Resmaa Menakem's Commencement 2024 Address

CIIS was honored to welcome Resmaa Menakem (MSW, LICSW, SEP) as the featured speaker at the 56th Commencement Ceremony on May 18, 2024, where he received an Honorary Doctorate of Human Letters. In his remarks to graduates, Menakem thanked his family, many of whom joined him in the audience, and, while honored by the distinction, he spoke about struggling initially to accept the honorary doctorate from an institution for which he was unfamiliar and cautioning graduates and the audience about the destructive nature of empire.

“I want to thank this university. Listen, when I was notified that I was gonna get this, I didn’t know how to quite think about it because a lot of my work is resisting capture. And how to resist capture. We are living in an empire that does nothing but know how to eat. That’s all it does. It devours things. It devours people.”

But Menakem also spoke about the upside to being pessimistic. “And when people and institutions acknowledge me, the first thing is to be pessimistic, right? I think pessimism sometimes gets a bad rap. I think pessimism sometimes is the brakes we need to examine things and slow things down. Sometimes people want us to be optimistic because they want to pick our pockets, pick our brains, and pick our genius. And sometimes, pessimism is the thing that saves us until we’re ready to do something else.”

Finally, Menakem offered graduates his wisdom: to think of resisting capture as their job.

“It is students like you who are going to resist the capture. That is your job. The system – the empire’s going to tell you that your job is to get a job. Your job is to resist! Your job is to connect with other resistance. Your job is to go to the edges and see what emerges in the edges. What you already know is not going to help you here.”

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I want to thank this university. Listen, when I was notified that I was gonna get this, I didn’t know how to quite think about it because a lot of my work is resisting capture. And how to resist capture. We are living in an empire that does nothing but know how to eat. That’s all it does. It devours things. It devours people. It breaks people. It eats people. And, when people and institutions acknowledge me, the first thing is to be pessimistic, right? 

I think pessimism sometimes gets a bad rap. I think pessimism sometimes is the brakes we need to examine things and slow things down. Sometimes people want us to be optimistic because they want to pick our pockets, pick our brains, and pick our genius. And sometimes, pessimism is the thing that saves us until we’re ready to do something else. And so when I got offered this, the first thing was to pull back and kind of figure out, wait a minute, who is these folks? And I use that phrase the right way – that’s the way my people use it – who is these folks? Who be these people? Right? 

And so I started looking and doing some research and working with and hearing that they were using my work and sometimes people use my work in ways that it wasn’t intended to use. It wasn’t intended to be something that you develop your own practice with. My work was developed – not just developed – it was emerged from me from being held by my ancestors and elders. It came about because it was designed to help humanity and help people be something else. And we don’t know what that something else is. And people think that my stuff is about curriculum or about teaching. 

It is really about how do you condition and temper yourself so you can usher in a living and embodied antiracist generative culture. It’s not so you can hang a shingle. It is to type in that thing that already is. We are living beings living with other living beings on a living being. And something has happened to people and continues to happen to people. It continues to happen to this earth and this planet. We are literally cracking the planet in half right now.  Literally. We are extracting from her. We are doing things and porting things into her blood stream – she is now trying to burn us off from her. That’s what’s happening. Global warming is another word for burning us off. We are no longer welcomed here. And it is students like you who are going to resist the capture. That is your job. The system – the empire’s going to tell you that your job is to get a job. Your job is to resist! Your job is to connect with other resistance. Your job is to go to the edges and see what emerges in the edges. What you already know is not going to help you here. 

I watched as some of y’all walked in; I watched the joy in some of these beautiful people up here. In some of these black bodies up here. In. some of these indigenous bodies up here. In some of these trans bodies up here. And some of these male bod… (drifts away). I watched at the way they look at y’all. I’ve done speeches before at universities – not everybody loves y’all. Not everybody loves y’all. What I saw up here were people who said I am going to be in relationship with you from now on. You can reach back to me when shit starts – when stuff starts (drifted away). Listen, I got a text when I was in line out there – and my wife said, “don’t over share!” and my daughter and son said, “don’t over share and don’t cuss!” I’m a cusser – I come from a long line of professional cussers y’all! This is really hard for me! It’s really hard for me. But what I saw was people that love you. Y’all are a bunch of weirdos! Y’all some weird people! Y’all had a band come up here and talk about Mama Earth! That’s some weird stuff at commencement! That’s weird! That’s what we need y’all – we need weird people. We need the people that are resisting capture. That are fugitive in their thinking. 

This structure – this empire – I have on this keffiyeh – underneath it I have on Kente cloth because many times people think that our striving for liberation is different because of the bodies it’s housed in. I come from a people that knows what it’s liked to be corralled into a certain place. I know what it’s like to come from a people where you don’t have access to your own water, your own electricity. I know what it’s like to come from a people where if you stayed you died, if you left, you died. And so, when I see what’s happening in the Congo, when I see what’s happening in Gaza, and I see what’s happening in Palestine, my heart connects to that. I ain’t gonna debate you about that. I’m not going to debate you about humanity. And I’m not going to debate my humanity with you. It is what it is! It is what it is! And if that means we gonna fight, then we gonna fight! If that means you ain’t gonna like me, you ain’t gonna like me. And I’ll be with people who do! 

And what I’m telling you, you beautiful graduates, that’s what’s gonna happen when you get out here if you are doing it the right way. And I don’t mean the right way in terms of prescriptive, I mean in terms of make your damn mistakes! Make your mistakes. Have people hate you and get away from you so that it creates room for people that supposed to be with you.

There’s a difference between ownership and stewardship; people are gonna try to tell you they’re the same thing and they are not. I’m gonna tell a couple of more stories because, as my wife says, I get a little long-winded so I’m gonna tell just two stories: one story is, if you don’t know, you get online right now and read excerpts of Columbus’ diary – Christopher Columbus’ diary. There is this excerpt that I read recently where he says that the indigenous people he and his men came across were some of the most beautiful, open, and generous people that he had ever met. And he said that if you needed something, they would offer it to you. If you needed something, they would give it to you or show you how to get it. And then his next line is the difference between stewardship and ownership. His next line was “they’re ripe for the picking.” 

When we’re talking about empire and what you are going to change and help change, what you are going to leave your grandchildren’s children’s children, is a recognition that we are in a world that needs changing and has no use for anybody that doesn’t get in line. Stewardship means that you get in line. Stewardship means that you are tied to something that gurgles. Tied to something that speaks. Notice the images behind me; notice the heart beats that you hear. Notice the babies. That is the message we want you to go away here with. Not that you completed something, but there are things you need to cultivate so new things can emerge. 

The second story is this: Doctor King right now is used as a litmus test for whether or not you are down or good or understood. Somebody says Dr. King and everybody nods but nobody understands. He was the most hated man in America.  He was talking and saying things that he knew most people didn’t understand what he was doing and talking about. He said it anyway and he said it so you could hear it. He knew the people there couldn't understand it, but maybe generations from that point, people could take it in because other things will have been cultivated. When he died and they did an autopsy on him – the man died at 39 years old – when he died and they took an autopsy and looked at his heart, you can read this, he had the heart of a 60-year-old man.

The system will wither you. By design it will wither you. And if you try to do it by yourself it will eat you. Connect with the people that love you. Develop relationship and community with each other. Continuously weight your heart at every moment. Decide whether or not it is in alignment with other bodies, the planet, and your ancestors. Every moment. Because the world will tell you you’re going in the wrong way and you’re not. Thank you, love you, keep going, keep doing what you do, thank you, you damn weirdos and let’s keep trying to change the world.