Geoffrey Canada interviewed by Julian Bond: Explorations in Black Leadership Series

jeffrey canada welcome to explorations and black leadership thank you i know you were only two years old when the brown decision came down in 1954 but when it became you became known about it and what it promised what did you think would happen well you know this is this is really fascinating because i grew up in the south bronx in new york city and we saw that issue as having to do with a cro being across the mason-dixon line now if you ask were we totally segregated absolutely we were did i go to schools that were totally segregated absolutely but in my mind uh this had nothing to do with me this was happening someplace else and it was a while before i started really becoming aware of how significant this was it was it was a piece of history that i heard glimmers of but i think my grandparents who had come from north carolina to harlem and later to the bronx to get away from the oppression and to try and find work we thought we were living the good life i think later on we began to realize uh that there were real limits uh and this uh major decision was as critical for uh me and those of us in the north as it was for those people do you remember how old you were when this dawned on you that this affected me affected us yeah i was probably uh 12 or 13. and the first part of my life i you know like a lot of african-americans at that particular point in time i wasn't necessarily too thrilled being black right being negro as we called ourselves uh i was very brainwashed by the culture i was living in uh and we used to tease one another about having big lips and a big nose and dark skin and i mean i used to constantly argue with my brothers that no no no no i'm yellow i'm not black right they would be this thing and and that was like almost an insult and that's the culture that i grew up in i'll tell you what changed it i was standing on the corner in the south bronx and a couple of people from the nation of islam we didn't even know who these guys were came and they began to talk to us about being brainwashed and the older guys sort of you know they laughed they just sort of blew them off but they started saying things like have you ever thought about why everything bad is black and they began to say black hat black monday but and i sat there and i said oh my goodness there may be something to this and then i it feels like the veils were sort of removed from my eyes and i began to look around and i said oh my goodness what's going on here uh and the place that it impacted i think in my own consciousness the most was at the schools i began to look to see what was happening in the schools uh and i began to look at a system you know i was in uh sort of the number one class and they called it i was in 4-1 and 5-1 and then the classes went back and it was all based on what someone thought was your ability and kids even in one grade i mean one class behind so if i was in six one the kids in six two no one thought that those kids would go to college and they didn't pretend that they thought they were hoping they might be able to finish high school and kids who went 6-5 no one even thought they could finish high school and so i sat there and thought this is not the way other people are living there are other places in this country and race seemed to have a primary sort of impact on how people thought about your life expectancy and suddenly i became very interested in brown versus board of education and what i think it was trying to do which was not just equalize the uh i think funding and say integration could but to actually allow african americans to get an education so that they could improve their lot in life and that wasn't happening for those of us do you think those kids in six two and six three absorb this expectation that other people had for them it was totally absorbed i am still even till this day absolutely devastated by the generations of young people who believed that they were not going to be successful so this is this is you know in my family i'm the one of the first ones to go to college um but there are about four of us who went to college i was uh fine because i was the kind of kid that i was always very good carriers and teachers uh the other three each one of them were told my aunt my brother uh and my uncle each one of them were told that you should not even think about college uh and so these were the ones who luckily just sort of somehow fought through that uh it doomed almost all those other kids because that's you internalize i'm not smart enough uh and it made you not want to work hard it made you not think you could do the work so you didn't bother studying and you didn't do the homework because you thought what's the point where am i going with this thing uh and i think there were generations who were destroyed by that system do you have a sense now all these many years after brown and 54 all these many years ago how it did affect your life even though initially you thought it didn't touch you at all well there were some really uh i think important ways that uh it impacted my life first of all i think that it it really said that there was something going on in this country that allowed those of us who weren't part of that uh initial generation of the civil rights movement uh that there were some doors that were being opened and we had better take advantage of it there was a and i think this by the way i think this was a generation i think my generation so i was born in 52 so right now i'm 56 i'll be 57 in january of 2009. so uh my generation was the first generation that actually got some benefit from brown versus board of education but it allowed us to think there's an answer and you know what the answer is the answer is education and you get a good education and you go out and you just open up this thing so everybody else will come charging in behind you and it really focused me on saying uh people fought people died for this now i've got to take advantage of this opportunity and try and change what's going on in my community and i think a lot of us felt that the competition uh the the absolute pressure on us to prove that we deserved to be sitting next to white students that we could compete at the same level drove a lot of us to actually strive for excellence uh and i think there are a group of people when i look and i see this group that's from my generation that sort of are in the top places in america i was in school at the same time ken chennault was and uh and there's just a number of us from that generation that thought this battle is about getting a's and about showing folk that we are just as intelligent and smart as whites and that was part of the i think culture of our growing up because it wasn't at that time it seems now people think that's such a racial thing to say there were actual studies where people were trying to prove the inferiority of races uh when i was still in college that there were people who were writing about this why you know this was really genetics this was not so we felt that we were in the vanguard of that struggle and i think brown versus board of education was the first thing that opened up the doors and allowed us to really get quality education all over this country i remember when i was young remember saying that jackie robinson broke through with the dodgers because he was better than all of the other baseball players and that therefore we black people didn't have to be as good we had to be better was that part of your coming of years this was exactly how we felt that in the end if you were not better you were not going to be able to get the same opportunity that that someone would say yo no no it's not race we just don't uh you know you just didn't reach that threshold uh so we really did grow up believing that by the way i think a generation later uh that was not the case i think that people actually began to under achieve uh because that same pressure wasn't on the next generation because i think my generation was part of the generation of first you know the first one to do this and the first one to do that and the first one to do this and so we were always sort of breaking through these barriers and then once the barriers are broken throughout ah so what's the big deal right but was that what stopped stop this breakthrough barrier impulse that we'd broken that barrier so therefore what made it stop i think that for a lot of us we thought that the biggest challenge we were going to face was just getting access and boy if you just gave us access we could just go out and do anything now we understood that because you had to be better you're gonna have to work harder but you know what that's the kind of preparation you need for leadership right you end up working harder and longer and being more focused and more determined than anyone else we were doing it because we were trying to prove that we could do it i think that for a lot of kids this pressure to be the best uh to prove that you can do what other people haven't been able to do that that pressure really lessened now there are there are lots of reasons it's not like suddenly after my generation the schools got better the inner city suddenly became wonderful everybody got great jobs so they were all of those barriers remain the same but i think this sense of uh that we were in a sort of a race to the top that we had to get there and just tell the world oh no we can be a surgeon or i can be a businessman or or i can be the first woman that runs the law firm that those kinds of pressures we felt intimately growing up in school we felt that it was an obligation to our race to do that that we had to continually knock these barriers down so you couldn't say we couldn't do this so no matter what it was look the first time we saw those williams sisters playing tennis oh there's another bag oh we gotta look we say oh they're scared now cause we're coming after them in tennis next thing we'll have them in ice hockey right i mean it's just like it was just this sense that we had to say to the world we can do all of these things at an equal level and therefore this issue about whether or not there's some genetic predisposition for any of this stuff we can throw it out the window and we thought at that point we'd be seen just as human beings but you know using the williams sisters as an example after them with say tiger woods is an exception we we haven't seen the black ice hockey star where is he and why isn't he why isn't he showing himself yeah you know i think that some of this has to do with where we are growing up and there are communities you know and and most of the communities i've been in ice hockey is not something you would have to go out of your way to find it so that meant that even if uh you were talented you would probably the chance of that one family or two families would end up with a talented young person who could do that i think are probably will i'll tell you this but i think once you break through i would bet and i don't know this for a fact but i would bet there are a thousand young african-american tennis players hoping they're playing right now thinking that maybe i'm the one right that i can but before them i don't think people felt it just wasn't our sport it was like if you put a tennis court there there was no one to really tell you how the game went and where you're going to get the racket so i think that every time we do one of these we open up the door i certainly know and if you play golf uh i'm a real hacker at golf course i learned it really late in life but i loved it and i know it's had an impact on all kinds of folks the fact that tiger woods was there but people forget now so tiger woods is young not from my generation right younger people forget there were actually discussions about whether or not they were going to let tiger woods in certain uh clubhouses because they were still restricted i mean i'm not talking 