By Hazel Trice Edney

Special to the Free Press

WASHINGTON

In his final seven months as America’s first African-American president, President Obama advised Howard University graduates on how to excel and impact change as black people in America.

“First of all — and this should not be a problem for this group — be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your blackness,” the president told the audience of graduates and their families last Saturday to rousing applause. “One of the great changes that has occurred in our country since I was your age is the realization there’s no one way to be black.”

President Obama’s speech to Howard had been a long time coming — near the end of his eight-year tenure leading the nation. He hinted that this culmination was intentional and appropriate. The historic black university, often called “the Mecca” because of its history and reputation as a bastion of black intellectualism, has produced leaders that changed the nation.

“It is that spirit that has made Howard a centerpiece of African-American intellectual life and a central part of our larger American story,” President Obama said. “This institution has been the home of many firsts: The first black Nobel Peace Prize winner. The first black Supreme Court justice. But its mission has been to ensure those firsts were not the last. Countless scholars, professionals, artists and leaders from every field received their training here. The generations of men and women who walked through this yard helped reform our government, cure disease, grow a black middle class, advance civil rights, shape our culture. The seeds of change — for all Americans — were sown here.”

The speech — which focused largely on how to build on the racial progress indicated by his elections — wowed the enthusiastic crowd and even impressed some of his strongest critics. After more than seven years in office, the president appeared to have turned a corner, becoming remarkably more candid and relaxed on the issues of race and racism.

“He was conscious of the historical backdrop against which he offered his oration. He was unapologetically rooted in his own racial and ethnic identity,” said Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson as he left the graduation. “In fact, he encouraged the students and graduates and others to be proud of their ethnic heritage without being narrow and limited, but to embrace the broad variety of blacknesses that were marshaled under our own struggle.”

Dr. Dyson, author of “The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America,” pointed out that President Obama’s style was not scolding as it has occasionally been in the past as he spoke to black audiences. His 2013 speech to Morehouse College graduates in Atlanta was heavily scrutinized by some who thought his talk about work ethics and social responsibility were condescending. Some also criticized the 2011 speech in which he told the Congressional Black Caucus, “Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying.”

At Howard, Dr. Dyson observed, “He wasn’t damning as he has been in the past. In the past he has been condescending and tone deaf to African-American culture and people. But this speech was resilient, was ebullient and edifying in a way that it should be and was a beautiful, beautiful send off.”

Morehouse graduate Perry Clemons agreed.

“He was giving good advice,” says Mr. Clemons, a New York elementary school teacher, who especially appreciated President Obama’s encouragement to embrace blackness. “I feel like he’s coming out and he saying all these things … I don’t think he would have said any of that stuff in his first term … And he’s not saying that to the country. He’s saying it to black people. He’s never talked directly like that.”