In his commencement address to Howard University graduates on Saturday, Barack Obama made specific mention of a new generation of black activists, including those involved in Black Lives Matter and “black Twitter”, for raising national awareness over inequality in the criminal justice system. 
 
 Seven days, three speeches: one week in the life of having a black president Read more 
 
 His praise came with a series of suggestions about how activists could most easily create actual change: through electoral politics and compromise. 
 
 “To bring about structural change, lasting change, awareness is not enough,” Obama said. “It requires changes in law, changes in custom.” 
 
 Obama stressed the need for willingness to sit at the table with opponents and openness to imperfect victories in his address to the historically black university in Washington DC. 
 
 “You consolidate your gains and then you move on to the next fight from a stronger position,” he said. 
 
 For many of the activists Obama appeared to be addressing, the advice was welcome but not necessarily new. According to Brittany Packnett, whom Obama mentioned by name, it is what many in the movement “have been advocating for from the start”. 
 
 Obama mentioned Packnett’s role in his taskforce on 21st-century policing. 
 
 “Some of her fellow activists questioned whether she should participate,” he said. “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 taskforce.” 
 
 On Monday, Packnett said activism required engagement on all fronts. 
 
 “I came to that table with the spirit of activism,” she said, “recognizing that that conversation was going to be had anyways. It was important to me to accept the responsibility and the privilege to help bring some of those things I have learned from people on the streets.” 
 
 DeRay Mckesson, one of the most visible Black Lives Matter activists and a leader of We the Protesters, said policy and street protests informed one another. 
 
 “The pressure created a different table to be at,” he said. “Without the pressure from all of us being in the streets, there would have been no 21st-century taskforce on policing, so this is a ‘both-and’, not an ‘either-or’, situation.” 
 
 
 
 Mckesson said the possibility that protest could lead to policy changes that do not align with activists’ goals becomes a serious problem when protesters do not engage with policy. 
 
 As an example, he cited the adoption of body cameras as a response to concerns about police violence – a change many activists find underwhelming. 
 
 “That is a sign that we weren’t actually a part of the process, so an ‘outside only’ strategy is not a strategy to win,” Mckesson said. 
 
 Samuel Sinyangwe, who works with McKesson and Packnett on Campaign Zero, a policy thinktank on police violence, said the president “was highlighting a truth, that awareness is not enough, but it does matter”. 
 
 
 
 He added: “I do think awareness matters in and of itself when you look at the fact that this issue is bigger than policy. It’s also about our culture and our inability to understand our own biases and how they contribute to the situations that we see in terms of people being killed by police.” 
 
 
 
 The president also cautioned protesters away from silencing or interrupting political opponents. 
 
 “If they’re wrong,” he said, “rebut them. Teach them. Beat them on the battlefield of ideas.” 
 
 April Reign, a prominent black Twitter voice and the originator of the #oscarssowhite hashtag, said she could see the president’s point. But she added that sometimes the opposite tactics could be extremely effective. 
 
 O'Malley and Sanders interrupted by Black Lives Matter protesters in Phoenix Read more 
 
 “Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton discussing issues that directly affect black people and the Black Lives Matter movement would not have happened had there not been disruption of their speeches,” Reign said. 
 
 “It was a wake-up call to them and to progressives, the Democratic party and the country that our votes must be earned.” 
 
 There was broad agreement that the president’s willingness to dive into issues of race was inspiring and important. Obama encouraged Howard graduates to “be confident in [their] blackness” and to embrace a broad understanding of racial authenticity. 
 
 “There’s no one way to be black,” he said. 
 
 Sinyangwe said: “I thought it was powerful to hear him speak freely about blackness. It’s freeing to a lot of people to recognize that their identities are recognized.” 
 
 Reign said much of the speech reflected thought Obama has wanted to share for years but could not because of the constraints of the presidency. 
 
 “Now that he’s got his second-term swag on, he’s able to let loose a little bit,” she said. “I think he hit a lot of the right marks and I think it’s one for the ages.” ||||| President Barack Obama delivered stirring remarks about the state of American race relations at Howard University commencement Saturday afternoon. The president highlighted the progress of black Americans have made since his graduation from Columbia University in 1983, but also set forth a blueprint for the future. 
 
 "Change doesn't happen every four years," the president said. "Change is the effort of committed citizens who hitched their wagons to something bigger than themselves and fight for it every single day." 
 
 The speech was unapologetically black, quoting black author Zora Neale Hurston, lauding singer Prince and applauding activists in the Black Lives Matter movement who fight for racial justice. Echoing his 2008 speech on race relations, "A More Perfect Union," Obama urged the students at the historically black college to embrace their heritage and affect systemic change through the political process. 
 
