Collin Williams:	Good afternoon everyone. 
Speaker 2:	Good afternoon.
Collin Williams:	Good afternoon everyone! 
Speaker 2:	Good afternoon!
Collin Williams:	You see I've learned from Carlene. Okay so if this were a regular Monday I would be, class would have started couple minutes ago. Holly my co-instructor I want to say thank you to Holly my co-instructor, thanks for being here today. Also say thank you to Chris who was the TA when I took the course. And everyone else from Penn from New York that traveled down to be here in support of me I really appreciate all of you. Thank you. 
	So if this were a regular Monday Holly and I would be going into class right now and we'd be talking to our group of 19, 16-19 students. And the class is about cross-cultural awareness. And it's an interactive diversity course, and it's very different than sort of your typical college course whether it be a lecture or a seminar. It's very small it's very personal, but what we have there is called the democratic classroom. And within this democratic classroom we try to create a space in which we can all talk about ourselves who we are and bring to, our real selves to the table, to then learn from one another and from one another's experiences right?
	So in this class we pay particular attention to each other's stories, how each other's stories are told, who has the power to tell the story, and what aspects of those stories are very important. 
	One activity that I leaned in taking this class prior is a game right? And so we have these games that we played sort of, break the ice, to warm up to get to know one another and sort of learn a quick valuable lesson. And one of the games is, everyone stands up and you sort of stand in a circle, and one of the instructors they hand out a card, and you look at the card you don't show it to anyone else. But there's something on that card and you take that card and then it's taped to your back. The goal then is for everyone in the classroom to sort of walk around this classroom and not let anyone else see what's taped to their back. That make sense? You have this card taped to your back, you know what it says but no one else is allowed to see it. When someone else sees this card their job is then to speak out loud and say what is written on your back. And you can choose different categories. 
	So when we did the activity we sort of assigned everyone a job. So it's like you were a farmer, you were a computer technician. And everyone has this label attached to their back and you're walking around the class and you're trying not to have anyone say what you are, cause once they find out it's then removed and you stand in the center. And now you no longer really have anything to do because you're not really hiding from anyone. That activity for a lot of students opens their eyes for the first time on what the experience is like with being honest with being candid and speaking from a place of, a lack of fear, speaking from a place of comfort. 
	So you walk around in the circle, someone sees you're a farmer. They say, "oh you're a farmer." Boom you're in the middle. You sort of ask the students, "what's different now? Now that someones called you out for being a farmer? How are you experiencing this game?" And the truth is once that label's revealed, once that thing that you're hiding has been removed you're now free to walk around this classroom with purpose because you're not hiding anything anymore. You're not hiding the shame, the guilt the doubt, you're not questioning yourself. You are now able to be yourself and to speak. So that being said I want to sort of put my labels, my professions on the table. 
	Again I'm Collin Williams, I am from Brooklyn, New York. Lived in Queens for a while, my family hails from Antigua West Indies. I grew up low income, at times I was a part of a single parent house hold. My parents lived here for my entire life undocumented. I ... to some extent I have to say that this moment speaking to all of you on this day commemorating Dr. King is one of a culminating moments of my entire life because it feels like everything that's happened has sort of led to this moment. 
	So as I go through my stories and share with you, if at some point I seem a little emotional it's because I am, this is my real life. This is me. This is me coming to you all. Also the introduction Carlene just provided had a lot of sort of academic credentials and it says all these things about me. Let's put those aside, for me that's sometimes a burden. I wanna talk to you as people today. I want to talk to you the same way I talk to my family, when I go home and we don't use this academic jargon, we don't use these big words, I just want to talk to you. Is that alright? Is that okay? Can we have some real talk today? Am I allowed to be honest? 
Speaker 2:	Yes.
Collin Williams:	Okay. October 1987. Two penniless immigrants sit in Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Dawn was one of four. Her family was very religious, and she was pregnant. She was 18, was considering having an abortion. Ended up in the U.S. without her papers because that's what she wanted to do, but decided against it. Something at some moment made her believe that her life would be different and that her son's life would be different. Six months later my mom and dad, still without any money, still living with family doing what they can to get by decided that it was best for me as their son, to go back to Antigua and live with his aunt and uncle who are a little bit more secure, financially secure. 
	I came back to the U.S. when I was 5 years old. At 5 I started school here. In the Caribbean you start school a little bit younger, 3 ... 2 ... 3. So I had some schooling work. So when I came back I was a little advanced for school. So I started in the local ... elementary school, kindergarten and I did well. My mom and dad and two aunts and uncle had realized through their experiences that in the U.S. the only way to achieve opportunity to step outside of poverty, to climb up the social ladder, is through education. So when I came back I didn't really have an option about how I approached school. 