1800s no i'm not talking brown versus boy i'm just talking yesterday this was still part so we're still breaking through these doors even today which is a little sad um but i think that there's you know what uh did he have to be better than everybody else to do it yes yes he did yes he did and was he yes and will it allow some other black professionals to just come up and i think so i think so you mentioned a moment ago having to be better than whites uh being as good as wasn't good enough did people tell you that did you hear that being said by family or teachers or others how'd that come to you around the sunday dinner table okay which was a formal dinner in my grandparents house right you had regular dinners but sunday was formal uh the conversation would come up and it would cross generations uh every so for my uncles who were 10 years older than me the message would go out no but you know you've got to be better if you want to just get a break you've got to be but you got to be the best you can't be just but you got to be the best so they're not going to let you win we heard it at every level if you're not the best they're not going to let you in and we believed that so this was coming from i think people who loved us cared for us but also understood that we didn't know what we were facing right we didn't understand that you know prejudice and racism really existed because we were so cloistered in many ways by living in these segregated communities that as they began to prepare us to leave those communities that then we would face this now by the way so i never faced this until i went to college right because i stayed my elementary school was all black middle school black high school was all black so now i go to bowdoin up in maine 90 95 percent white and then i understood i was stunned because i was the best i was the best in my high school right so i went up to mainstream wait i go up there i'm gonna show these people something i was at the bottom and then i said wait a second uh this this separate thing is not working for us because if i'm at the very bottom at a place like bowdoin then that means all the other kids who were below me they don't even have a chance and what we thought was a good education was not a good education and again brown versus board of education came to my mind because this issue of separate but equal see even we there was no one for us to integrate with per se because i think in places like new york city it was all based on where you lived in geography and you know and to some degree if you if you got into one of the specialized high schools you would be mostly the majority of folks in those schools would mostly be white but you had to take a test to get in those places and every other school was a neighborhood school so we didn't come in contact with this uh very uh often and some kids never came in contact with it if they didn't get out of their community and end up at a school like a bowdoin or another school that was mostly white you mentioned your grandparents dinner sunday dinner table who else was it that has been significant in your early life who in your family and your school teachers in your neighborhood who who touched you well well i have to start with the two people uh my my mother was one uh she you know it's funny my mother uh always told us the key to this whole thing was reading she just kept saying the key to this is reading and then no matter what happens no no the key to this is reading you just have to read and she allowed me to read all kind of stuff i was reading adult books when i was still in elementary school and she didn't care if books had curse words and stuff she was like no the key is reading right now i say oh let me read that book right the key so this idea that the key was reading now this is another thing we were very poor very poor and my parents used to tell me stuff which i hated to hear them say it right because we couldn't afford stuff like haircuts and so your hair is not cut it's not everybody else was laughing and teasing my mother would say it's not what's on your head it's what's in your head that's what then i'd be like i don't want to hear that can i just get a haircut you know and but you know what years of those kinds of messages began to really seep in and it's suddenly i started you know saying that to myself so that was initially i think what's began to prepare me uh to work hard uh there were a couple of key people in my life are separate than this one was a young man who was growing up in the south bronx who himself had dropped out of school and he just decided he was going to save me and i don't know why i don't know why it was me and not any of the other kids but he just grabbed a hold of me and he said you're not going to end up like himself he said you're going to go to school you're going to be successful and everybody looked up to him his name was mike everybody looked up to him and he actually stopped me he wouldn't let me drink he wouldn't let me smoke right now it's not in a nice soft way that people might think the things he told me he would do to me if he caught me i couldn't repeat but the idea was he decided some of us have got to get through this thing and i've decided you're one of the ones who's going to do that so you wouldn't see him in any of the formal education and well he wasn't a teacher but he actually helped me navigate my way uh through the south bronx and then after that uh there were a couple of teachers who just decided that they would not accept sloppy uh work from me and you know i i could write better than the other students and you know i the teacher would come and they'd be furious at the writing and that's that's the best stuff in the class what do you and i knew it right and i was like so what are you getting on my case why don't you bother paul look at his and they were like no no this is not and they really made me because i had gotten lazy simply because there was not no competition around they they would not allow me uh to do sloppy work or work that would not sort of stand up outside of the neighborhood i was growing up in and i think that those kinds of folk really shaped my life what about your grandparents and your first grade teacher well people know that uh my uh grandmother uh as a woman that i loved she passed away some time ago but she's probably one of the most unique people that i ever met because even as a five-year-old she would talk to me like a real person people don't usually see children and so they don't ask you really important question my grandmother would ask me questions like you know do you really believe in god and i would have a cup no i don't grandma let me tell you why and i'd go and i'd explain stuff and she'd listen to me and she said well you know what let me tell you and we would have these really deep conversations now if someone came in the room i would have to stop and she would stop right because people would have thought that's not appropriate kids don't talk like that you weren't supposed to speak your mind and say but she treated me as if i really had a brain and it was working and it was worth listening to even when she didn't agree with me and that kind of opportunity really propelled my own i think cognitive development because she allowed me to freedom to speak my mind to to explore boundaries which we were just told no because i told you so that's why it is and she would say no why do you think that and then she would come back well this is what i believe so that really had an impact on me my grandmother the biggest impact was i thought the key to everything was money we were poor and if we could just get money that everything would be okay and my grandmother was the kind of woman and if people may know someone like this if you ever hear of the brinks truck right the doors pop open and the bags of money pour on the highway and some person always takes the bag into the police station even though no one's around that's my grandmother we would sit there and say you would take it from why would you actually because it's not mine but if no one could see you they know i would never keep something up and we would sit there and say but we don't even have any money you don't have a dollar it didn't matter she told us it's about values and these values you don't steal you don't lie and she honestly meant that and her job was to try and save my soul because she knew i listened to it i was like yeah if i ever got that my hands on that money go right underneath my bed and i would and she really believed that was wrong and so it took years i would love to say that she got to me in a year or two it took years and my goodness the same grandmother who i then after i really got uh grown i was in college and and i was planning my whole life i was gonna pay her back right because i realized what she had done for me and how much time she spent with me and she was always available to me and she got cancer and it was really painful and bad and she had a pretty painful death but she was a a real believer in god i mean she she really believed in the end that she was trying to live by a set of principles that she felt like were christian principles and i used to always this is now you know i'm talking this is 1972 and we had all of these sayings about religion being the opium of the man i mean you know we were really rebelling they were preachers and we were and i remember i went into her uh because she was a good woman she lived a whole life and i always asked her if god exists why is it that good people have to suffer right and so why why is it that the bad people always seem to get the money and have all the fun and good and we would have these conversations i remember going in and she was on her deathbed and i said to her grandma you've lived a good life you've never lied i don't think he said you've never stolen you've done everything right by god and now this it's painful it's it's really terrible uh do you believe and she said i believe more now than ever he said it never was about believing when things were going great uh and i never understood faith until then and people sometimes say jeff don't you you know how is it you always keep this attitude that thing but i remember what she told me uh faith is really when things are tough it's easy believe when you're getting everything you want uh and so she really had an impact on me that that lasts till this day and what about the first grade teacher well first grade i i had this wonderful teacher in the first grade who uh was trying to connect with me because i was i was a kid who was easily distracted uh i had learned sort of the abcs and stuff like that and first grade to me was just very boring and i just wasn't focusing she kept trying to get me focused in the class and she tried everything painting in the eye and then wasn't really into the painting and she tried poetry she just got a book and she started reading this book and i remember sitting in the back of the classroom and she was reading it's about this guy who had these eggs and eggs were green and he didn't eat them on a house and he didn't eat them with a mouse and he didn't eat them here were there and i had never heard dr seuss before and i just remember thinking oh that is that is the most amazing thing i've ever heard it was just amazing to me and i i said you know excuse me could you read that book again and she read it again to the class and and i just it was so great i had to hear it again she was like jeff we have to move on she had to take it home to read it at home so i took it home and had my mother read it and the next day i came back to school hand was up first thing i couldn't teach her could you read and she said no no i can't read it uh and i was crystal and i just and she said well go go in the back and you read it and i went in the back and i read the book uh in the first grade i had never been taught to read and people when i tell a story people say well don't