My Commencement Speech: Shifting the Old Landscapes Through Social Justice and Systemic Change
Chancellor Groves, Faculty, Students, Family and Friends, etc. I am honored to be here to represent the AP & Relational Therapies Department.
My being here today to receive my doctorate degree in Couple and Family Therapy (CFT) with an emphasis on Social Justice is the result of a confluence of extraordinary circumstances, both recent and historical. 150 years ago a seed of social justice was sown in my family system when my ancestors were still enslaved. My great-grandfather inherited from the man enabled by law to “own” him, the apple orchard he tended all his life. I don’t know what inspired in this White man the ability to see my great grandfather as a human being — not property, but I see in this countercultural act an ember of hope that I’ve continued to coax into flame as I have grappled with the unfathomable web of systemic issues that has been the backdrop of the last three years.
We entered our graduate programs during a global pandemic; what felt like a post-Civil War apartheid which brought to light that as a nation we are not who we thought we were. The murder of George Floyd in 2020 opened floodgates to address the pernicious poison of systemic racism in all aspects of our culture — mass shooting, after mass shooting, policing, education, voting rights, healthcare, housing patterns, wealth creation, the arts, and organizational work life.
In 2021, hopeful to breathe a sigh of relief, we were instead aghast as we watched the January 6th –terror attack on democracy, an algorithmically gloried version of America’s sanctioning the thunderous fever dreams of White supremacists seething with unapologetic racism.
“When we are in the middle of living history like this we owe it to ourselves to stop what we are doing, to stop what we are thinking and pay attention to that history and allow ourselves to feel that history because it’s the feelings that will uniquely guide us to how we think and feel about social justice for the rest of our lives. It’s never too late to open our hearts to stunning moral clarity.”
I suspect there was some radical alteration in the nature of time scornful to social change. The road pulling us forward into the future was also pulling us backward into the past. A constitutional right was revoked as Roe vs Wade was overturned. And yet the turbulent scaffolding of political lies bleeding into the social atmosphere of our educational experience and attempting to exhaust our critical thinking (and our sanity) was unmatched by the in-your-face determination of the institution and mission of Antioch.
Being a student at Antioch means joining the unbounded power of fellow brilliant minds, bearing witness to each other’s aspirations and struggles and rallying together to unravel the idiosyncrasies of online learning through Sakai. It means learning in the presence of stellar faculty who know there is nothing esoteric or abstract about working toward social justice, which invariably requires acknowledging Whiteness as a system of privileges and becoming willing to experience and metabolize discomfort.
As students at Antioch we know that systemic change is relational, not transactional. It’s a means of disrupting, provoking and pluralizing our alternatives. This is why it’s vital to read and reread — to fill in the gaps of our whitewashed histories … to hear new voices. Truth and reconciliation are sequential. We must tell the truth in order to reconcile. Reconciliation sets the stage for social justice and repair.
Today, many of us are quivering with hope, excitement and curiosity about what is yet to be. What do we do now that we are graduating? This moment is not life waiting to happen, goals waiting to be achieved, regrets waiting to evaporate, enlightenment waiting to be gained. Nothing is waiting. This is it. This moment is life. So let’s rise up together in hope and the unimaginable, and land in a blaze of limitless possibilities. Let’s work together to extinguish the metrics of the impulse to protect the Dominant group from those they deem subordinate. Laws and policies are only a prelude. There must be a transformation of the human spirit or we Black and Brown folks will continue to pay with our bodies and find ourselves over and over navigating and negotiating the delusions of those who tinker around the edges of the fundamental belief that White skin affords them a certain value and status above all Others. Together we must learn what love means and how to act on it. Because here in the space of love is the eruption of the possible. And it is the eruption of the possible that triggers the imagination and allows one to see beyond the obtuseness of one’s condition.
I’d like to close with a quote by bell hooks; she writes, “If you have love you have the community of belonging that comes with it.” I believe there was love in the reparative act of the White man who gave my great-grandfather his apple orchard. It was the kind of love my surrogate father Reggie taught me — a deep rooted love that awakens us from the slumber of disillusionment and brings us face to face with ourselves — and each other — the community — a kind of love that celebrates our differences.
As the next cadre of Latinx, Queer, White, Black abolitionists, social justice practitioners and educators with the power and privilege of an Antioch education, we are called upon to set the world on a different track, carrying out the “ceaseless work” of shifting the landscape through systemic change, radical respect and liberating love that satiates all of us with a sense of belonging.
Congratulations to the class of 2023!
I was inspired to write this speech because I believe there is something unique about this particular time in history that has revealed the fundamental inadequacy of our systems — and I don’t believe I’m alone in this belief. In a way it is a time of real crisis, but also opportunity to make decisions about how we can reshape these systems to support all of us. As a therapist in the business of social justice and change I have learned that we cannot change anyone. We can only create the kind of conditions where people will want to change.
Contact me @ dr.paulamsmith@gmail.com — www.paulasmith-imago.com
