The President: Hello, Howard! (applause) H-U! Audience: You know! The President: H-U! Audience: You know! The President: (laughs) Thank you so
much, everybody. Please, please, have a seat. Oh, I feel important now. Got a degree from Howard. Cicely Tyson said
something nice about me. (laughter) Audience Member: I
love you, President! The President:
I love you back. To President Frederick, the
Board of Trustees, faculty and staff, fellow recipients
of honorary degrees, thank you for the honor of
spending this day with you. And congratulations
to the Class of 2016! (applause) Four years ago, back when
you were just freshmen, I understand many of you came
by my house the night I was reelected. (laughter) So I decided to return the
favor and come by yours. To the parents, the
grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, all the
family and friends who stood by this class, cheered them
on, helped them get here today -- this is
your day, as well. Let's give them a big round
of applause, as well. (applause) I'm not trying to stir up
any rivalries here; I just want to see who's
in the house. We got Quad? (applause) Annex. (applause) Drew. Carver. Slow. Towers. And Meridian. (applause) Rest in peace, Meridian. (laughter) Rest in peace. I know you're all
excited today. You might be a little
tired, as well. Some of you were up all
night making sure your credits were in order. (laughter) Some of you stayed up too
late, ended up at HoChi at 2:00 a.m. (laughter) Got some mambo sauce
on your fingers. (laughter) But you got here. And you've all worked
hard to reach this day. You've shuttled between
challenging classes and Greek life. You've led clubs, played
an instrument or a sport. You volunteered,
you interned. You held down one,
two, maybe three jobs. You've made lifelong friends
and discovered exactly what you're made of. The "Howard Hustle" has
strengthened your sense of purpose and ambition. Which means you're part
of a long line of Howard graduates. Some are on this
stage today. Some are in the audience. That spirit of achievement
and special responsibility has defined this campus ever
since the Freedman's Bureau established Howard just four
years after the Emancipation Proclamation; just two years
after the Civil War came to an end. They created this university
with a vision -- a vision of uplift; a vision for an
America where our fates would be determined not by
our race, gender, religion or creed, but where we would
be free -- in every sense -- to pursue our individual
and collective dreams. It is that spirit that's
made Howard a centerpiece of African-American
intellectual life and a central part of our
larger American story. This institution has been
the home of many firsts: The first black Nobel
Peace Prize winner. The first black
Supreme Court justice. But its mission has been to
ensure those firsts were not the last. Countless scholars,
professionals, artists, and leaders from every field
received their training here. The generations of men and
women who walked through this yard helped reform our
government, cure disease, grow a black middle class,
advance civil rights, shape our culture. The seeds of change -- for
all Americans -- were sown here. And that's what I want
to talk about today. As I was preparing these
remarks, I realized that when I was first elected
President, most of you -- the Class of 2016 -- were
just starting high school. Today, you're
graduating college. I used to joke
about being old. Now I realize I'm old. (laughter) It's not a joke anymore. (laughter) But seeing all of you here
gives me some perspective. It makes me reflect on the
changes that I've seen over my own lifetime. So let me begin with
what may sound like a controversial statement
-- a hot take. Given the current state of
our political rhetoric and debate, let me say something
that may be controversial, and that is this: America is
a better place today than it was when I graduated
from college. (applause) Let me repeat: America is by
almost every measure better than it was when I
graduated from college. It also happens to be better
off than when I took office -- (laughter) -- but that's
a longer story. (applause) That's a different
discussion for another speech. But think about it. I graduated in 1983. New York City, America's
largest city, where I lived at the time, had endured a
decade marked by crime and deterioration and
near bankruptcy. And many cities were
in similar shape. Our nation had gone
through years of economic stagnation, the stranglehold
of foreign oil, a recession where unemployment nearly
scraped 11 percent. The auto industry was
getting its clock cleaned by foreign competition. And don't even get me
started on the clothes and the hairstyles. I've tried to eliminate
all photos of me from this period. I thought I looked good. (laughter) I was wrong. Since that year -- since
the year I graduated -- the poverty rate is down. Americans with college
degrees, that rate is up. Crime rates are down. America's cities have
undergone a renaissance. There are more women
in the workforce. They're earning more money. We've cut teen
pregnancy in half. We've slashed the African
American dropout rate by almost 60 percent, and all
of you have a computer in your pocket that gives you
the world at the touch of a button. In 1983, I was part of fewer
than 10 percent of African Americans who graduated
with a bachelor's degree. Today, you're part of the
more than 20 percent who will. And more than half of blacks
say 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 world
is better, too. A wall came down in Berlin. An Iron Curtain
was torn asunder. The obscenity of
apartheid came to an end. A young generation in
Belfast and London have grown up without ever having
to think about IRA bombings. In just the past 16 years,