you know what it takes to teach your kid to read and i said yeah when i was at the ed school at harvard i taught reading as one of the things that i really took uh classes in but i learned to read because this wonderful teacher just kept trying to connect with me until she got to me and just opened up a whole new universe and when people sometimes say you know all children can learn but they don't really mean it i know no absolutely all children can learn this is really about whether or not we found the right key to unlock that sort of i think uh great potential that people have inside of them and this teacher did it and changed my life and i read look by the end of the first grade i had read every single dr seuss book in the school everything and i was absolutely convinced that my life was over because i went crying to my mother and i said i'm only in the first grade i've already read all the great literature in america you know and i was just really and she turned me on to langston hughes county cullen and i had poems and i always had a book of poetry uh and i was sort of tough growing up in the south bronx it's really tough in a city neighborhood uh and you know i was reading a little jeffrey chaucer or something you know some canterbury tales reading and it was all because this teacher sort of opened up my eyes to literature and poetry uh in the first grade tell me about your grandfather what effect did he have on you well you know my father left when we were infants and so uh we grew up my mother uh was raising four boys by herself uh and the only man in my life as a role model was my grandfather and i remember he he was a big man who always had a car which was in the south bronx was like a luxury and i used to think we were rich and it took me a while to find out that we were poor now he said and that the reason his whole career ended was because of john uh kennedy that president kennedy uh during his inauguration didn't wear a hat and my grandfather was a hat blocker that he and men wore hats and it had to be blocked and that's what he did for a living he made hats and he blocked hats and the business fell off a cliff and he just literally lost his job uh and i don't know whether it was really because of president kennedy or if it was just a changing men's styling but that's what's how he always told the story uh but and he didn't have a he didn't have a more than i think a fifth or sixth grade education so he wasn't going to be able to enter into the labor market uh so he did all kinds of things he sold fruits and vegetables and he he just made sure he always worked for his family and he taught me how to work i mean how to really work uh and uh it didn't matter what we were doing uh that we had to do it well you had to deliver quality to people uh and you had to have uh i think the tenacity to get the job done uh so i got my work ethic from my grandfather sometimes pick me up six o'clock in the morning we'd go down to uh the lower part of manhattan to get the fish uh we'd sell fish all day cutting them and cleaning them and everything else and you know come home that night i'd get a dollar i was thrilled like a whole dollar uh and you know after a while when i first started working people would say like wow you work long hours aren't you tireless you should try cutting fish all day on your feet traveling i mean that's a tough job you're smelly it's you know fish all over everywhere uh it prepared me at 9 10. i was used to working all day and we had worked with him all summer and i loved it and i just loved it and the idea of working for a living was something that i never was without a job by the way after i was 10 years old i always had some kind of job that i did for selling newspapers walking dogs and i always loved no matter what the work was i always loved the idea of working and providing and helping my family with money uh so that work ethic i think i got from my grandfather back to your family what about your siblings what influence of any did they have on you i had uh three uh brothers uh and my oldest brother dan uh was just the most he he uh now uh is a manager in a nuclear facility in south carolina uh but he was one of them i said that the teachers told him that he wasn't going to be prepared for college and i remember how hard academics were for my brother because they had convinced him that he was not uh bright right they just said yeah he's really on the dull side uh and it wasn't until he went away to college that he found out he was almost everybody uh and so uh dan was a nature lover and he taught me to love nature in the bronx we had chickens oh i don't know how the neighbors uh stood us uh we had a snake which got away and an alligator and he just loved nature and he always uh made sure that i was he's two years older to me that i was involved in in nature and those kinds of things uh my second brother john was just a phenomenal athlete and he taught me something about talent which i i i believe that everybody uh has potential um but it's not easy for everybody to realize what their talent is and your talent might be very different john was an absolutely phenomenal athlete and started playing with the older kids at 17 18 year olds when he was nine and ten i could barely play with the eight nine year olds and he was playing with kids who were almost grown and and was a star and it was just he was talented he worked hard at it he loved it uh he died when i was in a sophomore he was in the air force and uh died and wasn't war related he died or over overdose uh and he didn't really even use drugs he took some barbiturates and drank and he just passed out in his sleep and died but he did teach me something about talent and he had it and i understood that some all of us have talents and you have to really figure out what your talent is and the next sibling my youngest my youngest brother reuben uh was uh is uh just an absolute uh genius uh with uh his mind and hands and can put together anything and take apart anything and he was the first one to actually teach me anything about math because we used to learn these mathematical formulas that were totally meaningless numbers that ran on and on and reuben started working in radar and defense and all of those numbers meant something to them they were really using uh i think tools which had such specificity that you had to measure things to them so he brought math alive to me and uh i think allowed uh all of us to understand why uh i think these subjects really weren't important because if you didn't learn them it cut off these careers for you and i actually have never had to figure out uh you know the the third side of a triangle or the you know uh what what how many degrees were in you know an optics uh try that none of i've never had to use any of that stuff he used that stuff every day and so he could have a career i had to learn it and then forget it but he actually used it and helped us understand and appreciate math do you remember as you were coming along both before you entered school and after and as you went away to college or before even when you're in high school historical events that had some impact on you what do you remember from these years uh there were a number of things i was in the sixth grade when president kennedy was assassinated and i remember my teacher just burst out in tears and this was a time now when again this is history so interesting when we used to have these drills preparing for the soviets to drop an atomic bomb on us where we used to get up underneath the desk and the idea was that you get up underneath the desk and you would stay there and they used to practice this sort of stuff and so we were always worried that something was going to happen and when she broke out in tears we were all thinking could this be it and then she explained that the president of the united states had been assassinated i remember just being devastated uh and we all were and and the enormity of it because i wasn't the thing that my parents and grandparents told me about president kennedy was that he liked us us being african-americans that that he really liked us and i was thinking this is chris he really likes it no he really likes us and so when i found out that he was killed it really i think devastated me now the nexo from sixth grade through high school uh i lived through one of the most turbulent times i think in this country's history uh because we uh had not only the uh assassinations taking place so you get barbie and you get king and you get malcolm x all of that happening in the next eight years or so but you also had the cities burning in the summertime we had the long hot summers where there were riots in the street uh and each i remember by the time martin luther king was killed i remember thinking that we would never we meaning african-americans we would never see anything that looked like equality in my lifetime i really i don't think i was the only one who felt that way i felt you know after president kenny i was trying to explain to people why president-elect obama was so powerful for so many of us because the last person that looked like they were really listening to the cries from the the disenfranchised with bobby kennedy and right in front of our eyes they killed him and with that i felt well there it goes that's the end of that all of this stuff about you know we're going to make sure there's equality that is equal playing field it really opportu it's all over they'll murder anybody who says that stuff again and i just thought this country will never allow african americans to reach their full potential uh because it seemed clear now my age uh at that time we thought it was one big conspiracy there were just a bunch of these well they're killing all of the leaders and if you say certain things in this country you will be killed and we just believe that uh and then you know you look at history and you figure out who and there's some people who still believe in some who don't but it was just among me and my friends we all believed that if you crossed a certain barrier in this country you would be killed and so you could not say certain things and we thought they were symbols of those kinds of things so how do you juxtapose that feeling that they'll never allow us our true opportunity with my previous statement that a bunch of us felt it was our duty to smash through these doors so we said we're going to smash balance those things because we said we're going to smash through every door they'll let us smash to without killing us that was the deal how far could you go so you know you never get the president that one they'll kill you so leave that one alone but could you maybe run a fortune 500 company maybe you thought that was getting a little dicey but maybe uh could you be the president of a university that wasn't all african-american i don't know but if you were smart enough maybe work for a major law firm maybe so we thought we didn't know how far i thought maybe my children right could continue to push this and then maybe we would get something like an african-american president but never thought it would happen for us so we just thought we've got to open as many of these doors as wide as possible so that we kind of advance the cause another couple of steps uh and all of that i think was from uh this was a time and i don't think anyone's done really good writing about this time you had the black panthers you had folks actually talking about armed revolution in the country you had the nation of islam uh so you had all of this agitation going on with some people saying let's get guns and take it and other people say no it has to be non-violence and there was this huge debate that involved both african-americans and whites uh you know one of the things uh no one really understands about the weather underground bill ayers is sort of like relic oh i remember that group uh and i remember we thought no we're not messing with those guys