 "Be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your blackness," the president said. 
 
 "Be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your blackness." — Obama at Howard 
 
 Though Obama enumerated the issues facing young black people today — mass incarceration, the wage gap and the school-to-prison pipeline — he began by recapping the progress that black Americans have made since he graduated from Columbia University in 1983. Obama noted that at the time, only 10% of black Americans held college degrees. That number is now 28%. The ranks of American millionaires and CEOs are blacker than they've ever been. The president even cited showrunner Shonda Rhimes' domination of Thursday night programming on ABC as evidence that black Americans have made enduring progress. 
 
 Obama then asked Howard graduates a rhetorical question: In what time period of American history would you want to be born? He answered: to choose a time to be, in the words of Lorraine Hansberry, 'young, gifted and black' in America, you would choose right n 
 
 The president praised Howard alum, author and Atlantic national correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates, who won the National Book Award for "Between the World and Me," an epistolary memoir about being black in America, and wrote a 2016 series of Marvel's comic Black Panther. Like Coates, Obama explained, black people do not have to choose between pursuing one genre of writing or the other. They can do both. They can achieve both. Obama also encouraged students to embrace their own style and sexuality like the late musician Prince. 
 
 "We've got a justice gap." 
 
 Many issues still require the attention and work of the class of 2016, the president said. 
 
 "We've got a justice gap when too many black boys and girls pass through a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails," 
 
 The president reminded graduates that their blackness gives them unique insight into the struggle against inequality and racial injustice. 
 
 "We can't walk by a homeless man without asking why a society as wealthy as ours allows that state of affairs to occur," he said. "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 were unfair and 
 
 Obama called on graduates to "expand [their] moral imaginations to understand and empathize" to understand struggles that are different from their own. Obama mentioned refugees, immigrants, the rural poor, transgender people and even middle-aged white men whose world has been " by economic and cultural and technological change and feels powerless to stop it." 
 
 "You gotta get in his head, too," Obama said. 
 
 "Not just hashtags, but votes." 
 
 Obama stress to graduates that passion, while pivotal to progress, must be coupled with participation in the political process, which includes voting. 
 
 "I want you to have . You have to have a strategy. Not just awareness, but action. Not just hashtags, but votes," he said. "To bring about structural change, lasting change, awareness is not enough. It requires changes in law, changes in custom." 
 
 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. 
 
 "You don't think that made a difference? What would have happened if you would have turned out at 50, 60, 70% all across this country?" Obama asked. He added that, though there are still barriers to voting in America, they pale in comparison to the barriers their grandparents and great-grandparents faced, such as illogical tests that forced black people to guess how many bubbles were on a bar of soap. 
 
 Obama closed his speech by asking students to recognize that, even if they believe they are 100% right, democracy is built on compromise. In one of his rare nods to the issue of free speech on college campuses, Obama said students should allow others to speak, even if they disagree. 
 
 "A Terrific Speech" 
 
 Those watching in person and watching at home heaped praise onto the speech, with many commenters getting emotional. 
 
 Obama's speech was complicated, as he noted the role of compromise in the work of progress, while maintains a commitment to one's values. 
 
 Obama also rightly noted that awareness is not the win, but is the initial work that creates space for the later wins. 
 
 In many ways, this speech echoed themes he offered when we met with him a month ago. He is becoming more explicit re: discussing blackness. 
 
 Obama has mentioned non-hetero sexualities at least twice. In a speech to a black audience. At @HowardU. #HowardU16 
 
 The very Gospel itself. This is a terrific speech.https://twitter.com/jenniferd0902/status/728984008420425728 ... 
 
 Some folks on my tl are saying Obama's speech is too political, and some are saying it's not political enough. 
 
 Okay now @POTUS got me crying at his commencement speech. #HowardU16 
 
 Obama's speech is giving me the family talk after the first round of Thanksgiving eating. You waiting for peach cobbler, but "wisdom time." 
 
 Every Obama speech from here on out is gonna make me cry. I'm having end of Obama era anxiety. 
 