	I like most kids, wanted to be a regular kid. Like there's nothing more that I wanted to be more than a kid. I wanted to play outside. I wanted to ride my bike. But my mom always seemed to have a very very strong agenda. 
	"Collin you cannot do this until you do this. You cannot do this until you do that. You may not watch t.v you may not go outside and play, you may not hang out with any of the kids on the block until all of your homework is done. Is your homework done?" 
	"Yes mom it's done." 
	"Well do your homework for the rest of the week." 
	"Is that done?" 
	"Yes mom." 
	"Now do your home work for the rest of the month. Have you finished it for the year?" 
	"No mom I haven't."
	"Well then you can't play yet." 
	It got to the point where I believed that my mom wanted me to learn everything there was to learn. So first grade, reading fourth and fifth grade books. Taking those math quizzes and exams, running through these practice tests and wondering why in the world am I doing so much work but not being allowed to live like a regular child essentially. And that sort of continued throughout my childhood. 
	Fifth grade rolls around. And in New York City there are very few opportunities for students with students from low income backgrounds to access very affluent schools. So when you do see students that look like me, people of color, in those schools often times they are part of some sort of program. In fifth grade I received an application from a teacher ironically enough, named Mr. Collins for a program called Prep for Prep. By this point I was in fifth grade, I had gotten almost perfect sores in every city wide exam and preparing to make the jump to middle school confident that I could get into any middle school in the city, not really worried about what would happen next. 
	But along comes this program Prep for Prep. Fill out this application I see it I take it home kinda don't want to show it to my mom cause I know anything she sees I'm gonna have to fill it out, I'm gonna apply I'm gonna be a part of that as well. So long story short I apply, my mom forces me to apply, I try not to. Then my life changes. I had no idea at 12 years old that this program would reframe the way I saw the world, reframe the way I thought about things, reframe the worlds of so many people that look just like me, that had experiences just like mine. That if you listen to what society tells us about what it means to be low income about what it means to be first generation in college, what is means to be first generation American, you wouldn't think about someone whose 26, almost has his doctorate and is about to be a professor. 
	My first all-nighter. I was sitting in Brooklyn in my room. Let me tell you a little bit about Prep for Prep. 
	So Prep for Prep it takes 2,500 most high performing students on city-wide tests and it sort of takes that number and bring it down to 150 by sending students through a bunch of tests. So you have very smart Latino, Asian, black students some low income white students that are basically competing for these spots to get into this program. And to sort of get through this process to 150 you have math examinations, you have english examinations you have ink blot tests, you have IQ tests. You have week upon week upon week in which you can no longer trust that this is the work of a student because I don't know if there's a student out there who could've done what it took to get a child into this program. What this took was the dedication of our parent who took any time they could off of work to make sure that their son their daughter was at the testing center, and that they're in the right place to receive what this program was ready to do for them. 
	There are two summers. Two preparatory summers. So there's a preparatory component for Prep for Prep. And as you're coming from public school to private school they want prepare you to make this transition. And the transition is, you're doing well in this low-income school, under resourced with a lot of students in your classrooms and we're gonna put you in this really affluent predominantly white space and no ones gonna look like you and you're gonna have to perform here. So Prep sort of says "You know what. We're gonna over-prepare you." 
	So similar to what my mom had me doing for all these years, I walk into my first day of class at Prep and I remember Ms. Lobaz she handed me a book Light in the Forest. And she said "For tomorrow you have to read the first 60 pages." Again this is at 12:00. Read the first 60 pages. I'm like "Alright, 60 pages that's a fair amount of reading. But I can get that done by tomorrow." That was my literature class. That was one of my 9 classes that day. One of 9 classes where the homework load was very similar to that. So that continued for an entire summer. 
	So imagine a child already complaining that they want to be regular that they just want to do regular things. And then you say "Hey it's your summer, summer after 5th grade now go do school. Go do a whole bunch of school." And do give you a more vivid picture. Imagine 150 little kids trying to be children getting on these big Cheese buses in the city and driving from these low income neighborhoods into the city to Trinity school which is one of the private schools that kids went to, and they housed Prep for a couple years. And they're just there like going through academic boot camp. There's no other way of putting it outside of academic boot camp. It was an intense intense session to help kids learn more than they had ever learned before. I didn't know what that was about at 12. I was a kid. 
	So the night of the all-nighter. I wanted to get all my homework done. I promised to myself that I was gonna get this done I was committed to this program I was gonna do it. Until ... I was doing homework and I'm doing homework and I'm getting through one assignment, remember your 9 classes. Get through one get through Latin, getting through everything. And the sun's coming up, it's 6:30 now. And at 6:30 I decide "You know what? I'm 12. I'm a pretty smart kid I figure out a thing or two, I'm gonna go talk to my mom it's time we sat down and we really settled this."