they're radical and they're out there so there was all of this debate right now about how we could change america and how far you could go before you crossed this sort of danger threshold and that really influenced my life very early on and some of us felt that if we did not push that envelope we would actually be letting our race down let me take you back a little bit to the time when you realized and you've said that there were monsters in the world when a young kid malcolm was shot down tell us about uh what did that do to you yeah well you know uh growing up in uh the south bronx uh we uh really you know we knew we were poor so that was fine uh and we knew it was tough uh and that was fine uh but we really did not know uh that there was evil lurking around us there was a certain innocence about uh growing up in in in a city uh and when they killed uh malcolm this young boy who was really poor in the rest of us uh and it was over nothing they were and i remember my my youngest brother reuben uh was there they were rolling a tire and we'd just make games out of anything we'd find some piece of junk and we'd use it and play with it and a guy opened up his window and just yelled out the window hey you guys cut out all that noise and laughed and paid no money it took 9 10. and they kept playing god came downstairs with a handgun and just shot and killed mom just right there in the street in front of everybody and after it happened you know if if if we had been doing something really terrible right if we had been breaking people's windows then you would try and you could put it into sort of a gestalt that made sense no you can't go this far but this just said boy something could just happen that could change your life instantly you have no control over it at all and we realized that there were monsters there were people around who looked like regular people but at certain times if you got on their bad side or crossed them or ran into them at certain times you could really see uh that they were dangerous and they could kill you uh and one of the reasons so this is this is now i'm talking maybe uh 66 there weren't a lot of kids being killed by handguns dan when the handgun issue really became serious in the 80s and handguns began being pumped into urban centers all over america the idea that these monsters see to me the monsters were grown men right these these were grown men who might these weren't your friends this wasn't the guy that you met around the corner when the monsters become a guy you grew up with who lived around the corner a guy you saw every day i think it began to really change uh the way you think about your life in this country we knew they were monsters we thought there was some slight possibility we might run into one of them and they might kill us uh and i always thought that i wanted to come back in a community and say well there are monsters but they are heroes right there are people who are there to fight so don't be scared right just don't be scared we're going to be here when handguns came out i began to see this issue of uh you know who's going to protect the kids and the adults sort of not being in the forefront of protecting kids as a huge problem in poor communities particularly african-american communities because it has a real impact on african-american boys and if you look at the murder rates and if you look at the incarceration rates and if you just look at the level of inner sort of personal violence that happens in so many of these communities you see the end result of what i was afraid of in like 66 that the monsters would become real you know this is a natural segue how did you come to choose your career to do what you do now how how did you get from these earlier feelings to where you said right now yeah it's all so personal with me uh and most things i do in my life you know so i told you about the tracking so i i had these friends and we were really this is at a time where a friend you would say to a friend watch my back and what that meant was if i got into a fight and somebody tried to jump in would you stay and help fight that person or would you run so a person who would run could not be your really good friend but someone who would watch your back was a good friend so friendship was a qualitative thing that we could measure by how close you were and how willing this person was to possibly get hurt with you so i had these good friends they were terrific they never had a chance no one ever thought they were smart uh pretty soon they didn't think they were smart and i watched these young people end up dying and getting arrested and going to jail while i went on this other trajectory and i always thought that and this is i knew i was going to do this work when i was 11 or 12. because it became very clear to me one of the things about reading one of the things about reading was that i found out the way we lived a lot of people didn't live that way there was a whole different world out there that you didn't grow up living with roaches and rats and having to worry about people shooting you and robin that that was for some reason this was this was in our neighborhood but if you only went 15 blocks away people were growing up with a totally different view of what childhood looked like and i just thought to myself why why did this happen to us and where are the adults to come in and save us one of the things that this sounds silly now but one of the things that really depressed me it's hard for anything to depress me i don't get depressed was when i found out there was no superman i used to read comic books and you know you read them at that time we thought superman was really and then i remember one of my friends i didn't know superman i mean that oh yeah it's that superman superman he's coming they said no there's really no superman and i remember i asked my mother and she had no idea what i was asking her because she thought i was asking is this mythical this cartoon real and i was asking isn't there somebody who can come in and save us and she said no no superman's not real and i thought there's no one coming it's just like they're just gonna let us live like this and this is just how and i thought you know what there ought to be someone coming into these communities and saying the kids no i'm here i'm going to make sure the monsters don't give you i'm going to make sure you get a good education i'm going to make sure that this system works for you and i knew that at 11 or 12 that that's what i was going to do with my life and if you look at my academic career you'll see every single course i took was designed to try and help me figure out what i should be doing to help these kids have success in their life well again so you're you chose your education that i'm going to study this and this and i want to study this i'll study this and this and this and i'll learn about this as this because there's going to come a time when i want to be able to help kids help children and these things will prepare me to do that but could you say then that you had the idea of all this that we see around us today was the children's zone notion in your mind then or has that developed over time well you know it's it was a fantasy but it was purely fantasy right uh and i never thought that we would ever get an opportunity to do something like this you have to but this year we'll we'll spend about 68 million dollars in harlem and over the next couple of years we'll spend a couple hundred million dollars here and if you asked me back in 76 when i first began teaching is anybody ever going to trust you with that kind of money i was like you kidding they know where i come from they're never going to trust me to do something like that so it's part of what i think we're doing different and and one of the interesting things i think about my own role in this work uh is that i actually decided i'm not going to play along the margins i'm going to actually try and figure out how to fix this right so i want to fix it so every time you try to fix it people tell you all the things the reasons you can't well you got housing you got health you have mental health you got education you got child care you got into poverty i mean you just so and i kept saying okay okay so we have to solve each one of these areas we have to figure out what we can do and then we'll be able and every time you begin to try and sort of peel one thing off there was another thing and another and after a while people throw up their hands and say well i can't do all of that i'll do this but this is all i can do and i'll do it for this group of kids so when we begin to say well why don't we figure out how to go into a community and we decide it's going to be 97 blocks and help all of the children from birth straight through to graduation why don't we just figure out what that looks like and what kind of supports would they need and what would we have to do with their parents and how would we how would we build the team today uh that was a very liberating thought uh i never knew where the money was going to come from and when someone said well how are you going to pay for all of this i don't know where the money was going to come from but i decided you know what i got too old i said that uh you know i i haven't really been honest about what it would take to really i think stop this generational poverty the group of kids that i grew up the same community i grew up in uh their people are as desperately behind today as when i was there in the 50s i go once a year we have something we call old timers day in the south bronx and i go back and i just say why we could fix this uh we know how to fix it it's not ever it never was everywhere new york city is not everywhere in new york city the same pockets the same issues they've lasted all of this time and i said we could we could figure out how to do this uh and so no i never thought at the time when i began this work i wanted to be a teacher and i wanted to save 20 kids i said if i could save 20. and then when i had done that wow maybe i could save two classrooms and i couldn't teach anyone i said well i'll run the school and then maybe i could save all 200 kids and he said well what if we and so it started from there and it really became as i think i opened up the possibility that it could be more uh it sort of made me think about then what is it that you're really trying to do for my own curiosity when you're going through this list of things you have to fix the housing bad housing the schools school's not good health not only physical health but mental health you know help was there something you did not think about that later you had to say boy we left this out yeah one of the areas we hadn't thought about in our community was asthma it was uh it was the number one reason for school absences and the number one reasons that young people end up in emergency rooms and when you look at school and attendance so much of it was being driven by asthma that we actually had to create a program uh you know the new one for us today is obesity it is just it's an epidemic in our community and we're doing we're doing all of this work and spending all of this money and it's going to create a group of people if we don't tackle this which are going to bankrupt the nation because we'll have to spend so much money on their health care as they get diabetes and hypertension and just go on and on and on and so this was a new thing for us okay look we've got to figure out how to do this but by and large if you asked me 25 years ago what do you think the key ingredients of this is to be successful i could have laid out the same menu right so there was nothing that was sort of revolutionary we didn't know if handgun violence would be as big an issue but we knew violence would we didn't know it would be handgun violence so those you know there are this kind of changes that are kind of subtle uh but basically it gets back to uh brown versus board uh it gets