 And now I'm delighted to introduce our keynote commencement speaker, Michelle Norris. Michelle, an extra applause is always good. Michelle is one of America's foremost thinkers and writers on issues of identity and race. You may not have seen her speak in person before, but you've surely heard her voice. Michelle Norris served as the host of NPR's All Things Considered for a decade, providing clear, rational context for all the news of the day. During her career at NPR, Michelle founded the Race Card Project, an initiative that encourages people to share their descriptions of race as a way to launch meaningful discussion of race and identity. She and her collaborators won a Peabody Award for their work in 2014. Michelle has previously worked for the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the LA Times. She received both Emmy and Peabody Awards in 2002 for her coverage of the 9-11 attacks. And in 2010, Michelle published her first book, The Grace of Silence, a Memoir. The University of Michigan presented Michelle Norris with an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 2013, the university's highest honor. Michelle, it is my great honor to welcome you back to the University of Michigan, back to Ann Arbor, and here to the Ford School. Thank you. Hello everyone, and congratulations. Dean Barr, thank you so much for that wonderful introduction. Regent Weiser, it's a pleasure to be here with you. And it's great to be here at the University of Michigan. Good day to the leadership team, the faculty, the families, the alums, the distinguished guests, but especially the graduates, most especially the graduates. You did this. This is your day. It's special for me to be back here at the University of Michigan for a couple of reasons also. As you heard, I run a project called The Race Card Project, and the University of Michigan was the first institution to support and embrace that work. So this place means something special to me. And also because it's in the blood of our family treat. My husband, Broderick Johnson, who's here in the audience, graduated from the University of Michigan Law School, and you will soon discover that you leave this place, but it doesn't leave you. If my household is any indication, you will spend thousands of dollars over the course of your career at the M Den. You will continue to get catalogs. You will mysteriously paint rooms in your homes, maze and blue. You don't understand why you're drawn to it. It just happens. You will perhaps bear children, and you will buy little twinkly lullaby things for them that you attach to the crib that doesn't play the traditional lullaby music, but instead plays hell to the victors. My daughter heard that before she could talk, and in our household she would sing ham to the victors because she didn't quite understand it. Now all that is fandom, and you might even say fanaticism, but it also represents what happened here. You're part of this big family, and it suggests that people love this place because it is so special. We travel around the world, and you know, people from Michigan, they wear the stuff. As the kids say, they represent. They are always wearing that block M. There's one right there. Raise your hand. Wearing a hat indoors, and that's okay, because it's got a block M on it. And we travel all across the world. We were in Vietnam, and someone said, wait, no, it's like, you know, they talk to each other. But that means that you're graduating from someone special, that you will take this with you. One of the things that I love so much about graduation is the day is filled with possibility. You've got this big runway ahead of you. What will you do with it? A whole lot because you graduated from the Ford School. We are relying on you to take the wisdom, to take all that you learned, yes, and the stats. Again, an example of this is a special place. You cheered for statistics. We hope you will take all of that into the world and lift us all up. You all made it. And I say you all made it because you didn't get here by yourself. You had a lot of support. Physically, financially, spiritually, and so why we are all here to celebrate you. This is your day. It is about you. I'm going to ask you to take just a moment. I know that Dean Barr asked you to applaud for those who helped get you here, but I want you to actually get some exercise and stand up for a minute and look to the right and the left and give a hearty round of applause to all of the people, family, faculty, loved ones who supported you on this journey. Thank you because it's kind of their day too. And when you go out, wherever you're going out to celebrate, they're going to pick up the tab. The degrees that you received today are tremendously important, but they also represent something that carries even more currency, knowledge and curiosity and humanity. And how will you use that knowledge that you absorbed in the pursuit of that degree? How will you harness that knowledge and become the caretakers of our culture, our politics, our economy and our moral compass, our moral compass, our national character? How will you reach across cultures and disciplines and dialects to solve the world's problems? Because in a whole lot of areas, the current caretakers have left behind a bit of a mess. We are going to need you to solve the world's problems and light a candle for the world with the powers of your mind and the strength of your ideas. And at this time, it is common for people to circulate commencement addresses that have stood the test of time. And I, not long ago, came across one from a fellow named Verdon Jordan who you may know. And he said something in a commencement address, and I should be honest here, this is a commencement address as the other school my husband attended that he doesn't talk about as much. Verdon Jordan said it's been a decade of trial and tribulation for America's minorities. The promise of America's second reconstruction was ultimately cut off by war, by benign neglect, by national indifference. Many black people escaped the confines of poverty. Many others sank deeper into poverty. And our nation itself has demonstrated a poverty of spirit and determination to make ours a land of equals. This was written in 1978, but it sort of feels like this could have been written of the moment. When you heard those words, doesn't it feel like it's speaking to us right now today? This was 1978. It was 10 years after the Kerner Commission reported on America's deep racial divide after the assassination of Dr. King. It was a period followed by rioting and protest. I don't have to tell you that much of that happened right here for a second time in 1967 and 68 in Detroit. The country we knew then still had much to do, a long way to go, as Dr. King said, to make good on a promissory note spelled out clearly in our founding documents that all men are created equal, and not just the men. We need to say that, because the document said all men, but we now know that to mean all people, and we've tried to practice that. Humans are created equal. 