got a justice gap whentoo many black boys and girls pass through apipeline from underfunded schools toovercrowded jails. this is one area wherethings have gotten worse. when i was in college, abouthalf a million people in
america were behind bars. today, there areabout 2.2 million. black men are about sixtimes likelier to be in prison right nowthan white men. around the world, we'vestill got challenges to solve that threateneverybody in the 21st century -- old scourges likedisease and conflict, but also new challenges, fromterrorism and climate change. so make no mistake, class of2016
-- you've got plenty of work to do. but as complicated andsometimes intractable as these challenges may seem,the truth is that your generation is betterpositioned than any before you to meet thosechallenges, to flip the script. now, how you do that, howyou meet these challenges, how you bring about changewill ultimately be up to you. my generation, like allgenerations, is too confined by our own experience, tooinvested in our own biases,
too stuck in our ways toprovide much of the new thinking thatwill be required. but us old-heads havelearned a few things that might be usefulin your journey. so with the rest of my time,i'd like to offer some suggestions for how youngleaders like you can fulfill your destiny and shape ourcollective future -- bend it in the direction of justiceand equality and freedom. first of all -- and thisshould not be a problem for
this group -- be confidentin your heritage. be confident inyour blackness. one of the great changesthat's occurred in our country since i was your ageis the realization there's no one way to be black. take it from somebody who'sseen both sides of debate about whetheri'm black enough. in the past couple months,i've had lunch with the queen of england and hostedkendrick lamar
in the oval office. there's no straitjacket,there's no constraints, there's no litmustest for authenticity. look at howard. one thing most folks don'tknow about howard is how diverse it is. when you arrived here,some of you were like, oh, they've got blackpeople in iowa? but it's true -- this classcomes from big cities and
rural communities, and someof you crossed oceans to study here. you shatter stereotypes. some of you come froma long line of bison. some of you are the first inyour family to graduate from college. you all talk different,you all dress different. you're lakers fans, celticsfans, maybe even some hockey fans.
and because of those who'vecome before you, you have models to follow. you can work for a company,or start your own. you can go into politics,or run an organization that holds politiciansaccountable. you can write a book thatwins the national book award, or you can write thenew run of "black panther." or, like one of your alumni,ta-nehisi coates, you can go ahead and just do both.
you can create your ownstyle, set your own standard of beauty, embraceyour own sexuality. think about an icon wejust lost -- prince. he blew up categories. people didn't knowwhat prince was doing. and folks loved him for it. you need to havethe same confidence. or as my daughters tell meall the time, "you be you, daddy."
sometimes sasha puts avariation on it -- "you do you, daddy." and because you're a blackperson doing whatever it is that you're doing, thatmakes it a black thing. feel confident. second, even as we eachembrace our own beautiful, unique, and valid versionsof our blackness, remember the tie that does bind usas african americans -- and that is our particularawareness of injustice and
unfairness and struggle. that means we cannotsleepwalk through life. we cannot beignorant of history. we can't meet the world witha sense of entitlement. we can't walk by a homelessman without asking why a society as wealthy as oursallows that state of affairs to occur. we can't just lock up alow-level dealer without asking why this boy, barelyout of childhood, felt he
had no other options. we have cousins and unclesand brothers and sisters who we remember were just assmart and just as talented as we were, but somehow gotground down by structures that are unfair and unjust. and that means we have tonot only question the world as it is, and stand up forthose african americans who haven't been so lucky --because, yes, you've worked hard, but you'vealso been lucky.
that's a pet peeve ofmine: people who have been successful and don'trealize they've been lucky. that god may have blessedthem; it wasn't nothing you did. so don't have an attitude. but we must expand our moralimaginations to understand and empathize with allpeople who are struggling, not just black folks who arestruggling -- the refugee, the immigrant, the ruralpoor, the transgender person, and yes, themiddle-aged white guy who
you may think has all theadvantages, but over the last several decades hasseen his world upended by economic and cultural andtechnological change, and feels powerless to stop it. you got to getin his head, too. number three: you have to gothrough life with more than just passion for change;you need a strategy. i'll repeat that. i want you to have passion,but you have to have a strategy.