back to education it gets back to are we making sure these young people have an education where they can compete and what's stopping that from happening and to me that's what this whole thing is about uh and for some poor kids there are a lot of things stopping that to happen it's not just whether or not you know the schools are equitably funded and whether or not the schools are integrated you've got all of these other barriers that you have to remove before these young people can get an education but uh this is america we could do it and they're all interconnected they're absolutely on and connected and people keep thinking somehow you can do this one and not have to worry about that one and i think with the the research all says no you've got to make sure that you remove these barriers and and by the way this is this is the part that um i think bothers me so people come in they say oh you provide health care we have a health clinic you know the mental health oh yeah we have psychiatrists social workers uh you do education yes we run our own schools uh you do all the social recreation yeah we got great recreation great culture great arts and they're like isn't that great and i think no it is simply average that's what the average middle-class kid gets in america there's nothing great about that i'm great about that they figured out some great thing like we created some new way of educating no this goes on all over america it just doesn't happen in poor communities and so what we're trying to do is just simply provide for what happens in other places in the country that no one thinks anything particular about you go into you know a nice upper middle class place you got this healthcare services great school no one thinks anything about the streets look nice and everybody's like oh yeah fine you know because i mean so-and-so and you say whatever the name is right and it means i'm in scarsdale say oh of course what would you expect in scarsdale well you know what we should have that for poor children and no one should think that that's like some great big thing that we're providing for them uh because that should be their uh right as americans in my opinion yes it should be the average it just should be average it just should be average let me read something to you you said when i graduated from bowdoin i was a different person than when i entered i knew my vocation would be to work in the poorest communities this country had to offer it was my calling when my when i came it was my calling when i left but being at bowden was like being plunged into a brave new world the people had changed me what do you mean by that well you know this is one of the great things i think about education so i grew up poor i had never been around even middle class african americans so i went to bowdoin i found middle and upper middle class whites and i found middle and upper middle class african americans and i had never seen anything like it before and very quickly uh so here's one of the first things in in the south bronx when we were growing up we had a certain culture of toughness right that was just the way we so if we submit somebody for the first time you're gonna be like yo how you doing and you know it's just like everybody would be cool and so i was meeting these kids hi how are you and i was like whoa and i was saying yo what's up how you doing and they and no one talked to me for the first six months and i was wondering so later i asked my friends i said look when i first got there you guys treated me so bad they said you were the most hostile person we had ever met right always acted like you were but it was just the way we were sort of brought up and so suddenly i had to confront all of these issues i'd never been around white people before i just never been around white people before and so suddenly i'm surrounded and i'm finding out hey they're just people they'd just be good bad they're just people didn't know that uh the thing that really got to me i met some of the most brilliant african-americans i had ever seen in my entire life and i looked at them and i said i want to be i mean i could barely understand what they were saying right these were like seniors and they were talking about dialecticism and all that i'm just sitting there and never heard these words and i just said i want to be like that and as a role model it inspired me uh to take academics serious and to want to become a scholar and they sat us down as freshmen and said all of that's good whatever happened but here you've got to be a scholar and you're going to have to take this seriously and i know if i had gone to another school uh that had uh i think less rigor to it uh i would have been happy to party my four years away uh and pass my classes with c's and thought that that was great here there was a bar that everybody said you have to get to that bar and everybody around me was trying to do that and there was no escaping that and after a while i just accepted that that was the cultural values of that school and i became that myself and then after a while this was about how many aids you received in your classwork and not about whether or not you made the varsity basketball team or you were playing football or some of those other things uh and that when when i left bowdoin and came back out i still understood the streets and i still understood um but i was also a changed person i was just as comfortable being in uh the company of educated men and women who had a different set of cultural values than i did growing up so you didn't think as someone might have thought that the change in you was a loss that you were losing something that you had left something behind of yourself you just added something it was that you know the the the wonderful thing about it was that i've always worked in inner cities uh and with poor children uh and i started out working actually in boston and i was working with all white children they they weren't african-american but they were poor and they felt uh they felt neglected they felt everybody were singling them out because they were poor they didn't feel like uh they belonged and i i was like well i i know people feel like that that just feels like you know you're all just white you all don't understand as a whole bunch of people feel just like that and the ability to bring the experiences growing up poor to that group and to be able to connect with them because i understood what that felt like was something i've used my whole life so i actually thought this was an addition and not a subtraction uh that the change allowed me to move from talking with a group of kids in the project be they black or white and feeling comfortable walking through that neighborhood as well as it did going into a boardroom and talking to people about budgets and finance and those kinds of things uh and i think that that uh change uh happened uh while i was at potent your decision to go to college in brunswick maine far away from the south bronx very different uh could have been put down to chance with chance what do you think how much do you think of your life has been chance luck something fortunate happening as opposed to deliberate planning and oh this this is the reason that i believe we've got to allow poor children real opportunities because without that luck or that chance my life is over i'm not graduating college i'm probably ending up in jail or on drug or something that happened to all the rest of the kids who didn't make it out and i always thought it was unfair see in some communities if you if you're not lucky you don't get into harvard right now i can't go to harvard i have to go to state school say oh boy you weren't unlucky in some communities if you're not lucky you end up in jail you end up dead uh and part of the challenge i think is for us to level the playing field uh there were two things that were turned out to be just luck when middle school i went to junior high school uh by my seventh eighth and ninth grade by ninth grade i was interested in girls i was interested in studying i just wasn't focused on it at all and hormones kicked in and there it was and this was i didn't know how important this time was because you had to test to get into the best high schools in new york city right it was bronx high school science stuyvesant brooklyn all of them had that so there was test prep and i was in a really good class but i wasn't going to test prep i wasn't interested in that and if you didn't get in those schools then i was going to end up going to morris high school in the south bronx i knew if i went to morris it was over for me i wasn't coming out it was this was like a gladiator school that's what kind of school it was uh but you think at 14 that i could wrap my brain around how important no i could not right i'll get to the study i'll get it done well so i take the test i don't get in now i'm sitting there thinking oh my god i'm going to morris and so what i better do is get tough because forget being smart you don't make it in mars if you're smart you make it in mars if you're tough and so now i'm thinking oh my goodness i've got to really get tough knuckles i'm going to mars my grandparents moved out to a little town in long island all black called wine dance never heard of it before and out of desperation i asked if i could come live with them and go to school there and it was a quiet school with no violence no drugger and they said yes and so there was the second i got luck for bowdoin luck not to go to morris and my whole life has changed uh and i think that that's one of the shames of this country uh that it wasn't whether or not i ever had the potential it was just whether or not i was trapped in a place where i was not going to have an option to run into quality experiences which would give me an opportunity to reach my own potential and i think there are millions of young people who are trapped in these kinds of places where unless something lucky happens they're simply not going to make it out and i think that that's that's a shame as you look back over your life when did you begin to think of yourself as a leader well interestingly enough it started when i was about maybe 12 or 13 which sounds so strange now but i'll tell you why we used to travel around new york city on the trains by ourselves uh and when i i have grown kids but my my wife and all my wife and i also have an 11 year old and when i think about how much freedom we used to have in new york city at 11. i would able to go blocks i could get on the train i could travel anywhere i wanted to go well my mother really showed us how to use public transportation and showed us how in new york city you could get anywhere once you got in the train system and so we used to just go exploring we would just get on the train get off at some stop me and my brothers and we would just wander around new york seeing sites and the other kids on the block just they weren't allowed to even leave the block much less get on trains and so we used to do tours for the kids we take them and we take them to the bronx zoo which was to them like going to a different country when we we knew how to take the trains and it was all so mysterious and i realized that i actually i absolutely loved opening up new york city to other children so that they could get a chance to uh explore it with us so this issue of leadership to me these were younger kids these weren't so they were like two years younger than me uh i i think in in my professional career uh my leadership grew out of the fact that people and people ask me about this issue when i worked at uh the school there would be things that would come up that needed to be done and they would ask uh look will anybody stay to help do so and so and usually people would say no i'm not getting paid and i always thought if you're about the mission then you you know so i learned how to do all of these different things and then one day the director of the school said well