Lady Gaga joined former U.S. president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, as well as other public figures and artists to celebrate the students on their graduation time, by delivering an inspiring and powerful commencement speech on YouTube Originals' event 'Dear Class of 2020.'
Gaga touched important subjects in her message, focusing on the impact that kindness does and must do in society with future generations, by referencing the wave of racism that has been shown with the death of George Floyd in hands of the police. She also revealed that she previously has had recorded her message but decided to change it. 'Two weeks ago I recorded a very different commencement speech to help celebrate the wonderful accomplishment that is your graduation. My speech at that time reflected and referenced the shared experience of the COVID-19 global pandemic that's devastated the world this year,' she added.
When I think about racism in America, I imagine a broad forest filled densely with tall trees, trees as old as this country itself, trees that were planted with racist seeds, trees that grew prejudiced branches and oppressive leaves, and mangled roots that buried and entrenched themselves deep within the soil, forming a web so well developed and so entangled that pushes back when we try to look clearly at how it really works.
This forest is where we live. It's who we are. It's the morals and value system that we, as a society, have upheld and emboldened for centuries; I make this analogy between racism and nature in this country because it is as pervasive and as real as nature. It is some part of everything the light touches but in this moment, all of us are being invited to challenge that system and think about how to effect real change.
I believe in my heart that the people who are going to make this change happen are listening to me speak right now. I know this is true because it is you who are the seeds of the future. You are the seeds that will grow into a new and different forest that is far more beautiful and loving than the one we live in today. I believe the path forward to eradicating the blight of racism relies on three principles which form the basis of my faith and my perspective on nature, and what I believe humanity needs to thrive.
These three things are time, sufficient effort, and divine grace. We need these three things to be replanted anew, whole and with full hearts healed and inspired as a country, as a forest of seeds that have been mutated, nurtured by new and ingenious ways of watering and divine intervention that speaks to us all through the great mother nature with a voice of compassion.