Anna Deavere Smith Undergraduate Speech Transcript

2017 Undergraduate Commencement Address
by Ana Deavere Smith
delivered on May, 6, 2017, at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles

I don't know about these skies. I thought I'd say a few words about love today. Is that okay? But to get there, I'm really going to need your help especially with these particular skies and especially, since I graduated from college in 1971, and I don't have any idea what the current love songs are. What I need everybody out here to do is just close your eyes for a minute. This includes the parents too. Everybody close your eyes, and just in your head think of what love song you heard or sang while you're here at LMU that you think you're going to remember forever. That's for the graduates. For the parents, I need you to think of the love song you fell in love with and on, had you fell in love. Take a few minutes to do that. Everybody all together just hum those songs. No, really, hum those songs. I don't hear any humming yet. Does anybody have the courage to sing them out loud? Sing out loud. It's starting to rain. Okay. Thank you.

I did just a little bit of research to find out what was the best-selling love song right now and I'm going to read you those lyrics. Some of you know this song. "Jump in the Cadillac", sing it if you know it. "Girl, let's put some miles on it. Anything you want just put a smile on you. You deserve it baby. You deserve it all. I'm going to give it to you. Cool jewel be shining so bright, strawberry champagne on ice, lucky for you that's what I like, that's what I like. Lucky for you, that's what I like, that's what I like. I'm talking trips to Puerto Rico, say the word and we go. I will never make a promise that I can't keep. I promise that your smile ain't never gonna leave. Shopping sprees in Paris, everything 24 karats, take a look in that mirror, now tell me who's the fairest. Is it you? Is it me? Say it's us, and I'll agree baby."

"Jump in the Cadillac, girls, let's put some miles on it. Anything you want, just put a smile on you, you deserve it baby. You deserve it all, and I'm gonna give it to you. Cool jewel, be shining so bright strawberry champagne on ice, lucky for you that's what I like, that's what I like. Lucky for you, that's what I like, that's what I like." Now, who sings that? Is that the kind of love I'm talking about? No.

Right before I graduated from college, which honestly was a miracle, I had to turn in a religion paper. None of us were too fond of Dr. Hall, the chaplain and the religion professor. I put off taking his class till the very end and almost never went to class. I turned in the final paper well past the deadline. I wrote a paper on a book called, "Black Theology and Black Power", which is written by a theologian named James Cone, now at Union Theological Seminary. It turns out that Cone has really inspired me also in my adult life.

The response to the paper from Dr. Hall was enthusiastic, over the top. I shredded it, as common parlance might put it right now. I nailed it. I aced it as we would have said 20 years ago. I was, as you heard, a mimic, and I was a pretty much of a clown in those days. I read Dr. Hall's evaluation out loud to my friends. General hilarity ensued. No one really thought I was going to pass the class let alone shred the paper. I concluded my performance with a flourish and I said, "Dr. Hall even signed it agape." Agape. Everybody got quiet. I said, "Agape." Agape? He was so shocked, his mouth was hanging open, Agape?

The philosophy major among us snatched the evaluation out of my hands and said, "Agape, not agape. Agape." Of course, this solicited more peals of laughter from the group. We laughed a lot in those four years. Laughter was a healing force, it punctuated the dark absurdities and the real tragedies that marked our calendars from 1967 to 1971. It was a bloody time in the United States of America and in the world. Gloria Steinem, who has a way with words, said to me at one point that President Nixon ascended to his presidency because of three murders, two Kennedys and a Martin Luther King. But it was agape, it was unconditional love, universal love that got us through the 60s.

People compare these days because that we are in the midst of a transformation to the 60s but I don't think it was quite the same, three murders, Vietnam. Many of us, when I was in college, barely went to class. We spent much of our time dreaming up plans for a new world, worlds that were more equitable, fairer to women, fairer to the environment, ending the war in Vietnam. I have a sneaking suspicion that most of you went to class. I have a sneaking suspicion that most of you didn't think that a demonstration or school shut down was going to save you from the fact that you hadn't studied for the exam.

Many things about our world transformed for the better. I mean a less divided world, give peace a chance, all power to the people, we shall overcome, save the environment. The needle moved a little bit. There was some transformation, all you need is love. That's a lot different than the love call that Bruno Mars is making. That's a John Lennon love call. Agape was a very important part of that change, of that transformation, Agape.

Alum. I'm not sure when you officially become an alum. When is it? Right after they finally graduate? You will be an alum. I thought I'd look up the etymology of the word, "alumni", "alumnus". It comes from the Latin for "foster son", "ward", "charge". The idea of an alum as a foster child is interesting. I think of alums as individuals who have been fully woven into the texture of the organization, full woven into the history and texture of LMU, of it, born of it, by the time you get to here. A foster child, a ward, connotes one who is in need of a placement, who would otherwise be in strands, stranded, shredded outside of the fabric of society. I can only think that the process of becoming alum as we know alum to be is about Lions, memories of romance, pranks. I see some prankish people in these rows. I have observed, near misses, hard one accomplishments.

How did you get here today? How did you make your way into the character of LMU? As a person who has taught for over 40 years now, I'm aware that many students spend some of their time as undergraduates, even as graduates, struggling to endure the process of being educated without a feeling of belongingness. Some of you may have felt that way here at LMU. Most of you, I suspect, surpassed that feeling of alienation and found your niche, your way in. Even of those of you who stood outside what you perceived as the norm, the regular LMU, the fact is no one just fits in to fit, you have to be a part of creating the fit for yourselves and others around you.