i'm leaving and you know we need somebody in a number two position who can do budgets uh he might say well jeff you did we asked you to do those budgets a couple of times how do you feel so and next thing i know i was a number two and then the number one guy left and then i said and i would this was now i had to be all of 27 28 and they said you know well you have any interest in running the school now the truth of the matter i was thrilled to be number two and the idea of being number one and sort of being the the principal of the school was something that i hadn't wanted to do anything else but there was no one else who really felt like they wanted to do it and i thought i could do a good job and then i became the leader and the thing that helped i had a wonderful professor from harvard named john schlein who mentored me for the next two or three years in that leadership role and helped me i think develop my own leadership style uh which then i think continued over the next few years so there was this early time when i when i loved doing it but even in the later parts of my life when i became a professional and i ran the school which was my first professional leadership role i found that i absolutely loved being able to organize i think good people around the mission and trying to help kids and that's what i really like to do but in addition his early experience in leading your friends in the neighborhood around the subway system of new york city what about the organization brothers through unity you're young then too what about that growth through unity uh i was uh very uh young when these africa these african-american uh guys uh who weren't from business uh so this had to be i was in middle school so this had to be maybe 67. uh they decided they were going to come back into the hood and help some guys because we were struggling and i had it was like these guys came from a different world they were in shirts and ties and their shirts were white white and and their shoes were gleaming and they came in and they said look we want to help you guys and my best friend one of them was his uncle and he asked me to come and i i kind of thought they were corny right you know these corny guys they're coming into the ghetto they're going oh yeah this is really cute but they say we could have a basketball team and i i i said well does it come with a uniform and they said yeah we'll get you a uniform and then i they had me so now i'm in it and they actually try to teach us leadership skills uh and uh it was amazing because uh it was years years later that i understood these guys were really doing the kind of work that i always hoped to be able to do the difference i always wanted to i think have was they really sounded like they came from a different world and so when we saw them we we didn't see ourselves in them right we saw them as coming from someplace else into our community we didn't see them as people who came up through our community and therefore were role models for us and i thought that was one of the things that uh i always wanted to do i always let kids know no we wanted welfare we were poor we had all the same stuff uh and that can't stop you there's no sort of secret thing happening outside that prevents you from becoming some uh something great yourself which i think is really an important message for young people now how would you describe the difference between your vision your philosophy and your style or how do these interact with you yeah well vision philosophy and stuff well you know the the the vision uh i think i told you grew over time because i was afraid to really articulate the full vision which was to go into a place and save all of the kids and do whatever it takes to save them all i mean that's the vision we have and we're in the process of doing that uh the philosophy now my philosophy has really uh on the undergone some real changes over time i grew up in a time when we were trying to figure out whether or not capitalism could work for poor people right would it just destroy people and uh sort of grind you up and spit you out while certain groups of people got rich and i was very ambivalent about sort of being in america which is a capitalist country and it taught me it took me a while before i began to see that there are tools here that are very very useful in the work that i want to do that the ability to i think motivate people to to bring people together uh and reward hard work differentially uh was something that it took me a while to develop uh and so if you looked at my early style which talked a lot about sort of egalitarian we've got to all pull together and you deal with me now which says you know uh people who deliver the most should be paid the most and i want to make sure that people know how you get rewarded i think that philosophy has developed over time and i think uh matured uh somewhat i think people my style is essentially i think i have one view of my style but people who work for me might have another but let me tell you what i think that but my view is uh is that i like to bring a lot of people together to hear ideas i am never uh one to pretend i don't have very strong opinion and very strong ideas but i've learned to be more patient about suspending my own beliefs long enough to really listen hard to what people have to say uh and so when we want to do work i try and get uh 10 or 12 of the closest people and the leadership roles in the organization together and have a con i don't care they could be in fiscal or development it doesn't matter what they're i just want to hear what do you think about this issue what do you think about this problem and then to try and encourage people to come and solve it now 10 years ago i felt the need to solve everything myself right because i know what to do let's go out and do this and then charge off and come on everybody let's go now i i don't think that's such a great leadership style anymore uh will can you get things done yes and if you're really good can you get good things done i think the answer is yes but are you teaching anybody anything about sort of uh how you solve problems how you deal with complicated uh issues uh no no you're sort of lining people up and saying i'm in charge follow me uh which i don't think allows leadership to spread uh in other areas so as i become older i've become much more i think aware that my style needs to be more collaborative it needs to allow people to have more of an input believe me if you talk to folks they say yes what he thinks he's doing but i'm not sure he's really doing that because he is off charging uh it is it is tempered by time right that i don't feel like i've got a lot of time to waste i can't sit around and let people figure this out for the next five years right so but we do have uh time if it's going to take us a week a month to come up with a good i want people to really uh i think uh have a chance to grow and develop but this issue of time i think impacts my style because i'm impatient and i think we can do it and i think we can do it now and the only question is how do we get organized and focused so that we can is the focus on time the difference you described when you began describing your style saying you would say one thing and people who saw you from the outside would say something different yeah i think i think that the the there's a certain pressure that people feel uh to deliver uh that uh it's really comes from me i think that people know that uh i think that we are going to fix this whole thing and we're going to do it and another three or four i think we're closing we're about 70 percent there uh i think in the next three or four years we're going to fix the whole thing and i am i am trying to gather folk with this mission that says come on we can fix it come on let's think about it this is just a matter of us not having thought this through or hard enough so i want you all to think harder on this uh you have to juxtapose that with me also saying and could you do it tomorrow could you get it done by tomorrow because we gotta we got to get this thing going i think that that's uh become part of the style which is you know let's all think but but come up with answers so that we can get working on this thing right away is is the vision you described just a moment ago does that guide your work does that keep you on a sort of single track yeah you know it's it's easy to get drawn off and lots of different things and i think that people worry that when we say we have to do everything for kids they say well you can't do everything right and so you have to be really strategic about some things and some things you're simply not going to do um i think that for me uh this issue of can we really get this generation of kids in this community to a place where they are going to i think uh reach their full potential uh that that vision uh has to stay paramount and it becomes frustrating in a time like today and then why because we're in the midst of an economic crisis right we were saying jeff i have to cut back something to be realistic you know i know it was a big vision it was bold and now you know reality is coming in and we've got to rework this and i'm not prepared to do that uh i think that and i'm not it's not like i'm not gonna be realistic and understand that without the resources we can't but i'm not prepared to back away from the vision and say that this vision now has to become somewhat minimized because these external realities are going to sort of limit uh who we can reach and how many and uh the depth of that uh reaching and so uh i think that that in the end uh if the vision is to fix it uh then that has to stay division and even when external things which are really powerful forces come into play you've got to keep focused on your vision i think the vision ought to be the last thing to go and that ought to go kicking and screaming right but people often make it the first thing to go meaning they come in and say jeff be realistic and he said okay okay yeah you're right where are we going to get the money to do this and okay let's change that let's i'm if it happens i'll go kicking and screaming i'll tell everybody no we absolutely can do this and we're going to do it and i think that we've got to hold on to that vision some people categorize the making of leaders in three ways a great people cause great events b movements make leaders c the confluence of unpredictable events creates leaders appropriate for the times what about you what what was your path to leadership yeah uh this is the uh thing that i think young people who often want they they ask me if i have a couple of hours to mentor them and what they really want to know is can you tell me how to get where you are and what the secret sauce is in doing that and i remind people that i've been here 25 years that's the first thing people yeah and and i say you know for 15 of those years you know i know who i was that wasn't it there never was a plan that somebody could say well how do you get from here to that was never the plan the the my leadership really was focused around an issue uh and trying to solve that issue and just staying focused on that issue and by the way i never thought that anyone would ever necessarily take any notice of this work which is part of him when i'm still with some guys i went to school with from bowdoin and they work here with me now and uh we'll get in the office we still laugh can you imagine anybody ever thought anybody would care about this stuff is just hard for us to believe uh so the first thing i think is that this was all around mission uh we saw something that we cared passionately about uh and we said that we're going to try and figure out how to solve this and uh we were prepared to work on this until we died uh and we thought it was important and it was worth doing uh and no one ever no one thought you're gonna make any money uh no one thought there was any fame and by the way most most of