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VERNON E. JORDAN, JR.
So we parents, who have spent the past two decades learning
and adjusting to new situations and new phases of development,
must now adjust to yet another phase, perhaps the most difficult
of all to accept. But our acceptance of this new order is a mark of
our own maturity, and a final service to the children we love so
dearlyâ€"the gift of allowing them to be themselves.
Thus far I have been talking to your parents, to my fellow fa-
thers and mothers of this graduating class. But this is your day,
and I do want to say a few things to you directly.
The first is to apologize for the world into which you graduate.
It is, in many ways, a mean world. The superpowers rattle rockets
at each other. Television brings us, between commercials for ex-
pensive cars and clothing, pictures of some of the earth’s starving
millions. People still judge other people by the color of their skin.
Pockets of hate pollute our human environment. Right here, in
the shadow of this great university, well over one out of five black
people are out of work.
Yes, it is in many ways, a mean, mean world. But it is not much
different from the world we entered. And in some ways it is a bet-
ter world. When I returned home after my college graduation, it
was to separate drinking fountains, the back of the bus, and the
denial of basic constitutional rights.
So the world has changed. Not nearly enough, but it has
changed. And it changed because in the midst of that meanness,
buried deep within the caves of injustice, there was the throbbing
of the human spirit, the determination by millions of individuals
that wrong is something to overcome, not to tolerate.
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