For some of you, the others around you was a small group, for others, it was a large group. You didn't just fit. You helped make the fit for those who were with you, and for those who came before you, and for those who are here now, and those are yet to come. You are now officially a part of the fit of the history and tradition and potential of the mission of this university. As you approach your alum status, think of yourself as a part of a tapestry, even if you never quite fit, even if today you say, "Well, I never fit." You're part of this reality. If only in our cities, if in our nation, if only in places in the world of discord today we could make tapestries out of the many strands that are loose, and your valedictorian suggests the same thing, the foster strands as it were in the world.

Even if we could accomplish this in neighborhoods and then across the neighborhoods of cities, there's the exponentially more ambitious idea of attempting to make a more woven world. Love your neighbor as yourself. As you move into this world ask, "Are we in a moment when love your neighbor as yourself seems nearly unfathomable?" As you move into alum status, ask yourself, "As I move into the world, can I take my lesson, some hard, some easy, some accomplished, some about not fitting, some about fitting into the world to be an agent of the fit, become the person who helps others fit? Especially if I felt I never though I fit, can I take the profound sense of not fitting into other environments to help others experience productivity and joy? Can I take my critique of all that kept outside to help others feel inside?

There are lessons that you learn, you hopped and you jumped and you bicycled from group to group, from old ideas to new ideas, from simple ideas to more complex ideas from refined ideas. You move from strangeness to friendship from therapy fear of not belonging, to creating a place where others were belong. Apply it. Of course, it's easier to create a cohesive weave in a community with a stated mission and a community that lives up to the mission. It's harder to do that where strangeness is the status quo, where some some don't fit at all, where some are, in fact, bent on telling the weave inhibiting the tapestry.

In the United States of America, we have a stated mission towards a more perfect union. President Obama, on more than one occasion when he was President, reminded us that to get to a more perfect union, we even need our critique, we even need dissent. Being your own professor, like I said, it was so many years when I graduated and I was a horrible student, I'd probably one of the worst among you. My whiz kid researcher was a fantastic student. About four years ago, he graduated from Princeton, and so I asked Daniel Ratner to tell me some things that he thought new graduates needed to know. He wrote me a very long email with many, many things.

I pick out one to tell you. This is what he said. He's thinking about the fact that I have to speak today and say some things where he says about me, he says, "In terms of tying into Loyola's mission, they talk about the education of the whole person in their mission statement." He says, "College is, in a lot of ways, about cultivation of yourself, indulging in your interests, passions, and work. But your education in college is not just academic, it is a training on how to be curious, how to be rigorous. You will need to bring that training into the world at large. You need to create your own curriculum and syllabus for the world. Be your own professor. Be your own professor. Be your own Professor. Make your own syllabus.

The weaver. I know a weaver, an African-American woman, who crossed the Atlantic and showed up a weave at a weaving school in Sweden without having applied for enrollment. Her curiosity took her that far. The school only had 12 looms which were all occupied. Somehow they were charmed by her and brought in a 13th loom. Through the practice, she refined a technique of deliberately breaking the warp thread. As you know, the warp is the long thread which has the tension to hold the weft threads that are going over and under it. To break a warp thread is ambitious. It requires a lot of work to restore the break. Yet, what resulted when she broke the warp thread was a beautiful design resulting in a different type of fabric, a design that became her identity as an artist.

I'm not suggesting that you deliberately break the metaphoric warps. I only call for creativity and how you think about weaving, how you think about making community, how you think about loving beyond champagne and trips to Paris, how you think about making community beyond your home, beyond your fence, beyond your turf, beyond your knowledge. Walk in the world actively looking for the warp thread.

As I come towards my conclusion, I want to say something about hospitality. I'm not talking about the Marriott. Here's my favorite definition of hospitality. Let us say yes to who or what turns up before any determination, before any anticipation, before any identification, whether or not it has to do with a foreigner, an immigrant, an invited guest, or unexpected visitor. Whether or not the new arrival is a citizen of another country, a human, animal or divine creature, a living or dead thing, male or female.

That's Jacques Derrida on hospitality. Be practitioners of hospitality. Welcome the stranger. I'm not talking about the Bruno Mars kind of love, which is about purchases, and objects, and champagne, and ice, and Paris, and shopping, which is cool. I like them all. I'm talking about an extremist form of love. In Martin Luther King's letter from a Birmingham jail as many of you know was written in response to a critique from white Southern clergy that his non-violent practices were extremist. He addresses this notion of being extremist in this way. This is the important part of what I want to bring to you today, here's King.

"And now this approach is being called extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continue to think about the matter, I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love? "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice? "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel? "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist? "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise so help me God." John Bunyan, "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." Abraham Lincoln, "This nation cannot survive half-slaven, half-free." Thomas Jefferson, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

The question is not whether we will be extremists but what kind of extremist we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will be extremists for the preservation of injustice or the extension of justice? Perhaps the South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. I suggest to you Class of 2017, you are welcome to join the ranks of the creative extremists. What kind of extremist will be? Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Agape. Amen.