40 years later, those words feel like they were written for this time, feel like they are of this moment. We've seen so much progress on the economy, so much progress on all fronts, technology, education, and yes, even the narrowing of our racial divide and the healing of our original sins in a country that was founded with a significant birth defect because of legalized chattel slavery in this country. Customs and traditions that automatically placed women minorities, the disabled, and immigrants from a host of countries, Italy, China, Ireland, Slovakia, Slovenia, at the back of the line. And it wasn't fair, it's just the way it was. And in those times, people felt that it was always the way it would be. And then things changed. A lot of things changed. You are a generation that has grown up with the dividends of those changes. The color line that once seemed like it was 100 miles long and 100 miles high has seemingly fallen. I've seen that even within my lifetime. I'm not afraid to tell you how old I am. I was born in 1961, which meant that there were places that I could not even enter, that I could not dream to even stand in an auditorium like this and deliver a commencement address. But change is a surprising thing. The words bias and discrimination and prejudice have for so many decades been attached to people of color in America. But change is something that we all experience. And we now know that a lot of people feel like they are the victims of bias as well. White Americans have been assumed to have automatic privilege. This assumption still holds true, and yet studies show that a majority, a majority of white Americans say discrimination against them exists today. Now every time I say this, people shake their heads and say, how can that be true? But studies show this. Surveys show this. A survey by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard School of Public Health, sorry to mention that other school, found that more than half of people surveyed, 55%, say they believe there is a discrimination against white people in America. And some of you will nod your head in agreement upon hearing these things, and some will reel back and say, whoa, wait a minute, how can that be true? But those are the true beliefs for a whole lot of people. That America has become less hospitable, less welcoming, and less privileged for some white Americans, and that minorities or people who have only recently arrived in America get the first crack at jobs, get more help from the government or private institutions, and they feel like they're cutting the line. Actual statistics perhaps don't bear that out, but perception is a powerful thing, especially in an era when America feels so divided and when people so often listen to news or news sources or perspectives that come from people or members or their social or political or ethnic tribe, where so much of what we hear in my business actually confirms or affirms what you already believe. The stories that we tell ourselves, the stories that we hear, the tales we adopt and embrace can confine or define us. They set the template for opportunity or oppression, for ambition and contrition, for what we accept, for who we accept, or tolerate or celebrate. Stories are the currency of my work. Reporting, fact-checking, yes, facts do matter. Writing, reporting, and listening. And I want to spend a little bit of time talking to you today about the skill of listening because I really do believe it is a skill. Right now in America, there's so much emphasis placed on what we say and how we say it and where we say it. You all have devices in your pockets that you thankfully silenced that allow us to focus on what is said. But I want to talk a little bit about what is heard. People ask me about my favorite stories in the tenures that I hosted, all things considered. And they expect me to talk about presidents and Oscar winners and people with big titles that I interviewed. And I will tell you in truth, the stories that I really loved were really close to the ground. They were stories from everyday people. Yes, I've interviewed several presidents and I'm not saying that to say, oh, smell me, it's part of the job. We interview movie stars. I've interviewed Nobel laureates. I once interviewed astronauts while they were traveling in outer space thanks to the wonders of modern technology. And I have to say that was really cool. And that morning I did it. If you work at NPR you all have, we all have little studios in our homes if we have to update, and it's usually in a quiet space, a closet or in my case it was in the third floor in what we call the bird's nest. And I remember I had to do that at a really odd hour because of the time difference in space. And after I did the interview I came downstairs and I was smelling myself. I was really proud. And my husband said it's your turn to make the sandwiches this morning. Brought me right back down to earth. But the stories that I love are simpler and almost weird by journalism standards. There's stories that you can do when you do a show called All Things Considered where we endeavor to consider a lot of things every day before four. I did a whole series on the American porch and what porches do for us. And I actually relied on Michigan for some of the reporting. I called the dean of Michigan's College of Architecture and Urban Planning. I don't know if he's still here. Doug Kelbaugh? Okay, he helped me out with that story and helped me understand that porches are a uniquely American phenomenon. I did not know that. But it was the stories of individuals and how they used their porches that really