2004 Commencement Speech
By Alan Page, Minnesota Supreme Court Justice
Sunday, May 30 2004

Thank you for your kind introduction and the warmth of your reception. Thank you also for allowing me to share my thoughts with you on this special day.

PageCommencement04
Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page gave the keynote address during this year's commencement ceremonies on May 30.
To today's graduates let me say, "Um! Yah! Yah!" Let me also say congratulations. I can appreciate the conflicting emotions that you're feeling right now: from the relief of having no lectures, finals or tuition, to the anticipation -- coupled with a little fear I suspect -- that comes with new beginnings, to the sense of accomplishment and pride that we all share this afternoon, to the fear that your graduation speaker will drone on forever saying nothing of relevance to you.

Indeed it occurs to me that you may be asking yourselves, "What is wrong with this picture? How is it that we that we have a former football player speaking at our commencement ceremony?" After all, we know that football players are nothing more than dumb jocks and that defensive linemen have all been hit in the head at least one too many times. The simple fact is, long before I was a football player, my parents, who knew and understood the importance of education, made sure that I understood it also. Now, I was lucky. They, along with other family members, were my role models. They made it clear to me by word and by deed that if I were going to have a better life than they had, I would have to be educated and also be a good citizen.

Another simple fact is that athletic achievement and academic performance are not mutually exclusive. Recognizing that what I say as your commencement speaker may well not be long remembered, I would like to talk for a moment about the future, about hope and ultimately about the role that each of us can play in making the future better and brighter.

Important to that discussion are issues of character and issues of race.

As you leave St. Olaf, traveling your chosen paths, your character will be challenged. As a nation it seems as though we have lost our character. If we are to thrive we must regain it. The American Heritage Dictionary defines character as "moral or ethical strength. Integrity. Fortitude." Character is who we are at our core. It's what determines what we believe and how we choose to respond to any given situation. Character is not something we are born with, nor does it develop automatically. It must be consciously developed. Character is not something that is static. Whether we are 50 or 15, 5 or 75, whether we are an Ole student or graduate, or a member of the St. Olaf faculty or staff, or a Supreme Court Justice, we will be forced to reevaluate and renew our character again and again. How we act today -- and every day for the rest of our lives -- will define who we are.

People of character take responsibility for who they are and what they do. They resist the pressures and temptations that seduce to make the easy choices rather than the right choices. To be a person of character takes a strong person. And I don't mean strong in the physical sense, for physical stature really has nothing to do with character. I do mean strong in the sense of believing that each one of us has an obligation to act in ways that build, rather than diminishes, our character, as well as the character of those around us. That means we must be honest and trustworthy, saying what we mean and meaning what we say. It means keeping our promises. It means avoiding the arrogance of power, playing fairly, telling the truth, making decisions with others in mind, always treating others with respect and respecting ourselves. It means working to figure out the difference between right and wrong, and then acting accordingly.

The fact that I was once considered a great football player, or that I am a Supreme Court Justice, doesn't by itself mean that I am a man of good character. The fact that the color of my skin is different from yours doesn't mean that I am not a man of good character. The fact that your language or religion is different from mine doesn't make either one of our characters better or worse. The outward differences that identify us as individuals do not define the content of our character.

Along life's path, you will be confronted with issues of race. That is so, in part, because what one person sees as innocent conduct another may see as racially motivated. Moreover, even innocent conduct can have a negative effect when it comes to issues of race. Sometimes the race card is openly and blatantly played. Sometimes its use is subtle, and sometimes the card played is not the race card at all, but the effect is such that it does have a racial impact.

Clearly some things have changed for the better. We've taken down the "Whites Only" and "Colored Only" signs that were once clear symbols of state-sponsored apartheid. The Supreme Court's 1954 decision, in Brown Vs. Board of Education, which we celebrate this year, announced the death knell for segregation as we knew it. However, recent studies suggest that many of our schools are resegregated. In 1965 we passed the Voting Rights Act, giving African Americans the right to vote. Yet today, far too many African Americans feel they have no reason to vote.

An area of particular concern to me is our criminal justice system, which at times seems more interested in putting people of color in jail than in helping them succeed. Shortly after I was sworn in, the Minnesota Supreme Court issued a task force report examining racial bias in our state's judicial system. The task force found, everything else being equal, that people of color are arrested more often, charged more often, given higher bails, tougher plea-bargains, less fair trials and far longer sentences. These findings are consistent with the findings of the 30 or so states that have conducted such studies. Sadly, they are also consistent with the findings of the Kerner Report from 1968.

There is something fundamentally wrong when our judicial system, the branch of justice grounded in the principle of equal justice and the law, persistently denies equal justice to our communities of color.