not just awareness,but action. not just hashtags,but votes. you see, change requiresmore than righteous anger. it requires a program, andit requires organizing. at the 1964 democraticconvention, fannie lou hamer -- all five-feet-four-inchestall -- gave a fiery speech on the national stage. but then she went back hometo mississippi and organized cotton pickers.
and she didn't have thetools and technology where you can whip up amovement in minutes. she had to go door to door. and i'm so proud of the newguard of black civil rights leaders who understand this. it's thanks in large part tothe activism of young people like many of you, from blacktwitter to black lives matter, that america's eyeshave been opened -- white, black, democrat, republican-- to the real problems, for
example, in our criminaljustice system. but to bring aboutstructural change, lasting change, awarenessis not enough. it requires changes inlaw, changes in custom. if you care about massincarceration, let me ask you: how are you pressuringmembers of congress to pass the criminal justice reformbill now pending before them? if you care about betterpolicing, do you know who your district attorney is?
do you know who your state'sattorney general is? do you know the difference? do you know who appoints thepolice chief and who writes the police training manual? find out who they are, whattheir responsibilities are. mobilize the community,present them with a plan, work with them to bringabout change, hold them accountable if theydo not deliver. passion is vital, but you'vegot to have a strategy.
and your plan better includevoting -- not just some of the time, but all the time. it is absolutely true that50 years after the voting rights act, there are stilltoo many barriers in this country to vote. there are too many peopletrying to erect new barriers to voting. this is the only advanceddemocracy on earth that goes out of its way to make itdifficult for people to vote.
and there's areason for that. there's a legacy to that. but let me say this: even ifwe dismantled every barrier to voting, that alone wouldnot change the fact that america has some of thelowest voting rates in the free world. in 2014, only 36 percent ofamericans turned out to vote in the midterms -- thesecondlowest participation rate on record.
youth turnout -- that wouldbe you -- was less than 20 percent. less than 20 percent. four out of fivedid not vote. in 2012, nearly two in threeafrican americans turned out. and then, in 2014, onlytwo in five turned out. you don't think that made adifference in terms of the congress i'vegot to deal with? and then people arewondering, well, how come
obama hasn'tgotten this done? how come he didn'tget that done? you don't think thatmade a difference? what would have happened ifyou had turned out at 50, 60, 70 percent, allacross this country? people try to make this political thing really complicated. like, what kind ofreforms do we need? and how do weneed to do that?
you know what, just vote. it's math. if you have more votes thanthe other guy, you get to do what you want. it's not that complicated. and you don't have excuses. you don't have to guess thenumber of jellybeans in a jar or bubbles on a bar ofsoap to register to vote. you don't have to risk yourlife to cast a ballot.
other people alreadydid that for you. your grandparents, yourgreat grandparents might be here today if theywere working on it. what's your excuse? when we don't vote, wegive away our power, disenfranchise ourselves --right when we need to use the power that we have;right when we need your power to stop others fromtaking away the vote and rights of those morevulnerable than you are --
the elderly and the poor,the formerly incarcerated trying to earntheir second chance. so you got to vote all thetime, not just when it's cool, not just when it'stime to elect a president, not just whenyou're inspired. it's your duty. when it's time to elect amember of congress or a city councilman, or a schoolboard member, or a sheriff. that's how we change ourpolitics -- by electing
people at every level whoare representative of and accountable to us. it is not that complicated. don't make it complicated. and finally, change requiresmore than just speaking out -- it requireslistening, as well. in particular, it requireslistening to those with whom you disagree, and beingprepared to compromise. when i was a state senator,i helped pass illinois's
first racial profiling law,and one of the first laws in the nation requiring thevideotaping of confessions in capital cases. and we were successfulbecause, early on, i engaged law enforcement. i didn't say to them, oh,you guys are so racist, you need to do something. i understood, as many of youdo, that the overwhelming majority of police officersare good, and honest, and
courageous, and fair, andlove the communities they serve. and we knew there were somebad apples, and that even the good cops with the bestof intentions -- including, by the way, african americanpolice officers -- might have unconsciousbiases, as we all do. so we engaged and welistened, and we kept working until webuilt consensus. and because we took thetime to listen, we crafted
legislation that was goodfor the police -- because it improved the trust andcooperation of the community -- and it was good for thecommunities, who were less likely to betreated unfairly. and i can say thisunequivocally: without at least the acceptance of thepolice organizations in illinois, i could never havegotten those bills passed. very simple. they would haveblocked them.