we've come from a world without marriage equality to
one where it's a reality in nearly two dozen countries. Around the world, more
people live in democracies. We've lifted more than 1
billion people from extreme poverty. We've cut the child
mortality rate worldwide by more than half. America is better. The world is better. And stay with me now -- race
relations are better since I graduated. That's the truth. No, my election did not
create a post-racial society. I don't know who was
propagating that notion. That was not mine. But the election itself --
and the subsequent one -- because the first one, folks
might have made a mistake. (laughter) The second one, they knew
what they were getting. The election itself was
just one indicator of how attitudes had changed. In my inaugural address, I
remarked that just 60 years earlier, my father might
not have been served in a D.C. restaurant -- at
least not certain of them. There were no black CEOs
of Fortune 500 companies. Very few black judges. Shoot, as Larry Wilmore
pointed out last week, a lot of folks didn't even think
blacks had the tools to be a quarterback. Today, former Bull Michael
Jordan isn't just the greatest basketball player
of all time -- he owns the team. (laughter) When I was graduating, the
main black hero on TV was Mr. T. (laughter) Rap and hip hop were
counterculture, underground. Now, Shonda Rhimes owns
Thursday night, and Beyoncé runs the world. (laughter) We're no longer only
entertainers, we're producers, studio
executives. No longer small business
owners -- we're CEOs, we're mayors, representatives,
Presidents of the United States. (applause) I am not saying
gaps do not persist. Obviously, they do. Racism persists. Inequality persists. Don't worry -- I'm
going to get to that. But I wanted to start, Class
of 2016, by opening your eyes to the moment
that you are in. If you had to choose one
moment in history in which you could be born, and you
didn't know ahead of time who you were going to be
-- what nationality, what gender, what race, whether
you'd be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith
you'd be born into -- you wouldn't choose
100 years ago. You wouldn't choose the
fifties, or the sixties, or the seventies. You'd choose right now. If you had to choose a time
to be, in the words of Lorraine Hansberry, "young,
gifted, and black" in America, you would
choose right now. (applause) I tell you all this because
it's important to note progress. Because to deny how far
we've come would do a disservice to the cause of
justice, to the legions of foot soldiers; to not only
the incredibly accomplished individuals who have already
been mentioned, but your mothers and your dads, and
grandparents and great grandparents, who marched
and toiled and suffered and overcame to make
this day possible. I tell you this not to lull
you into complacency, but to spur you into action --
because there's still so much more work to do, so
many more miles to travel. And America needs you to
gladly, happily take up that work. You all have
some work to do. So enjoy the party, because
you're going to be busy. (laughter) Yes, our economy has
recovered from crisis stronger than almost
any other in the world. But there are folks of all
races who are still hurting -- who still can't find work
that pays enough to keep the lights on, who still can't
save for retirement. We've still got a big racial
gap in economic opportunity. The overall unemployment
rate is 5 percent, but the black unemployment
rate is almost nine. We've still got an
achievement gap when black boys and girls graduate high
school and college at lower rates than white
boys and white girls. Harriet Tubman may be going
on the twenty, but we've still got a gender gap
when a black woman working full-time still earns just
66 percent of what a white man gets paid. (applause) We've got a justice gap when
too many black boys and girls pass through a
pipeline from underfunded schools to
overcrowded jails. This is one area where
things have gotten worse. When I was in college, about
half a million people in America were behind bars. Today, there are
about 2.2 million. Black men are about six
times likelier to be in prison right now
than white men. Around the world, we've
still got challenges to solve that threaten
everybody in the 21st century -- old scourges like
disease and conflict, but also new challenges, from
terrorism and climate change. So make no mistake, Class of
2016 -- you've got plenty of work to do. But as complicated and
sometimes intractable as these challenges may seem,
the truth is that your generation is better
positioned than any before you to meet those
challenges, to flip the script. Now, how you do that, how
you meet these challenges, how you bring about change
will ultimately be up to you. My generation, like all
generations, is too confined by our own experience, too
invested in our own biases, too stuck in our ways to
provide much of the new thinking that
will be required. But us old-heads have
learned a few things that might be useful
in your journey. So with the rest of my time,
I'd like to offer some suggestions for how young
leaders like you can fulfill your destiny and shape our
collective future -- bend it in the direction of justice
and equality and freedom. First of all -- and this
should not be a problem for this group -- be confident
in your heritage. (applause) Be confident in
your blackness. One of the great changes
that's occurred in our country since I was your age
is the realization there's no one way to be black. Take it from somebody who's
seen both sides of debate about whether
I'm black enough. (laughter) In the past couple months,
I've had lunch with the Queen of England and hosted
Kendrick Lamar in the Oval Office. There's no straitjacket,
