Black skin, Mr. Obama said, “means we can not sleepwalk through life, we can not be ignorant of history”.
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He said: “When I was graduating, the main black hero on TV was Mr. T. Rap and hip-hop were counterculture, underground”. No longer small business owners-we’re CEOs, we’re mayors, representatives, presidents of the United States.
“Sivona Blake, who graduated on Saturday with a bachelor’s degree in marketing, said the president gave Howard students a kind of “‘black State of the Union'”.
“Be confident in your blackness”, Obama said.
“I tell you this not to lull you into complacency, but to stir you into action because there’s still so much work to do … so many more miles to travel, and America needs you to gladly take up that work”.
Later, he continued, “So make no mistake, Class of 2016”. “Just vote. It’s math: If you have more votes than the other guy, you get to do what you want”.
“You need a strategy”, Obama said, adding passion and anger are not enough to effect political change and encouraging them to embrace compromise.
That line drew cheers and applause, but the president said ‘that’s a different discussion for another speech’.
He told the graduates to “be confident in your blackness”.
“People try to make this political thing really complicated … you know what?”
He added that his election “did not create a post-racialsociety”.
Obama cautioned his audience of mostly young African Americans to remember history at a time when racial strife and mistrust between blacks and local police forces have racked cities across the country in the wake of high-profile shootings of black residents.
Actress Cicely Tyson was among the others to receive, as did Obama, an honorary doctorate.
President Barack Obama has always had a keen appreciation for the far-reaching influence pop culture has on Americans and that was never more apparent than during his commencement address at Howard University.
He called on the university’s 2,300 graduates to step up and take on the work of closing those gaps.
That empathy should extend to “all people who are struggling”, he says.
Obama also encouraged the graduates to get out and vote. But a lot can change in 11 years: Hillary now has become a “crooked” woman for Trump while the latter is a “presumptuous nominee” in the eyes of the Democratic front-runner.
He spoke candidly about the initiatives he was unable to pass because of lack of cooperation from Congress, and gave graduates a light chiding for low voter turnout among youth during midterm elections.
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The Howard address was the first for Obama this graduation season, and came 51 years years after President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered the last address to Howard graduates by a sitting president.