us didn't even think the people we were helping weren't necessarily going to like us that much it wasn't like people are going to applaud for you you know when you're doing tough stuff uh that uh work i think this focus on uh can we solve this problem uh is i think in the end uh how i would describe the leadership now for us to get here there had to be some opportunistic things that happened that we had to be prepared to take advantage of that's absolutely true and so when opportunities presented themselves we tried to grab those opportunities to sort of leverage our work and move forward with that work and i think we've been good about doing that but if i had this program and no one knew anything about the program and no one knew who i was and no one even came to look uh i would like to think that i would feel no different about this work than i do right now it never was for any of those other kinds of things i had a young person who i've known for many i knew when she was a little girl and she now is a teacher and she's going for her master's degree and we had lunch the other day and i was just looking at her remembering when she was 11 and her being so scared that she didn't have the right stuff that she just wasn't going to make it and she was talking about she was going on a trip to africa and she was going with a friend and they were going to go on so far and i'm just looking at her thinking this is why i was telling my wife but my wife knows her also and we just got the biggest kick out of knowing uh that you know that's the promise of this work that after a while you know no one no one knows anything about that she she doesn't have to tell that story with her life but she's having a good life uh and you know for some number of kids we've made a difference so i think that if you're looking there are some people who want to be leaders right and they want to take leadership development because they want to be leaders and that's a path to leadership that i am somewhat doubtful about and the reason i'm doubtful about it is uh that when we bring young people into the organization ask about leadership we say the leader is usually the one who works the hardest the one who works holidays the one who works weekends when we're doing something christmas they're the ones who work in christmas and they can do that year after year after year people want to take my job he's like i'm going to be the leader leader i want to be in the room in the office and say no no no no that we don't think that's the way leadership leaders do what needs to be done whatever it is and they do it for as long as it needs to be done and they can outwork everybody else and they never lose touch with what the mission is if the mission is let's move the chairs and make this play then that's what we do and the moment that you think the leader tells everybody else what to do we think you've lost sort of the essence of the kind of leadership that we're trying to do here and if you look in my agency there are people who come up through the agency and uh one of the reasons i think we're able to do the work is that the leaders have learned a set of academic and professional skills while at the same time doing that and tough long hard service to their community and i think the two of those things so they are now the guardians of the gate so if you want to be a leader like well yeah well how many weekends did you work in how many years have you and i just think that that's a different level of leadership uh because it's leadership that comes not only from hard work and study but also from service and you never forget who the client is and the client is not you and your leadership skills or your uh i think uh uh a celebrity the client really are those young people or those families or whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish so i think that's how we see leadership here in the organization how does race consciousness affect your work do you see yourself as a leader who advances issues of race issues of society or both are these different is there a distinction is there such thing as a race transcending leader well you know it's interesting i i told you i started my career working with poor white students and it's probably one of the things that was the most eye-opening for me because i saw those kids uh as very similar to the kids i grew up with in many ways except for their skin color and after a while they actually because they this was in boston in 1974 1975 when boston was going through busing and these kids were the shock troops for the bus and these were very kids who had been brought up to be violent and racist that's how they were raised so they get me walking into their classroom as a teacher and i tell everybody it's the teacher's equivalent of guess who's coming to dinner right i walk in there those kids are looking at me i'm like what's going on here i have no idea sort of what this deal is um so what it said to me was that part of the problem in america is the issue of our children we have categorized as being about black children and it's not about black children it's about all children but people think it's black children so they think it's my children so whenever i go out and try and talk about saving children they hear me saying i want to save black children which means jeff's children not american children which means our children and i think that that has been a real challenge now i used to uh take some comfort in the fact that people recognize that black children had a particular set of issues and circumstances which we needed to deal with you you can't be in our work and not look at the plight of african-american men and so it is different than any other men in this country and we need to focus on that but as a leader i think part of my challenge has been to get americans to understand that we are saving american children who happen to be black and i wouldn't care if children were in appalachia or uh in mississippi or in seattle if they're poor and if the deck is stacked against them i think as americans we need to change that uh and we shouldn't be worried if they're native american children or if they're poor white children they're poor black children that our job in this business is to really get americans to think about their children uh by the way uh here's how complicated this thing is in america uh our new president is considered a black man right and he's going to be the first black president so ayan this is what i wonder so black people are very proud of him right because like yes we've got a black president and he's ours but we all know his mother is white right so do white people claim that i mean do they feel like well this is he's ours too or have we so brainwashed america that people reject the fact that he's half black and half white and only see him as black and therefore they don't feel the same kind of pride and this smart intelligent person and i don't think i don't care what racy was i think people would say wow isn't he interesting this guy is really smart and together but i think that's part of the dilemma around leadership is that so much of it is colored by race that sometimes people miss the issue as an african-american do i want to save my children and they are african-american yes but if they were all fine all my kids was fine would i want to save latino children the answer would be yes and if all of them were fine would i go to the next group the answer would be yes i don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to save african-american children if you're african-american um but if i just wanted to save them and i could say to hell with everybody else's children i think there's something really wrong with that so it's complicated i hope to get one day in this country where we just save children and they're equally at risk not based on race uh or not ethnicity or religion uh which i think will make the issue easier now uh pro you know it's not a lot they're more poor white children and poor black children but you would never know it in the way we think about children in this country the more poor white people in this country than there are black people period yes um do you have a different style of leadership when you deal with groups that are all black that are mixed black white or all white uh i have something different for each one of those groups and and one of the things i find with all black groups is that we have our own shorthand and i don't have to explain a lot of what i'm talking about sometimes i can say so you all know how it is and they know how it is and i'm talking about my grandmother or often i'm talking about um here's an issue that we get into sometimes uh corporal punishment getting spanked right so i talk about how my mother you know when if we messed up she she spanked us and my grandmother she gave us a whooping and we knew the difference between the two because we didn't mess with grandma and you know and i'm i'm talking to a black audience almost everybody has somebody they're relating that story to uh that's uh in their own family and so i don't have to spend as much time i think that in mixed audiences uh you tend to uh have people often get get it get a comfort level if i'm talking about something by looking and seeing how another african-american they so that's okay they're laughing they're having a good time i shouldn't be nervous about because i can be very loose with with my conversation and stories uh i think that uh in uh wide audiences i think you have to spend a little bit more time connecting with them and saying i'm all right you're all right and i want you to know i think you're all right i don't want you to worry that i don't think you're all right uh and so that takes to me a little bit of making sure that there is a connection that happens that's not shorthand that you're just not jumping to a conclusion that i know who you are what your experience has been who's in the room is there a danger further divisiveness if we focus on the concept of black leadership well that's a that's a great question and i don't i don't think we we have to worry about that danger yet uh and it's because i think that there's still some ambivalence i think in america about what black leadership really means uh if black leadership becomes exclusive so if barack obama the president is a black leader then people are going to be petrified right because everybody's going to think well isn't that what they always wanted black leadership and now that they've got it are we cut out of this deal and i think that there's a fear that somewhere along the line maybe it's get even time it's like we know you all been mad so now if you all get leadership so i think that there's some degree uh there people are ambivalent about this but i don't think that right now when i talk to people and it's clear that your mission is to create a set of circumstances that levels a playing field i don't feel like people are really worried about that i did hear some um talk that so many african-americans voted for obama right and he was like oh yeah he got more the african-american vote than anyone else and and so it's but what i've tried to remind the people was that early on uh when people thought hillary clinton was going to win uh he was not getting most of the african-american vote people didn't just vote for him because he was african-american as people began to think well you know what this guy is really talented and good he won people over and i think people dismiss that and just assume it was because he was african-american and everybody decided to vote for him so i think the country is learning uh i think that as people are getting more and more use of african-americans in leadership positions you know colon power people i don't think anyone's worried about colin powell in a leadership position right they believe he's fair and even when he says what he says the people say well i wonder if he said that because