Articles

Confronting Poverty:
A Commencement Speech

Delivered by Andrew Young
National University, San Diego
May 13, 2001

Thank you very much. As I walked through the neighboring foyer and looked at this class of graduates, I decided that this is the most beautiful class that I have seen in a long, long time. Not only because California is a place of beautiful people but because the diversity of that beauty reminds me of a wonderful flower garden of God's humanity. And the experience you have had together and the simple associations through the years will prove to be one of the more valuable parts of your education.

I'd like to thank president Lee and the trustees and the faculty for inviting me to share this occasion with you because it is indeed an impressive occasion. I went to my own college reunion yesterday. It was my 50th anniversary from college -- Time sure flies -- and the only thing I remember about my commencement address was that it lasted almost an hour. I assure you I will be out of here a whole lot quicker than that. But the other thing is, I don't remember a thing that was said.

I want you to remember some of the things I have learned these last 50 years. The first thing is that, with all due respect to all of you, and honor and praise and glory to all of you who have graduated Suma cum laude, magna cum laude, cum laude and with all of the honors, I guess I'm here as part of an "Oh thank you, Lordy."

As I sat there 50 years ago, it was not a time of triumph. It was a time of triumph for my father and my mother because I was on my own, but it was a frightening time for me and all of the hopes and dreams and ambitions and aspirations, which had nurtured me through college, ended up falling by the way side. And I think my success has been defined by my failures and my ability to deal with the obstacles in life. That the eagle says, "I could fly so much faster if it wasn't for the wind in my face," in truth, without the wind, he couldn't fly at all. We talk about the greatest generation: our parents' generation. Remember, that great generation was defined by the tragedy of the Second World War. And it is in coping with difficulties - the one thing that I thought would be a great burden to me coming out of college 50 years ago was race. Actually it has been the struggle with race that has produced all the triumphs of my life. And so I say to you: be thankful for the troubles you face because those are the incidents and the difficulties that will force you to dig way down deep inside yourself and decide for the future, and yourself, and for generations yet unborn what your contribution will be to humanity.

I was a biology major and chemistry minor, and almost everything I was taught 50 years ago people know not to be true anymore. Almost all of the conventional wisdom of our time is in the process of being redefined. So that what's important is that you know that you have the capacity to build upon the knowledge and experience of the past and create your own future. And just as I think the difficulty of race defined my success for the last 50 years, I would suggest that the challenge of poverty will define yours.

Almost every problem we face now is related to the fact that, as Martin Luther King said," We have people isolated on lonely islands of poverty in the midst of this ocean of material wealth." And all of the problems of hate, all the problems of disease, of ignorance, of almost any difficulty you want to define starts in those islands of poverty. I remind people as we see the young people nowadays, with their pants down halfway across their backsides, and they're all braided, and funny things are shaved; this is really the culture of the jail that has become the mainstream culture of youth society. We are either going to deal with the troubles and problems spawned out of poverty or we will find it undercutting many of the values and beliefs and ideals that have made us what we are today.

Fortunately you represent a group of people who have enjoyed the follies and foibles of youth and you look back on that, and yes, most of you having overcome, and you're ready now to take life seriously. And I would say that even to the young woman who is graduating at 73, that God did not call Moses to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt until Moses was 80, and it was 80-140 that the freedom struggle of the Jewish people occurred in the Old Testament. I contend that our generation has got to prepare to survive, to contribute to at least 100, because if we have the motivation, if we have the inspiration, if we have the sense of direction our bodies will respond and give us the energy and the flexibility to do whatever we have to do. It's only when we think we got it made and we can lay down that we begin to rust and decay and deteriorate and get sick and die. But the things that we have learned are extremely valuable to generations yet unborn.

Poverty should not be a problem. Poverty should be seen as an economic opportunity. I didn't realize this until we were working on the North American Free Trade Agreement, and free enterprise needs to expand. Mexico and Canada need to be a part of our global economy and they need to be associated with us very closely in the United States. But the gross national product of Mexico and Canada combined at that time was about 400 billion dollars. And suddenly I realized that the Mexican-American economy was almost 400 billion dollars; and the African-American economy was almost 500 billion dollars - now it's about 572 billion dollars. But none of us would say that we had reached the full-fledged economic development in our African-American or Mexican-American or Native-American communities. They are in a sense poor because they have been denied access to capital. They've been denied the training and the management skills and the marketing attention. In fact we don't have a free trade agreement with our poor communities. And one of the things we ought to define is how we are going to see to it that access to capital becomes a basic human right in the 21st century.