the point is, you needallies in a democracy. that's just the way it is. it can be frustratingand it can be slow. but history teaches us thatthe alternative to democracy is always worse. that's not just truein this country. it's not a blackor white thing. go to any country where thegive and take of democracy has been repealed byone-party rule, and i will
show you a countrythat does not work. and democracy requirescompromise, even when you are 100 percent right. this is hard toexplain sometimes. you can be completely right,and you still are going to have to engage folkswho disagree with you. if you think that the onlyway forward is to be as uncompromising as possible,you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy acertain moral purity, but
you're not going toget what you want. and if you don't get whatyou want long enough, you will eventually think thewhole system is rigged. and that will lead tomore cynicism, and less participation, and adownward spiral of more injustice and moreanger and more despair. and that's never been thesource of our progress. that's how we cheatourselves of progress. we remember dr. king'ssoaring oratory, the power
of his letter from abirmingham jail, the marches he led. but he also sat down withpresident johnson in the oval office to try and geta civil rights act and a voting rights act passed. and those two seminal billswere not perfect -- just like the emancipationproclamation was a war document as much as itwas some clarion call for freedom.
those mileposts of ourprogress were not perfect. they did not make up forcenturies of slavery or jim crow or eliminate racism orprovide for 40 acres and a mule. but they made things better. and you know what, i willtake better every time. i always tell my staff --better is good, because you consolidate your gains andthen you move on to the next fight from astronger position. brittany packnett, a memberof the black lives matter
movement and campaign zero,one of the ferguson protest organizers, she joined ourtask force on 21st century policing. some of her fellow activistsquestioned whether she should participate. she rolled up her sleevesand sat at the same table with big city policechiefs and prosecutors. and because she did, sheended up shaping many of the recommendations ofthat task force.
and those recommendationsare now being adopted across the country -- changes thatmany of the protesters called for. if young activists likebrittany had refused to participate out of somesense of ideological purity, then those great ideas wouldhave just remained ideas. but she did participate. and that's howchange happens. america is big and it isboisterous and it is more
diverse than ever. the president told me thatwe've got a significant nepalese contingenthere at howard. i would not haveguessed that. right on. but it just tells youhow interconnected we're becoming. and with so many folks fromso many places, converging, we are not always goingto agree with each other.
another howard alum, zoraneale hurston, once said -- this is a good quote here:"nothing that god ever made is the same thing tomore than one person." think about that. that's why our democracygives us a process designed for us to settle ourdisputes with argument and ideas and votes instead ofviolence and simple majority rule. so don't try to shut folksout, don't try to shut them
down, no matter how much youmight disagree with them. there's been a trend aroundthe country of trying to get colleges to disinvitespeakers with a different point of view, or disrupta politician's rally. don't do that -- no matterhow ridiculous or offensive you might find the thingsthat come out of their mouths. because as my grandmotherused to tell me, every time a fool speaks, they arejust advertising their own ignorance.