there's no constraints, there's no litmus
test for authenticity. Look at Howard. One thing most folks don't
know about Howard is how diverse it is. When you arrived here,
some of you were like, oh, they've got black
people in Iowa? (laughter) But it's true -- this class
comes from big cities and rural communities, and some
of you crossed oceans to study here. You shatter stereotypes. Some of you come from
a long line of Bison. Some of you are the first in
your family to graduate from college. (applause) You all talk different,
you all dress different. You're Lakers fans, Celtics
fans, maybe even some hockey fans. (laughter) And because of those who've
come 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 politicians
accountable. You can write a book that
wins the National Book Award, or you can write the
new 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 own
style, set your own standard of beauty, embrace
your own sexuality. Think about an icon we
just lost -- Prince. He blew up categories. People didn't know
what Prince was doing. (laughter) And folks loved him for it. You need to have
the same confidence. Or as my daughters tell me
all the time, "You be you, Daddy." (laughter) Sometimes Sasha puts a
variation on it -- "You do you, Daddy." (laughter) And because you're a black
person doing whatever it is that you're doing, that
makes it a black thing. Feel confident. Second, even as we each
embrace our own beautiful, unique, and valid versions
of our blackness, remember the tie that does bind us
as African Americans -- and that is our particular
awareness of injustice and unfairness and struggle. That means we cannot
sleepwalk through life. We cannot be
ignorant of history. (applause) We can't meet the world with
a sense of entitlement. We can't walk by a homeless
man without asking why a society as wealthy as ours
allows that state of affairs to occur. We can't just lock up a
low-level dealer without asking why this boy, barely
out of childhood, felt he had no other options. We have cousins and uncles
and brothers and sisters who we remember were just as
smart and just as talented as we were, but somehow got
ground down by structures that are unfair and unjust. And that means we have to
not only question the world as it is, and stand up for
those African Americans who haven't been so lucky --
because, yes, you've worked hard, but you've
also been lucky. That's a pet peeve of
mine: People who have been successful and don't
realize they've been lucky. That God may have blessed
them; it wasn't nothing you did. So don't have an attitude. But we must expand our moral
imaginations to understand and empathize with all
people who are struggling, not just black folks who are
struggling -- the refugee, the immigrant, the rural
poor, the transgender person, and yes, the
middle-aged white guy who you may think has all the
advantages, but over the last several decades has
seen his world upended by economic and cultural and
technological change, and feels powerless to stop it. You got to get
in his head, too. Number three: You have to go
through 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 requires
more than righteous anger. It requires a program, and
it requires organizing. At the 1964 Democratic
Convention, Fannie Lou Hamer -- all five-feet-four-inches
tall -- gave a fiery speech on the national stage. But then she went back home
to Mississippi and organized cotton pickers. And she didn't have the
tools and technology where you can whip up a
movement in minutes. She had to go door to door. And I'm so proud of the new
guard of black civil rights leaders who understand this. It's thanks in large part to
the activism of young people like many of you, from Black
Twitter to Black Lives Matter, that America's eyes
have been opened -- white, black, Democrat, Republican
-- to the real problems, for example, in our criminal
justice system. But to bring about
structural change, lasting change, awareness
is not enough. It requires changes in
law, changes in custom. If you care about mass
incarceration, let me ask you: How are you pressuring
members of Congress to pass the criminal justice reform
bill now pending before them? (applause) If you care about better
policing, do you know who your district attorney is? Do you know who your state's
attorney general is? Do you know the difference? Do you know who appoints the
police chief and who writes the police training manual? Find out who they are, what
their responsibilities are. Mobilize the community,
present them with a plan, work with them to bring
about change, hold them accountable if they
do not deliver. Passion is vital, but you've
got to have a strategy. And your plan better include
voting -- not just some of the time, but all the time. (applause) It is absolutely true that
50 years after the Voting Rights Act, there are still
too many barriers in this country to vote. There are too many people
trying to erect new barriers to voting. This is the only advanced
democracy on Earth that goes out of its way to make it
difficult for people to vote. And there's a
reason for that. There's a legacy to that. But let me say this: Even if
we dismantled every barrier to voting, that alone would
not change the fact that America has some of the
lowest voting rates in the free world. In 2014, only 36 percent of
Americans turned out to vote in the midterms -- the
secondlowest participation rate on record. Youth turnout -- that would
be you -- was less than 20 percent. Less than 20 percent. Four out of five
did not vote. In 2012, nearly two in three
African Americans turned out. And then, in 2014, only
two in five turned out. You don't think that made a
difference in terms of the Congress I've
got to deal with? And then people are
wondering, well, how come Obama hasn't
