Chicago Rotarian Xavier Ramey says the key to creating an equitable society is understanding where we’ve been.
by Bryan Smith Photography by Frank Ishman
Wearing a dark suit, a white shirt, and a blue tie held in place by a silver clasp, the young man walked onto the stage, flashed a disarming smile, and introduced himself to the 24,000 people assembled there. “My name is Xavier Ramey,” he said, “and I bring you greetings from the wonderful city of Chicago, Illinois.” A smattering of cheers followed, and then the young man launched into an oration that would be one of the most powerful, persuasive, and memorable speeches at the 2018 Rotary International Convention in Toronto — an event that, among its speakers, included Justin Trudeau, the charismatic prime minister of Canada.
Over the next quarter of an hour, Ramey alluded to the Book of Esther (“we were created for a time such as this”), quoted from Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail (“we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality”), and invoked what he called “the first step in [Rotary’s] four-step process to building peace”: Is it true?
But the speech was also grounded in the personal. The words from the Old Testament, he said, could be found in “the Bible that my grandmother Eudora Ramey used to read to me.” The moral code he lived by — which emphasized the importance of “acknowledging not only other people’s pain but where it came from” — sprang from boyhood lessons he learned from his mother, Arietta. And, as Ramey explained, his firsthand understanding of life’s inequities came from living in a city that King — who lived for several months in the same Chicago neighborhood where Ramey grew up — claimed “had deeper racism than he had ever seen in his life.”
Yet Ramey, now 35, relayed all this without bitterness. He had not stepped before his fellow Rotarians in Toronto to settle old scores, make political points, or employ rhetoric to incite angry passions. Instead, he wanted to send a message of reconciliation and a call for urgent action that has only become more relevant in the two-plus years since he delivered his speech.
Watch Xavier's Speech
The key to creating an equitable society in America, he said, is a recognition of the “tension” that exists between the founding ideals of the United States
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