 This Obama speech should have you ready to conquer the world 
 
 Wow. I'm so honored & blessed to have experienced an Obama speech in person. He was so unapologetically black.pic.twitter.com/ZgWVI9VsrH https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ch3g5JTUUAAFfhj.jpg:large 
 
 Obama speech. #amazing! What a man 
 
 President Obama speech today was soo on point and uplifting. I know what he means...I'm living proof that hard work and determination works 
 
 Obama's remarks begin at the 1:32:00 mark below. ||||| My name is Kevin Hart and I WORK HARD!!! That pretty much sums me up!!! Everybody Wants To Be Famous But Nobody Wants To Do The Work 
 
 Philly/LA • bit.ly/kevinhartapplol ||||| President Obama's speech at Howard University's commencement on May 7 was full of advice on civic engagement, black history and democracy. (The Washington Post) 
 
 In the next few dizzying weeks, when one public figure and elected official after another will don academic robes and stoles to deliver commencement speeches at colleges and universities across the country, some ideas will inevitably be repeated. 
 
 Dream big. Work hard. To thine own self be true. (Or the modern update: You do you.) Of course, some ideas are now stock features of graduation speeches. On the list: Don't be afraid to make mistakes, they offer life's biggest and best lessons. Be sure to give back. You are entering the real world. Know now that life will never be quite the same. 
 
 However, every once in a while, there is something said that is, well, kind of surprising and almost new. One of those moments happened Saturday when President Obama became the sixth sitting president to give a commencement speech at Howard University, a school founded by the Freedman's Bureau for freed slaves and their children just two years after the Civil War. Howard remains one of the largest and most prestigious historically black colleges and universities in the United States and one of very few with both medical and law schools. All of that is to say that when Obama said the following on Saturday, he was talking to a largely but not totally black audience. 
 
 Expand your moral imagination to empathize with all people who are struggling, not just black folks who are struggling, [but] 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. 
 
 There are many ways to read Obama's words. They followed a widely reported Obama suggestion that graduates operate in a way that is comfortable and confident in their own version of "blackness." As he put it, "There is no one way to be black." Yet black people must never forget that which does bind all black people from disparate places and backgrounds. That is knowledge of injustice and unfairness and struggle, according to Obama. And that requires that graduates do something more than "sleepwalk through life." 
 
 Maybe this bit of Obama's speech was a stealth call for a new kind of political coalition. A coalition of voters of color, many naturalized immigrants and young white adults, after all, voted Obama into office. Perhaps he was suggesting that groups such as middle-aged white men, who have for decades voted overwhelmingly for the Republican Party can, in fact, join a different coalition in service to shared concerns — if they are welcomed to do so by those already in that coalition. 
 
 But the most likely explanation for the president's call for expanded moral imaginations at an HBCU commencement would seem to be concern and open recognition of the tangle of fear, anxiety and anger shaping the political behavior of large numbers of white, middle-aged male voters this year. The struggle to acknowledge and understand their experiences ended more than a dozen Republican presidential campaigns, many of which were well-funded or centered on a presumed favorite to win. 
 
 Reporters have wrestled with how to describe these voters and accurately but respectfully depict their priorities, even when they venture into the realm of bigotry. Most notably, Donald Trump's ability to empathize with these same voters and, dare we say it, speak with abandon to even their most guttural and factually unarmored fears goes a long way to explain why today he is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. 
 
 Empathy and the expanded moral imagination. That's a commencement speech nugget, in the middle of graduation season, that is certainly worth some thought.
– President Obama's commencement address at Howard University on Saturday is still reverberating, with some ranking it among the best speeches he has ever delivered. Black Lives Matter activists are among those praising Obama, who spoke about being "comfortable in your blackness" and of the importance of compromise and bringing about change through the political system, the Guardian reports. "To bring about structural change, lasting change, awareness is not enough," Obama said. "It requires changes in law, changes in custom." More: Activist April Reign, originator of the #oscarssowhite hashtag, says that while they may disagree a little on tactics, she was pleased he wasn't holding back. "Now that he's got his second-term swag on, he's able to let loose a little bit," she says. "I think he hit a lot of the right marks and I think it's one for the ages." Obama—who told the crowd that now is the best time in history to be "young, gifted, and black"—also praised Black Lives Matter activist Britanny Packnett for joining the White House's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. If she had "refused to participate out of some sense of ideological purity," he said, "then those great ideas would have just remained ideas. But she did participate. And that's how change happens." This was one of the best—and blackest—speeches of Obama's career, writes Mathew Rodriguez at Mic, who praises the way Obama encouraged graduates to be black any way that they wanted to be, "to embrace their own style and sexuality like the late musician Prince," and reminded them "that their blackness gives them unique insight into the struggle against inequality and racial injustice." In what Janell Ross at the Washington Post calls the most interesting line of the speech, Obama told the audience to expand their "moral imagination" to identify not just with struggling black folks, but with refugees, transgender people and "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." Ross sees this as either a call for disaffected white men to join a new political coalition—or concern about the "tangle of fear, anxiety, and anger" gripping many voters this year.