Obama closed his speech by urging graduates to 'widen your circle of concern' beyond the African American community. He acknowledged the particular sting of being marginalized as a Black man in America, but then connected that experience to Hispanic Americans told to 'go back,' to gay and lesbian Americans judged for their love, to Muslim Americans stared at with suspicion, to women earning less for equal work. The argument was that the experience of discrimination, rather than narrowing their vision, should expand it — endowing them with empathy, 'the understanding of what it's like to walk in somebody else's shoes, to see through their eyes, to know what it's like when you're not born on third base thinking you hit a triple.' Obama's personal testimony — that empathy, not credentials, had been the foundation of his career — gave the advice its force. 'There but for the grace of God, go I — I might have been in their shoes. I might have been in prison. I might have been unemployed.'