let them talk. if you don't, you just makethem a victim, and then they can avoid accountability. that doesn't mean youshouldn't challenge them. have the confidence tochallenge them, the confidence in the rightnessof your position. there will be times when youshouldn't compromise your core values, your integrity,and you will have the responsibility to speak upin the face of injustice.
but listen. engage. if the other side has apoint, learn from them. if they're wrong,rebut them. teach them. beat them on thebattlefield of ideas. and you might as well startpracticing now, because one thing i can guarantee you --you will have to deal with ignorance, hatred, racism,foolishness, trifling folks.
i promise you, you will haveto deal with all that at every stage of your life. that may not seem fair,but life has never been completely fair. nobody promised youa crystal stair. and if you want to make lifefair, then you've got to start with theworld as it is. so that's my advice. that's how youchange things.
change isn't something thathappens every four years or eight years; change is notplacing your faith in any particular politician andthen just putting your feet up and saying, okay, go. change is the effort ofcommitted citizens who hitch their wagons to somethingbigger than themselves and fight for itevery single day. that's what thurgoodmarshall understood -- a man who once walked this year,graduated from howard law;
went home to baltimore,started his own law practice. he and his mentor, charleshamilton houston, rolled up their sleeves and they setout to overturn segregation. they workedthrough the naacp. filed dozens of lawsuits,fought dozens of cases. and after nearly 20 yearsof effort -- 20 years -- thurgood marshall ultimatelysucceeded in bringing his righteous cause before thesupreme court, and securing the ruling in brown v.
board of education thatseparate could never be equal. twenty years. marshall, houston -- theyknew it would not be easy. they knew it wouldnot be quick. they knew all sorts ofobstacles would stand in their way. they knew that even if theywon, that would just be the beginning of a longermarch to equality. but they had discipline.
they had persistence. they had faith --and a sense of humor. and they made life betterfor all americans. and i know you graduatesshare those qualities. i know it because i'velearned about some of the young peoplegraduating here today. there's a young woman namedciearra jefferson, who's graduating with you. and i'm just going touse her as an example.
i hope you don'tmind, ciearra. ciearra grew up in detroitand was raised by a poor single mom who worked sevendays a week in an auto plant. and for a time, her familyfound themselves without a place to call home. they bounced around betweenfriends and family who might take them in. by her senior year, ciearrawas up at 5:00 am every day, juggling homework,extracurricular activities,
volunteering, all whiletaking care of her little sister. but she knew that educationwas her ticket to a better life. so she never gave up. pushed herself to excel. this daughter of a singlemom who works on the assembly line turned down afull scholarship to harvard to come to howard.
and today, like many of you,ciearra is the first in her family to graduatefrom college. and then, she says, she'sgoing to go back to her hometown, just like thurgoodmarshall did, to make sure all the working folks shegrew up with have access to the health care theyneed and deserve. as she puts it, she's goingto be a "change agent." she's going to reach backand help folks like her succeed. and people like ciearra arewhy i remain optimistic
about america. young people like you arewhy i never give in to despair. james baldwin once wrote,"not everything that is faced can be changed, butnothing can be changed until it is faced." graduates, each of us isonly here because someone else faced downchallenges for us. we are only who we arebecause someone else struggled andsacrificed for us.
that's not just thurgoodmarshall's story, or ciearra's story, or mystory, or your story -- that is the story of america. a story whispered by slavesin the cotton fields, the song of marchers in selma,the dream of a king in the shadow of lincoln. the prayer of immigrants whoset out for a new world. the roar of womendemanding the vote. the rallying cry ofworkers who built america.
and the gis who bledoverseas for our freedom. now it's your turn. and the good newsis, you're ready. and when your journey seemstoo hard, and when you run into a chorus of cynics whotell you that you're being foolish to keep believing orthat you can't do something, or that you should justgive up, or you should just settle -- you might say toyourself a little phrase that i've found handy theselast eight years: yes, we can.
congratulations,class of 2016! good luck! god bless you. god bless the unitedstates of america. i'm proud of you.