gotten this done? How come he didn't
get that done? You don't think that
made a difference? What would have happened if
you had turned out at 50, 60, 70 percent, all
across this country? People try to make this political thing really complicated. Like, what kind of
reforms do we need? And how do we
need to do that? You know what, just vote. It's math. If you have more votes than
the other guy, you get to do what you want. (laughter) It's not that complicated. And you don't have excuses. You don't have to guess the
number of jellybeans in a jar or bubbles on a bar of
soap to register to vote. You don't have to risk your
life to cast a ballot. Other people already
did that for you. (applause) Your grandparents, your
great grandparents might be here today if they
were working on it. What's your excuse? When we don't vote, we
give 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 from
taking away the vote and rights of those more
vulnerable than you are -- the elderly and the poor,
the formerly incarcerated trying to earn
their second chance. So you got to vote all the
time, not just when it's cool, not just when it's
time to elect a President, not just when
you're inspired. It's your duty. When it's time to elect a
member of Congress or a city councilman, or a school
board member, or a sheriff. That's how we change our
politics -- by electing people at every level who
are representative of and accountable to us. It is not that complicated. Don't make it complicated. And finally, change requires
more than just speaking out -- it requires
listening, as well. In particular, it requires
listening to those with whom you disagree, and being
prepared 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 the
videotaping of confessions in capital cases. And we were successful
because, 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 you
do, that the overwhelming majority of police officers
are good, and honest, and courageous, and fair, and
love the communities they serve. And we knew there were some
bad apples, and that even the good cops with the best
of intentions -- including, by the way, African American
police officers -- might have unconscious
biases, as we all do. So we engaged and we
listened, and we kept working until we
built consensus. And because we took the
time to listen, we crafted legislation that was good
for the police -- because it improved the trust and
cooperation of the community -- and it was good for the
communities, who were less likely to be
treated unfairly. And I can say this
unequivocally: Without at least the acceptance of the
police organizations in Illinois, I could never have
gotten those bills passed. Very simple. They would have
blocked them. The point is, you need
allies in a democracy. That's just the way it is. It can be frustrating
and it can be slow. But history teaches us that
the alternative to democracy is always worse. That's not just true
in this country. It's not a black
or white thing. Go to any country where the
give and take of democracy has been repealed by
one-party rule, and I will show you a country
that does not work. And democracy requires
compromise, even when you are 100 percent right. This is hard to
explain sometimes. You can be completely right,
and you still are going to have to engage folks
who disagree with you. If you think that the only
way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible,
you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a
certain moral purity, but you're not going to
get what you want. And if you don't get what
you want long enough, you will eventually think the
whole system is rigged. And that will lead to
more cynicism, and less participation, and a
downward spiral of more injustice and more
anger and more despair. And that's never been the
source of our progress. That's how we cheat
ourselves of progress. We remember Dr. King's
soaring oratory, the power of his letter from a
Birmingham jail, the marches he led. But he also sat down with
President Johnson in the Oval Office to try and get
a Civil Rights Act and a Voting Rights Act passed. And those two seminal bills
were not perfect -- just like the Emancipation
Proclamation was a war document as much as it
was some clarion call for freedom. Those mileposts of our
progress were not perfect. They did not make up for
centuries of slavery or Jim Crow or eliminate racism or
provide for 40 acres and a mule. But they made things better. And you know what, I will
take better every time. I always tell my staff --
better is good, because you consolidate your gains and
then you move on to the next fight from a
stronger position. Brittany Packnett, a member
of the Black Lives Matter movement and Campaign Zero,
one of the Ferguson protest organizers, she joined our
Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Some of her fellow activists
questioned whether she should participate. She rolled up her sleeves
and sat at the same table with big city police
chiefs and prosecutors. And because she did, she
ended up shaping many of the recommendations of
that task force. And those recommendations
are now being adopted across the country -- changes that
many of the protesters called for. If young activists like
Brittany had refused to participate out of some
sense of ideological purity, then those great ideas would
have just remained ideas. But she did participate. And that's how
change happens. America is big and it is
boisterous and it is more diverse than ever. The president told me that
we've got a significant Nepalese contingent
here at Howard. I would not have
guessed that. Right on. But it just tells you
how interconnected we're becoming. And with so many folks from
so many places, converging, we are not always going
to agree with each other. Another Howard alum, Zora
