Last week, award winning author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
gave a rousing speech to the 2015 graduating set of Wellesley
College, Massachusetts.
As usual, Adichie encourages women to be the best they can be,
irrespective of the circumstances they find themselves in. “Your
standardized ideologies will not always fit your life. Because life is messy. “
Here’s an excerpt from the speech which we found quite profound:
“I already knew that the world does not extend to women the many
small courtesies that it extends to men.
I also knew that victimhood is not a virtue. That being
discriminated against does not make you somehow morally better.
And I knew that men were not inherently bad or evil. They were
merely privileged. And I knew that privilege blinds because it is the nature of
privilege to blind.
I knew from this personal experience, from the class privilege I
had of growing up in an educated family, that it sometimes blinded me, that I
was not always as alert to the nuances of people who were different from me.
And you, because you now have your beautiful Wellesley degree,
have become privileged, no matter what your background. That degree, and the
experience of being here, is a privilege. Don’t let it blind you too often.
Sometimes you will need to push it aside in order to see clearly.”
She also goes on to say:
“We can not always bend the world into the shapes we want but we
can try, we can make a concerted and real and true effort. And you are
privileged that, because of your education here, you have already been given
many of the tools that you will need to try. Always just try. Because you never
know.
And so as you graduate, as you deal with your excitement and your
doubts today, I urge you to try and create the world you want to live in.
Minister to the world in a way that can change it. Minister
radically in a real, active, practical, get your hands dirty way.
Wellesley will open doors for you. Walk through those doors and
make your strides long and firm and sure.
Write television shows in which female strength is not depicted as
remarkable but merely normal.
Teach your students to see that vulnerability is a HUMAN rather
than a FEMALE trait.
Commission magazine articles that teach men HOW TO KEEP A WOMAN
HAPPY. Because there are already too many articles that tell women how to keep
a man happy. And in media interviews make sure fathers are asked how they
balance family and work. In this age of ‘parenting as guilt,’ please spread the
guilt equally. Make fathers feel as bad as mothers. Make fathers share in the
glory of guilt.
Campaign and agitate for paid paternity leave everywhere in
America.
Hire more women where there are few. But remember that a woman you
hire doesn’t have to be exceptionally good. Like a majority of the men who get
hired, she just needs to be good enough.”
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