moved me. The porches that helped clean up a neighborhood in a failing neighborhood in Norfolk they decided to put porches because women would sit on the porches and they could tell what was going on and if someone was going on in the corner they could chew people away. That people started to become house proud and they would decorate their porches and then there was a little bit of composition. Oh, she put out geraniums. Well, I'm going to put out daisies. And it changed the neighborhood and it was something that they then emulated in cities across the country. Porches that created a space for a gentrifying neighbor, a homeowner to slowly get to know the other people in her community who feared her arrival heralded something ominous having seen what happened in so many other areas where yuppies invaded with their little dogs and their brew pubs and their koi ponds. Porches allowed that young woman who saved her money to buy that house in a neighborhood that was deemed transitional gentrifying that space to get to know the people who would sit out on their porches late at night to get to know and love and cherish the older neighbors and working class families who sat on porches to cool themselves or play cards or swap gossip. Porches were her on ramp. Porches that allowed a kid with glasses that were too big and shoulders that were always slumped and too narrow to hear the words that encouraged him from the porches he passed where women would sweep and snap green beans and set out jars for sunti because the Scotch Irish immigrants in his coal mining town had to save every penny they could. I loved interviews and interactions with everyday people. Estella, the hat lady who made special hats for household seniors on Easter who housebound seniors on Easter who perhaps couldn't get to church on Sunday but she made a hat for them so when they listened on the radio or watched on TV that they felt that they had their Sunday go-to meeting outfit on even though they were in their living room. The man who placed an ad in the paper so he could find a family that would share Thanksgiving with him. He was lonely. So he placed a small ad and every year he went to a different household. They welcomed him into their home. I had similar encounters with everyday people in another quirky series I did this time on Children's Books with Jared Krizetska who was a young kid whose mother was a heroin addict and was raised by his grandparents and he used to doodle in class like a big deal author into his school and the author was walking up and down the classroom talking about the work that he did and he noticed that Jared was drawing and he drew a cat and he touched Jared on the shoulder and he said, nice cat and Jared said his heart grew several sizes bigger and he kept drawing and he kept drawing and that little bit of encouragement was just like water on a desert rose and he says that was the moment that he decided to actually try to apply himself in school. Similarly, Children's Books are really deep. They're written not just for the kids but for the parents who are sitting at the edge of the bed at night often reading to them. An author, Gary D. Schmidt whose teacher he describes how he was in his school I'm old enough to remember the tracking that went on in schools where you were in different groups in his group they were two, track three I remember in my school there were the the robins and the bluebirds and the crows they weren't even subtle he was in group three which would have in my school been the crows and he couldn't read and he said that the kids who were in the top group were destined to come to a place like this the kids who were in the middle group would probably get a job in the factory in town and he told me that the kids in that bottom group were probably destined to serve french fries or maybe they'd be lucky to do that he felt that he had been discarded by the time he was eight years old and he said a teacher walked into his classroom for some reason she'd taken a liking to him she heard him cut up in the hallway and he made her laugh and she walked into his classroom and she just put her hand out and she said come with me and she took him across the hall and she sat him at a little desk next to her and she filled the desk up with golden books do any of you remember golden books those little books and they were well below his reading level but he still couldn't read them because he had been in group three and so she said just keep trying and every day she would spend a little bit of time with him a little bit more time a little bit more time and eventually he learned to read that one woman made a difference in his life by the way what was his favorite book and he said the book was the big jump I don't know if any of you remember that it was part of a series of the first golden books along with green eggs and ham I bet you remember that story I love these stories because they give listeners a dose of humanity and they remind us that the basic human condition needs to be centered in all that we do policy is not just about statistics and politics it's about changing people's lives and protecting their health protecting their dignity honoring their humanity these all sound like feature stories and yes they were quirky and I probably couldn't do them in some of the other newsrooms that I've worked in but every single one of those stories hinges on public or social policy in some way how we treat the elderly how we treat our children how we create neighborhoods where we have people who live in one area and people who live in another based on FHA policy it doesn't just happen through osmosis it's based on policy you filled your brain with knowledge here but also make sure that you fill your heart in your work and that you hold on to that humanity and shaping that world the world that you were about to inherit when you leave here and you make the big jump you were leaving this campus as both beneficiaries and ambassadors of what I like to call radical curiosity you were graduating from a school with a demonstrated hunger for knowledge and experience and also for understanding America and never underestimating America and so I want to spend what little time I have with you focusing on a few of the ways that perhaps you can carry on that tradition of radical curiosity into your future