Neale Hurston, once said -- this is a good quote here:
"Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to
more than one person." Think about that. That's why our democracy
gives us a process designed for us to settle our
disputes with argument and ideas and votes instead of
violence and simple majority rule. So don't try to shut folks
out, don't try to shut them down, no matter how much you
might disagree with them. There's been a trend around
the country of trying to get colleges to disinvite
speakers with a different point of view, or disrupt
a politician's rally. Don't do that -- no matter
how ridiculous or offensive you might find the things
that come out of their mouths. Because as my grandmother
used to tell me, every time a fool speaks, they are
just advertising their own ignorance. Let them talk. Let them talk. If you don't, you just make
them a victim, and then they can avoid accountability. That doesn't mean you
shouldn't challenge them. Have the confidence to
challenge them, the confidence in the rightness
of your position. There will be times when you
shouldn't compromise your core values, your integrity,
and you will have the responsibility to speak up
in the face of injustice. But listen. Engage. If the other side has a
point, learn from them. If they're wrong,
rebut them. Teach them. Beat them on the
battlefield of ideas. And you might as well start
practicing now, because one thing I can guarantee you --
you will have to deal with ignorance, hatred, racism,
foolishness, trifling folks. (laughter) I promise you, you will have
to deal with all that at every stage of your life. That may not seem fair,
but life has never been completely fair. Nobody promised you
a crystal stair. And if you want to make life
fair, then you've got to start with the
world as it is. So that's my advice. That's how you
change things. Change isn't something that
happens every four years or eight years; change is not
placing your faith in any particular politician and
then just putting your feet up and saying, okay, go. Change is the effort of
committed citizens who hitch their wagons to something
bigger than themselves and fight for it
every single day. That's what Thurgood
Marshall 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, Charles
Hamilton Houston, rolled up their sleeves and they set
out to overturn segregation. They worked
through the NAACP. Filed dozens of lawsuits,
fought dozens of cases. And after nearly 20 years
of effort -- 20 years -- Thurgood Marshall ultimately
succeeded in bringing his righteous cause before the
Supreme Court, and securing the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that
separate could never be equal. (applause) Twenty years. Marshall, Houston -- they
knew it would not be easy. They knew it would
not be quick. They knew all sorts of
obstacles would stand in their way. They knew that even if they
won, that would just be the beginning of a longer
march to equality. But they had discipline. They had persistence. They had faith --
and a sense of humor. And they made life better
for all Americans. And I know you graduates
share those qualities. I know it because I've
learned about some of the young people
graduating here today. There's a young woman named
Ciearra Jefferson, who's graduating with you. And I'm just going to
use her as an example. I hope you don't
mind, Ciearra. Ciearra grew up in Detroit
and was raised by a poor single mom who worked seven
days a week in an auto plant. And for a time, her family
found themselves without a place to call home. They bounced around between
friends and family who might take them in. By her senior year, Ciearra
was up at 5:00 am every day, juggling homework,
extracurricular activities, volunteering, all while
taking care of her little sister. But she knew that education
was her ticket to a better life. So she never gave up. Pushed herself to excel. This daughter of a single
mom who works on the assembly line turned down a
full scholarship to Harvard to come to Howard. (applause) And today, like many of you,
Ciearra is the first in her family to graduate
from college. And then, she says, she's
going to go back to her hometown, just like Thurgood
Marshall did, to make sure all the working folks she
grew up with have access to the health care they
need and deserve. As she puts it, she's going
to be a "change agent." She's going to reach back
and help folks like her succeed. And people like Ciearra are
why I remain optimistic about America. (applause) Young people like you are
why I never give in to despair. James Baldwin once wrote,
"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but
nothing can be changed until it is faced." Graduates, each of us is
only here because someone else faced down
challenges for us. We are only who we are
because someone else struggled and
sacrificed for us. That's not just Thurgood
Marshall's story, or Ciearra's story, or my
story, or your story -- that is the story of America. A story whispered by slaves
in the cotton fields, the song of marchers in Selma,
the dream of a King in the shadow of Lincoln. The prayer of immigrants who
set out for a new world. The roar of women
demanding the vote. The rallying cry of
workers who built America. And the GIs who bled
overseas for our freedom. Now it's your turn. And the good news
is, you're ready. And when your journey seems
too hard, and when you run into a chorus of cynics who
tell you that you're being foolish to keep believing or
that you can't do something, or that you should just
give up, or you should just settle -- you might say to
yourself a little phrase that I've found handy these
last eight years: Yes, we can. Congratulations,
Class of 2016! (applause) Good luck! God bless you. God bless the United
States of America. I'm proud of you.