Now, it makes some of us a little uncomfortable to think of ourselves as capitalists. We've been trained by the Bible, by our communities to look to government and to look to the church -- and I come out of the church and out of the government -- but the church can preach about feeding the hungry; government can talk about distributing the wealth fairly. But look around. Everything about us is a product essentially of a system of free enterprise in a free society. Government could not have developed the rapid revolution of computers that we've seen in our lifetime. When I became mayor in Atlanta, we had computers in a floor and it was about twice the size of this stage. And all of the computer power in the city of Atlanta in 1980, you now have in your laptop. That's essentially free enterprise, and that is what's generating the wealth and defining the future.

Our challenge is to see the poor as people who can develop business ideas and programs. In the black community, the first black millionaire was a woman who developed hair grease. In Bangladesh Mohammed Unis of the Gravene bank took beggar women and, giving them small amounts of capital and allowing them to develop their own business plans and nurturing them in their own business, developed a billion dollar bank in 18 years. It became a two billion dollar bank in 20 years, because the people who were once putting together straw to make baskets to sell them are now putting together cell phones for Ericsson and they are making buses for Volvo. They are full participants in the capitalist revolution, because they now own 50 percent of the factory and they are working there as shareholders and investors and not simply as minimum-wage workers.

So one of the challenges of the 21st century is going to be how to give poor people an opportunity to develop their enterprise. Of course, in order to do that there is nothing more important than education and the ability to know and to learn and to understand and to read and compute. And to do all of the things you are trained to share essentially grows out of the ability to love. You cannot teach somebody if you do not like them. And I have the greatest admiration for those who select education, because I have a hard time loving my own four children. And even my grandchildren get on my nerves. How are you going to take on 30 or so of somebody else's children eight hours a day? God knows you are blessed and are the heroes of our society. And we need to find some way to honor you enough so that you can participate fully in the economic blessings of this society.

I have one daughter who is an engineer and another who is a teacher. And my daughter who is an engineer came home in tears with her IBM bonus and felt disgusted with herself. Because she had sold some people in a hospital computers that they didn't need. And she said, "I wish I could come home every day like Paula, my baby daughter; she believes in those children; she loves what she's doing."

So money isn't everything, and don't let money define you. You define yourself. And let the goals and the desires to serve and create and to love be your motivation. You know, I started doing that with Martin Luther King and, doggone it, if I didn't end up trying to do good and ended up doing well. I've never had...I've never wanted for any thing. I've never had to sell my soul to get something because there was no price. And yet everything I have given myself to has turned out to be extremely rewarding. And so giving of yourself and your talents and your money is also one of the most important ways of contributing to the society in which we live.

I serve on the board of the United Nations Foundations with Ted Turner. Ted Turner considers himself an atheist and he's always cussin' and fussin'. But he gave a billion dollars to the United Nations. He gets angry with me because he said, "When I gave a billion dollars I didn't have but 3 billion dollars." And he said, "Now I've got 8 billion dollars." And I couldn't resist, I said, "You see Ted, you can't beat God giving." You will find that one of the most paradoxical lessons of life is that the more you give, at whatever you give, the more you will find coming back to you.

So I challenge you to give of yourselves to end poverty. To give of yourselves to design new communities; to give of yourselves to end the complications that lead people into criminal behavior. Find ways to take people from our jails and put 'em back into our universities. Deal with the diseases and infirmities of our bodies through health and nutrition and exercise and all the things that you can demonstrate not only through your studies but in the quality of your own life. And most of all on this mother's day let's remember that all of this starts with family and you wouldn't be here without a mother. And you know brothers we have a little something to do with this too. And the coming together and the nurturing and the development and the responsibilities that we develop for our families essentially is the foundation of the future.

I don't know what the future will hold for you but I know this: if I had told Martin Luther King, who was the dreamer of the 20th century, that coming out of Howard University - Oh thank you Lord - that I was going to be a congressman and a mayor and an ambassador to the United States and run a successful international business, he would have said, "You know, I admire your goals but kinda sit down here on the road from Selma to Montgomery for a little while, 'cuz it ain't gonna be that way." He could not see it. I could not see it. But I would say that you write down your wildest dreams and your fondest ambitions today and I will guarantee you that 25 years from now you will have surpassed them. You are blessed; go and bless the world.