Take leadership role: Rutgers-Camden commencement speaker

A story on Rutgers-Camden commencement from my colleague, Jonathan Lai

Drawing on his personal experience working to improve health-care delivery in Camden, Jeffrey Brenner called on Rutgers-Camden's graduating students to take leadership roles in revitalizing the city and improving the region.

Brenner, a primary care physician who received a 2013 MacArthur "genius" grant for his work as the founder of the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, spoke Wednesday afternoon to hundreds of graduating students and their families in the Susquehanna Bank Center.

"My goal today is to challenge you to think about the future of our region and your role as leaders in the region. You've received the gift of an education and with that gift comes important civic responsibilities," Brenner said, going on to describe how he had grown up in a segregated South Jersey that used property deeds and legal tricks to separate people by race and class.

He left the region for his medical residency in Seattle in 1995, he said, expecting not to return, thanks to "the backwards attitudes about race, gender, class, and sexual orientation in our region."

But Brenner did return, joining the Cooper University Hospital medical system in 1998.

"As I looked at the abandoned homes and the broken streets, it felt like I'd walked into a family kitchen where a terrible fight had happened, with smashed dishes lying everywhere, but no one was talking about what had really happened," Brenner said. "The explanations didn't seem to explain the level of devastation in Camden: 'They burned the city down,' 'it was the riots,' 'the jobs went overseas,' or 'it was the political machine.'"

"How could such a beautiful, wealthy city that made phonographs, ships, records, radios, televisions, and soup, become such a basket case?" he said. "It felt like a family feud had happened, as ethnic groups retreated angrily to their own enclaves: Italians moved to Bellmawr, the Irish to Runnemede, the Jews to Cherry Hill, and African Americans to Lawnside and Sicklerville."

The city had been torn down, Brenner said, by "a failure of leadership and a failure of imagination … leaders in our region didn't rise to the challenge of race and class, and the region broke apart."

Brenner also criticized New Jersey for having too many small municipalities, where insular communities were allowed to wall themselves off from others.

"We have choices about our tax dollars. We can continue to be one of the highest-taxed, most-segregated, most-suburban states in the country, or you can rebuild our cities and break down our walls," Brenner said.

The graduates of Rutgers-Camden, Brenner said, would need to play a role in revitalizing the city and, thus, the region.

"So your generation has a chance to write the new story for our region. You will have many choices to make in your personal life and your professional life: You can run for office, you can serve on boards, and you can use your voice for a new vision for our region. We can work together to tell the stories of what really happened before that generation dies off," Brenner said.

"You are now, with your diploma, children of the enlightenment, and you have been lucky enough to receive an education," he said. "I hope you will be a voice for the future of our region and stand up against intolerance."

Brian Everett, 21, a junior from Cherry Hill studying Spanish and urban studies, said Brenner's talk was a perfect fit for Rutgers-Camden, a campus that has emphasized civic engagement and service learning.

"That type of call to action almost is absolutely what this campus has become. It's not just a place where the suburban kids come and get their college degrees anymore, it's a place where students really are expected to make change," Everett said.

"I wish I heard it when I was a freshman, and I wish more people would have heard it when we were freshmen," he said, adding that he had been following the New Brunswick campus' controversy over having Condoleezza Rice as speaker but thought Brenner would have been the perfect choice for that campus as well.

"I guess more traditional [commencement speeches], it's almost, in a sense, anybody could come up with it," he said. "Usually a commencement speech is supporting you or just basically saying 'Congratulations, you've done a ton of work.' But this one was it was almost a run for office speech. It was fantastic."

Brenner's remarks are transcribed below in full:

Thank you so much for the chance to join all of you today and thank you to Rutgers for this honor. I deeply appreciate it. Graduates, family members, friends, faculty, and administrators, I'm honored to be here today to give the commencement address for the graduating class of 2014. You've worked so hard to get to this point and I'm here to congratulate you as you move on to your next steps in life.

My goal today is to challenge you to think about the future of our region and your role as leaders in the region. You've received the gift of an education and with that gift comes important civic responsibilities. Today, I'd like to have a conversation with you about race and class in our region. These are hard subjects to talk about in America.

I was raised not far from here, in Gloucester Township, and attended Triton High School. My mother was a real estate agent, which is a little like being a fisherman. Life in our house was full of stories about the next big fish, the fish that got away, and the fish on the hook. Selling real estate is feast or famine, with great highs riding on the next deal and deep lows when the deal falls through.

I remember quite vividly when she came home complaining about a potential listing. A homeowner who wanted my mom to sell his house, that's how you make money, getting people to let you sell their homes or helping buyers who want to buy a home.

She was tied up in knots. The owner had told her he'd only list with her if she agreed not to sell his house to a black or hispanic person. Knowing that this was illegal, she explained the law and refused to take the listing under these conditions. It wasn't the first or the last time. It was South Jersey in the 1980s.

My grammar school, Chews School, didn't have a single African-American or Latino student. My middle school, Glenn Landing, and my high school, Triton, in Runnemede, had only a few minorities. These were not accidents, but intentional segregation.

In the early part of the 1900s, it was legal to have language in property deeds restricting the sale of property to minorities: Asians, Jews, Hispanics, and Blacks were blocked from buying homes all over the country until the Supreme Court struck down racial covenants in property deeds. Later, it became hard to get a mortgage or homeowner's insurance when entire neighborhoods were declared undesirable by the federal government through redlining, because they had too many minorities.

When I graduated high school, I swore I'd never come back to this region. I set off for college, medical school, and eventually residency in Seattle, Washington. I looked back at my childhood in South Jersey with positive memories, but they were overshadowed by the backwards attitudes about race, gender, class, and sexual orientation in our region.