Consider also the debate regarding Affirmative Action programs. Such programs are under attack from virtually every corner, from those they are meant to help to those who claim that the programs are discriminatory. We seem to have lost sight of Affirmative Action's original purpose: to help eliminate the present effects of past discrimination. The fact is: If we had equal opportunity today, we wouldn't have to talk about Affirmative Action.

Is active prejudice at work? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Some of the policies and practices that lead to over-representation in our prison population and under-representation virtually every place else for people of color stem from well intentioned if naive efforts to demonstrate that our society is color blind. Other policies and practices seem to result more from indifference than from outright prejudice, but whatever the reason the outcome remains the same. While we may be better at covering up our biases, making bias harder to detect is not the same as making it go away. Living in a color-blind society should not require we live in a society that is blind to racial bias.

How can we address the issues of race that confront us? Identifying the problem and complaining about it isn't enough. Rhetoric without action is self-defeating. We can all do examine our own biases and set aside our stereotypical views of people who are different from us. We need to make sure that our feelings about other people are based on the individual rather than some perceived characteristics of a racial group. Itýs all too easy to get hung up on the differences that we see on the outside. Indeed, too often the word "different" is just a euphemism for "inferior." We see people who are like us as good, and people who are different from us as bad. True understanding can only come about, however, when we are willing to look beyond the packaging and focus on what is really important, what's inside.

The need for true understanding and the acceptance that often follows has never been greater. In my mind, the tragic events of September 11th stem from an inability on some very basic level to connect with other people. If we as a nation, and as a world of nations, are going to survive, we need to learn to live with one another. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this well. In what I can only describe as a prophetic sermon, which he gave in 1956, he spoke these words: "More than ever before, people of all races and nations are today challenged to be neighborly. The call for a worldwide good neighbor policy is more than an ephemeral shibboleth; it is a call to a way of life which will transform our imminent cosmic elegy into a psalm of creative fulfillment. No longer can we afford the luxury of passing by on the opposite side. Such folly was once called moral failure; today it will lead to universal suicide."

Today it will lead to universal suicide. We cannot long survive spiritually separated in a world that is geographically together.

In the end what does this mean to you? Well, as college graduates, especially from a college like St. Olaf, we are among the privileged few. As such, I believe we have some obligation to work to improve the lot of those who are less fortunate. Grabbing what we want for ourselves and ignoring everyone else simply is not acceptable.

For me, it has meant helping children understand the importance of education, motivating them in their educational pursuits and working to provide educational opportunities through the Page Education Foundation. Over the years, 2,082 individuals have been Page Scholars. Our scholars are required to work with children, kindergarten through eighth grade, as tutors, mentors and role models. Our scholars send a clear, strong message to those children that education is important. Forty-four of our scholars have been Oles. Currently, eight St. Olaf students are Page scholars, including Jessica Lee, a member of today's graduating class. Jessica, I believe, did her service to children through an educational talent search here at St. Olaf. Page scholars are my heroes.

I believe that children are the future, and that the future is mostly about hope. If we are to have hope for the future, our children's and ours, we must educate our children. We must do that one school at a time, one classroom at a time, one child at a time.

But what can you, aspiring new graduates with heavy student loans and uncertain job prospects, do? Because the problems we face are complex, we tend to think in terms of complex solutions. Or we think it's somebody else's problem. As a result, individual effort seems insignificant. But I believe that the steps we take individually can be significant. Ultimately, the problems we face are people problems, and the solutions to those problems will be found in people like me and people like you. Whether itýs volunteering at a homeless shelter or a food shelf, or assisting the disabled or working with children in schools as I do. Whatever it might be, you have the power to change the future. You have the power to change the future.

Some would say the problems are too big and too complex for one person to impact. I believe that those people are wrong. You don't need to be a Supreme Court Justice, or even a football hero, to make change happen. Everyone here, and I emphasize everyone, has the ability, the opportunity and, I believe, the obligation to make the world a better place. All we have to do is act. And act we must.

A quote from Robert Kennedy, taken from the speech that he gave in 1966 at the University of Capetown in South Africa on its day of affirmation, symbolizes for me the impact that we, as individuals, can have. It has special meaning when we consider the changes that have taken place in South Africa since 1966. What he said was this: "Each time a man [and I would add, a woman] stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. In crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

When we put our hearts, our minds and our bodies to the task, when we act, we can improve the lives of those less fortunate, change both our personal and our national character, and begin to address the seemingly intractable problems of race. In the process, we can change the future. As Dr. Seuss said in The Lorax, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it's not."