life a do a dunked and a dare first the dare see we come with lists you had your list I have mine dare to listen to someone that you do not agree with this is so important that I'm going to say it again dare to listen to someone who you do not agree with and at this moment in America that person might be in your family that person might be in your job and it's no surprising that someone who spent so much time on radio would try to get you to focus on listening but this is really important we are losing the ability to actively listen and engage in deep and meaningful conversation I just learned today that students on this campus created an organization that allows for just that coming together and listening to each other it's important to listen to the things and the people that you might otherwise shut out we are living in a time where there doesn't always seem to be a common set of facts or when so many people can see the same thing and come away with totally different interpretations make America great for instance to some a campaign slogan to others an offensive black lives matter to some a curiosity don't all lives matter to others a rejoinder to the all lives matter because history has shown that black lives are sometimes in fact often valued less climate change an obvious threat to some a political distraction or distortion to others I think quite a bit about reaching across difference because of the work I do at the race card project I know that you can not necessarily reach common ground but you can use dialogue to create an effective bridge and the bridge is important because if you think about the bridges that you cross every day in your life what allows that bridge to remain standing oppositional force tensile strength so I'm here to basically provide the exclamation point behind what Dean Barr said today you are strong because of your differences but you will only realize that strength if you're willing to reach across the aisle if you're willing to reach across that ideological chasm to listen to and engage with someone that you might not agree with I know I left out a dangling participle there apologies for that someone that holds beliefs that you might find offensive someone who holds beliefs that might make you uncomfortable or even afraid figure out how you can engage with them you will be stronger they will be stronger two don't quantify success in terms of numbers that inclination can start early especially in a place where you cheer for statistics how much candy did you get on Halloween how many soccer games did your team win how many badges are on your Girl Scout uniform we're conditioned to always sort of count things and rank things how many friends or followers or likes do you have on social media and admitted if I asked one of you today would you tell me how many likes you had or how many followers you have you check you're nodding your head you check don't you and then she unfollowed me what was that about that's part of our media universe today with grades and internships and measures of popularity it continues into adulthood with salaries and promotions and the cost of one's home or the exotic nature of one's vacation around the size of your dress were small as preferable and unrealistic for some of us or your bank account were large as preferable and unrealistic for some of us numbers can signal and even define success the zip code, the floor where your office or your home is located the secret signs that flash into our heads to rate almost anyone and anything and sometimes the way that we automatically apply the discount when we meet certain kinds of people or hear certain kinds of accents but I want the people who now hold these degrees to hold also the promise in their caps and gowns and also the promise that perhaps you will not measure your life solely in terms of numbers is a million dollar picture more successful than the little league coach who manages to find time to spend every weekend with a rag tag team of ten year olds despite the fact that he holds down two jobs is the working woman who dazzles everyone she comes in contact with more successful than the woman who chooses to be a stay at home mom and volunteers for a number of good causes is the investment banker more successful than the poet who helps us see the light of the world is the computer programmer who can churn out algorithms more successful than the journalist who pursues the truth especially the hard troops that help us understand the world and pursues that work knowing that they will never get rich at least as defined by their paycheck is the business tycoon more successful than the elementary school teacher or park ranger or police officer or aid worker who does famine relief or the person who sits behind the desk at the senior citizen center who has memorized the first name and dietary restrictions of every single elderly person who walks through or rolls through or is carried through the front door or the person who will clean up this beautiful room when you leave and go off to celebrate the answer is simple if you're only looking at numbers but it's not so simple if you're looking for excellence and success and excellence and success are qualified in different ways success is based on all kinds of factors some in your control others not you can be born into success if you're really fortunate and if you're only looking at numbers but no one is born into excellence even if you enter a senior with perfect pitch a pitcher with a golden arm as a future academic with a mind like Einstein you can only achieve excellence through hard work remember you were told you need to work hard and you do you need to possess a mindset based on discipline self-sacrifice and a strong ethical compass excellence may take you to dizzying heights but also allow all of us to flourish where we are to bloom where we're planted define our own personal best and our values our restrictions or our relative gifts and the pursuit of excellence allows us to measure that same quality in others to see those who are doing their best even in simple things to lift up their work to new heights the barista who turns out a latte and turns it into a work of art the landscaper who transforms a plot of land into an Eden the swim coach who is known as the pool god because she can coach even the most scaredy cat kids