Each year in Seattle, thousands of young people showed up in June after graduating college. Known for its beauty and its progressive politics, the city was booming. There were high-tech jobs everywhere, and I had a front-row seat to what it looks like when a city is succeeding.

Upon finishing residency, I decided to move back east to be closer to family. My professional plan was to work and live in an underserved community, and I was lucky enough to get a job with Cooper Hospital. I moved from downtown Seattle, in a summer, to downtown Camden.

I was unemployed for the first few months, waiting for my medical license to be processed, and I wandered around the city of Camden and spent time in the historical society. As I looked at the abandoned homes and the broken streets, it felt like I'd walked into a family kitchen where a terrible fight had happened with smashed dishes lying everywhere but no one was talking about what had really happened.

The explanations didn't seem to explain the level of devastation in Camden: "They burned the city down," "it was the riots," "the jobs went overseas," or "it was the political machine."

How could such a beautiful, wealthy city that made phonographs, ships, records, radios, televisions, and soup, become such a basket case?

It felt like a family feud had happened, as ethnic groups retreated angrily to their own enclaves: Italians moved to Bellmawr, the Irish to Runnemede, the Jews to Cherry Hill, and African-Americans to Lawnside and Sicklerville.

Beneath the broken dishes was an angry and simmering discontent as each group rewrote their narrative for the region. And each group had their own story to tell about their own exodus from Camden.

My favorite story about the city of Camden, and our region, in its good days, is the story of Eldridge Johnson, he was the young machinist, not much older than all of you, who figured out how to mass-produce gramophones, records, and eventually that turned into RCA, where they mass-produced radios and televisions in Camden. Camden was at the cutting-edge of new technologies in the era of recorded sound, radio, and television. Camden was a wealthy, high-tech city not unlike Seattle, where I'd lived.

But capitalism can create and destroy very quickly.

Our region was once wealthy and powerful. Immigrants moved here. Presidents visited here, seeking our votes and support. The world bought our inventions, and the country fought on the ships that we made. Camden could have become the 25th poorest city in the country, or the 50th poorest city in the country. It didn't need to become the poorest. It once led our region in job creation, innovation, culture, transportation, and commerce. I believe it was a failure of leadership, and a failure of imagination, that destroyed Camden. Leaders in our region didn't rise to the challenge of race and class, and the region broke apart.

Our region will never realize its potential with America's poorest and saddest city in the middle of it. The city and its residents don't need charity, but an honest and forthright discussion about race, class, and segregation in our region.

[APPLAUSE]

In 2009, the New Jersey Department of Health statistics across all of Camden County showed that the average age of death for whites is 76. For African-Americans, it's 65 years old. And for Latinos, it's 56 years old. For whites, the difference in life expectancy is 83 years old in Haddonfield and 72 years old in Gloucester Township, where I grew up. That's a 20-year difference based on race, and a 10-year difference based on class.

Segregation by race or class has consequences. This is life and death stuff.

Researchers are learning that lives are shortened by stress. Stress in Camden comes from having a corrupt police department, failing schools, polluted air and water, unsafe streets, and healthcare that's difficult to access. Stress in Gloucester Township comes from a collapse in the middle class, the export of jobs, and the rising costs of healthcare and college. Stress makes you age more quickly. We've all seen what happens when a friend or family members goes through hard times: They look older on the outside, inside their bodies age more quickly as well.

Our municipalities in New Jersey are a legal form of segregation, where you can wall yourself off from families of different race or class. This segregation is hurting all of us. We have a different municipality for every three traffic light. We have two of the smallest municipalities in the world, in Camden County: The borough of Tavistock, near Haddonfield, has five residents, and the borough of Pine Valley, near Clementon, has 12 residents. Both municipalities are actually golf clubs, and the country clubs where the town council meets. Both have elected mayors.

Our municipalities have used zoning law to exclude people of different classes or races. It's not an accident that Haddonfield is 94 percent white, and Camden City is 4 percent white. Despite a decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court called the Mount Laurel decision, communities continue to buy their way out of having a fair share of low- and moderate-incoming housing, paying communities like Camden to take their share. Segregation, legal or not, is still segregation.

We have choices about what our region is gonna look like going forward. Together, we can rewrite the story of our region. We can reimagine a different region, and break down the walls that separate us. We can heal the trauma that the breakup of Camden caused.

Our future depends on innovation. New jobs depend on innovation. Innovative regions don't have America's poorest city in the middle of them. Innovative regions don't have municipalities with five people living in them. Innovative regions don't have a school district, police department, fire district, and mayor every three blocks. Innovative regions don't embrace segregation, they fight against it.

We have choices about our tax dollars. We can continue to be one of the highest-taxed, most-segregated, most-suburban states in the country, or you can rebuild our cities and break down our walls.

Our region is capable of great things, like Cooper River Park and the PATCO train network. Even the idea of the Ben Franklin Bridge came from our region. The closure of the Camden City Police Department and the opening of the Camden Metro Division of the Camden County Police Department is one of the most important urban and regional innovations in the country, thanks to our mayor.

[APPLAUSE]

It has saved countless lives, it's saved your tax dollars, and it's made us all safer in the region.

So your generation has a chance to write the new story for our region. You will have many choices to make in your personal life and your professional life: You can run for office, you can serve on boards, and you can use your voice for a new vision for our region. We can work together to tell the stories of what really happened before that generation dies off.

The city burned down because another generation couldn't figure out how to get along. Your generation can change that story, and many of you already are. The city of Camden made our region great, and we can choose to return it to greatness.

So let me close by wishing all of you, all of the graduates today, best of luck in your next steps in life. I wish you great success in life. You are now, with your diploma, children of the enlightenment, and you have been lucky enough to receive an education. And I believe, with that education, I hope you will be a voice for the future of our region and stand up against intolerance. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.