he was black i don't think they then discount his leadership so if he said well i want to go and lead americans i think people say yep that's great because colin is terrific we understand that he's going to be fair uh because he's been in that position before so i think we're learning to be comfortable with african americans who who talk about black leadership and african americans who are leaders who are also black right and i think there's a difference uh that the country is still grappling with right because there's some african-americans they're just leaders the king should know the leader he happens to be black he runs american express people don't think he's a black leader right so that's one issue uh with someone to look at me and they say now jeff's a leader in the black community he's a black leader uh and then i think getting trying to figure out what that difference is is something i think the country's still grappling with i don't think it's divisive i don't think it's divisive because i don't think that people have felt that we've wielded unfair power over their lives so that they're excluded now affirmative action was one of those areas that people say okay now you're hurting me so that's going too far right but so there may be moments like that again but i think that there was a leadership style in america that i would consider people who are from my generation which was really looking at the uh discrimination the racism the prejudice and pointing it out and saying to people i i demand you look at this that made people very uncomfortable they say oh boy i don't know about jesse jackson i don't know about al sharpton they make me nervous as black leaders i think there's a different group of leaders that people are saying well you know this is really about issues and if race happens to be an issue they'll mention it but it's not their issue it's not the issue that they're dealing with they're dealing with other issues so i think we're in i think we're in a sort of a transformative stage right now and everybody's trying to get used to what this means and we don't know how it's going to come out and i don't think we know how it's going to come out yet do you think black leaders have an obligation to help other african-americans you know what i really do and i i thought everybody assumed that we were on the same team i just think it's like football right so you're on my team so we're all trying to score the touchdown and because you were black i assumed you were on my team and i hate to tell you how old i was before i found out it's not everybody thinks like this i mean i i was probably in my uh early 40s and i was talking to family members and they and one of them asked me why do you do this that's what i do is to help our people yeah they said why that's what do you mean why you don't feel any need you're like no and i was stunned i'm like you don't feel anything and i'm like no i don't what i go out i work i do i said but you don't like you have to and so then i thought well i'm assuming this and it's not true but do i believe it's true the answer to that is yes uh that i think that we have a responsibility to level the playing field to make america a better country and if you have benefited from being in this country and you have an obligation to level the playing field and if you're african-american i'd like you to start with african-americans you have to be limited there but i don't think you should ignore the plight of people who are present like you're a native american i would assume that you would try and help the native are you italian i would assume i wouldn't say anything wrong with that i would think you'd say well looks a great country i want to help my people you extend it to other people so that was an assumption i had it's not a reality meaning a lot of people who don't feel that way but i thought that's how the game ought to be played but if the if the obligation exists is there a point where the obligation ends yeah i think i think there is a point when the obligation ends uh and i think that's when uh we've really leveled this playing field and i and i don't mean that like that's some lofty you know 100 years from now kind of uh issue i think that uh there are certain groups in this country that still don't get equal opportunity uh and and it can't be talking about women i'm talking can't talk about gays and can you talk about after they did these groups and i think we have to demand that america level this playing field and we are obligated to keep fighting that fight uh in particular if we are from that group uh until this playing field is leveled uh look i don't i don't think we have to go outing people right you know the gay community i'm not going to keep that job and be gay and not say something about so we're going to out you i don't i don't think that's what we have done i don't think we have to go and stand in front of fortune 500 companies and say you know what have you done for black people lately but in quiet conversation when we have people i think we have to remind people that we need their help and their help would be important and that there's an obligation and they can reject that but i think that people need to be reminded that the playing field is not level because here's one of the challenges the better you do in this country the harder it is to understand that others aren't doing as well and why they're not right because you most of us have done this because we've worked so damn hard you say well they worked hard like this and they would do well too so what are you bugging me for and i think that it becomes easy to look at them and say if you all would just get up and go to work and do this everybody you get your kids and your family in that same environment and then say the same thing and it's a problem and i think that people as you get wealthier and you get live in these communities that are more and more exclusive you forget how hard it is for some families growing up so to remind people to say yes i think that's an obligation you have to do that's terrific uh i don't think it's divisive yet uh i would there's a lot of things i thought wouldn't happen in my lifetime i would love to think that there's a point before i died and i say all right black people it's over right we've done that now everybody go do your own american thing because this is one america and i do think other countries feel like that i don't think when people consider it their children i was over in norway and they were norwegian children and they were concerned about norwegian children and you know when i looked at norwegian children they looked like norwegian children but people were concerned about that i'd love to see america get to that same place and then i don't think this issue of what race and nationality you are is going to be as important what do you think is your greatest contribution as an african-american leader i i hope it's going to be that we have proven without a doubt that we can take large numbers of poor disadvantaged students and get them in and through college and on the path to success and i i want to prove it so convincingly that this won't be a question of whether or not it can be done it'll only be a question of whether or not we have the will to do it uh and if the country then says you know what yeah we could do it but we don't want to spend the money uh fine then i feel like well look i've done my part let somebody else battle this next battle right now people are still saying we don't think this can be done and i'm hoping to make sure that no one will be able to be comfortable with that saying well there's no real proof you can do this and so you know we don't want to necessarily make these investments because we don't know if we're wasting money and we could probably do a smarter i want to end that whole conversation and just get it down to do we care enough or don't we uh and let people fight that one out do you see a crisis in leadership in black communities today and and if you do what contributes to this i think there is a crisis and and i think that i'm part of the problem and maybe part of the solution uh and this is what i believe and i learned this the hard way uh i mentioned kenshinok because we're friends and he runs american express and we both took over our organizations at about the same time and i go and occasionally once a year we go in and talk about running organizations and business obviously american express is a thousand times bigger than our organization but organizations organization there are many many similar things and i was talking to him about leadership and he said to me you know one of the first things my board demanded when i walked in here is that i have a leadership succession planning uh in place and i said really it's oh yeah they like me but this was never about personality this is about uh how much money you're going to make and if i'm out of here they want to know that the company is going to be fine and so that they've really thought about leadership and how and i think in our community many of us who were in leadership positions have not taken this seriously in thinking how are we preparing the next generation for leadership uh how how is it that we get out of the way and allow leaders to come up uh and one of the things that i'm convinced that i have to do is i just have to leave this position i just i can't stay yes i told my board i told everybody look got another four or five years and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna i have to make space so someone else can who's younger can come in we have to groom them and prepare them so that they can take the organization to the next level so that we have to intentionally create the next leadership and then you got to get out the way so people have space to actually develop their leadership skills and i think part of the problem is that many of us who've gotten to these positions we fought so hard to get here and every moment you're here you're fighting so you cling to the positions of power until you die right and you just protect your kingdom until it's over and you never think i should make way for someone else to come in so that we continue to replenish the leadership well with our own organization like start your own organization you know if you want to be a leader you create your own thing well yeah that's great but some of us who've had i think some success at this have to think about uh what we've learned from the uh i think from the corporate america about leadership and how you bring in uh the next level and by the way it's not always successful many companies go out of business and i think that's poor leadership uh from the first leader because they did not protect their company in a way that you could ensure that that company could even get to a lousy leader to allow another leader to come in so i think we've got to do that all across america i think my generation has clogged up a lot of the leadership uh positions and you know we don't want to go anywhere uh and that we've got to start making room and we've got to start sending a message to others that there's an opportunity here for you that that if you're serious and you're committed that you know we don't plan to stay here and you don't have to go out and start your own thing there's opportunities for you an existing uh organization that are doing great work jeffrey canada thank you for being with us it is absolutely my pleasure been our pleasure thank you

Channel: University of Virginia

Views: 239,492

Rating: 4.2888889 out of 5

Keywords: Geoffrey, Canada, president, CEO, Harlem, Children's, Zone, New, York, education, social, services, health, care, community, support, engagement, opportunity, model, public, charter, schools, comprehensive, leadership, African, American, history, U.Va., UVA, University, of, Virginia

Id: 2f5MZKf6Uu4

Length: 98min 49sec (5929 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2009