to move into the deep end of the pool I had one of those coaches once they give you the seeds of courage that will flower into more adventurous lives I can tell you that you begin to value excellence in all its forms the mastery of the complex and the simple talents that elude so many of us how many allegedly successful people do we all know who are not necessarily excellent or not necessarily excellent listeners or excellent at consoling someone in grief or excellent in providing an at a girl at exactly the right moment because trust me no matter how long your privilege to live on this earth we all need the occasional note in our lunch box I wish success for everyone success is great but my great hope for the class of 2019 is that you think long and hard about how you measure success and that you understand the satisfaction and the self-confidence the self-worth that comes from the pursuit of excellence on one's own terms it's living life with a work ethic but also a worth ethic so I've shared a dare and a don't so in closing I'd like to share something that I hope you will do do listen to the little voice in your head always listen to the little voice in your head it's the wisest counsel that you will receive you know what I'm talking about sometimes you have a voice you have a conversation with that little voice in your head sometimes you do it silently I bet that you have long and deep conversations with them in the shower if you're like me I am eloquent in the shower I think of all the things that and another thing I think of all the things that I wish I would have could have said in the moment they all come to me when I'm washing my hair listen to that little voice in your head because you've heard me use the word compass several times it is your compass it will guide you it will help you find your way and I know that because of the last story I will share with you which is summed up in a card that I received at the race card project I collect stories in six words stories about race and identity and it starts with six words and then people give me their backstory and the six words that I received race is throwing rocks at kids was handed to me by an elderly gentleman he was frail he moved slowly he was quietly fighting back tears when he gave me the card he did not want to give me his name but he gave me his story this was in North Carolina it was after a book signing and he's now this was years ago so I'm I'm not even sure he's still on this earth he was in his 70s then I hope he is but he said as a much younger man he was staunchly opposed to integration and when integration came to North Carolina he and his friends made clear that they were against the idea of brown children going to school with white children by throwing rocks and bricks and rotting vegetables at children who were crossing the color line to enroll in what were then all white schools in North Carolina he knows that some of those projectiles hit their target he knows that and so he said this now aging man with broad shoulders and very thick hands that suggested that he probably worked with those hands for a living he said that every time he goes around his town when he encounters an African American man he immediately looks at their forehead he said when he goes to the hardware store or the piggly wiggly he looks immediately at their forehead he's looking at their forehead for what he's looking for a scar he said he knows he bloodied someone with one of those bricks he doesn't know that person's name he doesn't know how badly they were hurt he does know that there was a lot of blood he remembers it, the image is still in his head and he remembers also that he got a lot of praise from his friends for making that direct hit he got a lot of atta boys so as he goes about his errands and encounters black men who like him now are older and slower now gray able to move through a community in certain sections of town when he encounters them he immediately looks to their forehead for a scar but he's also looking for something else he's looking for a chance after all these years to say I'm sorry he said I just want to say I'm sorry to his face he knew that throwing rocks was wrong he knew that the hatred for kids except for the color of their skin did not comport with the lessons that he learned in Sunday school did not comport with most of the lessons that he learned at his own dining room table there were life lessons about loving thy neighbor except if that neighbor was black or perhaps came from another country something inside him at that time told him that trying to injure people who were just trying to get an education wasn't right was in violation of the human code of conduct there was a little voice that said don't do this but there was larger voices there were larger voices all around him loud, pushy, passionate voices that encouraged and indeed implored him to join the crowd and create a wall of resistance really a wall of hatred that would uphold what was then the status quo to keep schools and libraries and the public parks and the swimming pools the way that they had always been cordoned off for white Americans only to that little voice in his head and six decades later he wished that he had there was a big lesson in that story listen to that little voice even when it's drowned out by the crowd especially when it's drowned out by the crowd because that voice is your inner GPS it's honed by your parents and your elders fine tuned at this fine institution listen to that voice always be in touch with that voice allow it to help guide you it's your own voice no matter how far you travel after graduation no matter how far your talents and your dreams and your new skills take you make sure a piece of this place never leaves you make sure you hear your voice and the voices of your professors hear this intellectual circle this wonderful spirited community make sure you always hear that voice I know that you will make America strong I pray that you will make America kind I trust that you will make America strong and I am as certain as the sun will rise tomorrow that all of you who have graduated from the Ford School on this day in May of 2019 will make America soar and you will do that by listening to that little voice to the class of 2019 I honor you I celebrate you go blue and go big thank you very much