	"Mom it is now 6:30 I've gotten great grades throughout my entire life I've been active in church. I do all these things I make you proud. If you love me if you care about me, if you care about my development as a functional child, you will allow me to not stay in this program." And I was very serious. This was like ... I was very serious. My mom looks back at me and she says, " I understand you're tired. Go ahead and go to bed. The bus is gonna be here at 7:30 so you have about an hour and you can do the rest of your homework on the bus on the way back the next day." 
	She saw something that I didn't. Prep. The end of the preparatory component ends with you getting sent to one of these private schools one of these illustrious schools. And again you go to this school and now you're in this new environment. Getting to that new environment was pretty seamless for me in terms of academics. Cause Prep was in fact the academic boot camp that I thought so when I got to collegiate things were easy. Math was good, english was good, I was a little bit behind other students in terms of english but it wasn't a big deal because I had asserted myself in other spaces that I didn't feel like I was behind in any way. 
	Race. Going to collegiate engendered some of the weirdest most confusing emotions that one can encounter as a teenager growing up. My mom always told me ... we had a dress code at collegiate and you're allowed to wear anything you wanted as long as your shirt had a collar and a tie. Sounds peculiar right? So you can wear jeans, you can wear your sneakers boots, whatever you want as long as you have a collared shirt and a tie.
	My mom did not allow me to wear jeans, I was not allowed to dress like the other students. I had to have on pretty close to what is a suit. Pretty close to business formal. So other kids can wear sneakers, the closest I can do to sneakers were maybe some sporty boots. Maybe and that's with like sneaking behind her back. So I'm at collegiate you know dealing with these things just trying my best to be a normal kid. I just wanted to be a normal kid. Just a normal kid. 
	The preparatory component ends and then you have the leadership development component. So all these students who have left their individual respective public schools are now at these private schools. And one of the things that you sort of deal with at your private schools is maybe you haven't build the social network that you need to. So maybe you're doing well in classes but you haven't built connections with people that are like you. Particularly when you know like my situation one of your buddies, his dad owns Snapple and you own nothing. 
	So Prep had these events every weekend. And every weekend you would have this opportunity to reconnect with students who were like you who went through these same struggles but they knew what you were going through the way no one else did. Because no matter what I said to my mom, she wouldn't get it. No matter what I said to my friends from my church that I grew up with they wouldn't understand because they weren't experiencing that. Being one of three black kids in a graduating class of 52. Only people who were going through that would understand that. So that support structure was there which will come to play later on. 
	We started doing these things called leadership development modules, aspects of leadership. So you think that Prep is just teaching you these things about what it means to be a leader, not directly saying to you, "We are teaching you how to change the world." Not directly saying to you "We are teaching you how to think critically about problems that you may be dealing with that others may be dealing with. That people aren't thinking about attacking critically that people aren't thinking about using different lenses with which to approach." And those things sort of just sat there. They sat there and they built up. But again there was no immediate pressure to say "Go do this, go do that." 
	I think race became obvious. I think race became challenging and difficult and it slapped me in the face more so than it ever had in 10th grade. So imagine 16 year old teenager at this predominantly white high school, black male pretty athletic build. We have the student center and we had a ping pong table inside. And every morning we would like boys do play some ping pong before classes started and this morning, it was my turn to play. I was up, and someone walked into the class I mean walked into the room, and wanted to just get on the table. And this student had felt as though he could just bully anyone out of it. So he walks in snatches up the ping pong ... picks up the racket, goes over to the table and proceeds to start playing. A buddy of mine goes, "Hey CJ it was your turn to play why'd he do that?" And I was like "I don't know man, I'm not even gonna sweat it." 
	Quin in that moment looks over at me and he says "Guys come on Collin is smarter than that. Collin knows that if he were to dare hit me in 10 years he will definitely be working at McDonald's." 
	In 10 years he will definitely be working at McDonald's. Try to wrap your head around this moment alright? This was 2004. This wasn't 1965. This wasn't '92. This was at a liberal, very Democrat in terms of political affiliation ... it was supposed to be one of the places that we herald as a great learning institution. A place where everyone is welcome. A place where everyone is provided with the same sort of resources to achieve the same goals. But I stood in that student center that day realizing that what I had previously sort of understood about race and sort of being very I guess forgiving and not really thinking too much about it. I became curious. In that moment I walked out, I went to the bathroom I stood in the mirror and I cried in the bathroom down the hall because I thought that I was a part of this community. I thought Collin, CJ was just like the other collegiate boys. But I was wrong.
	That moment sort of reframed everything for me. So all of a sudden I'm now curious. I was taking a class with the one black teacher that we had upper school and we had read the Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois. And in this book by Du Bois this sort of archetype of sociology. Du Bois talks about John in the chapter called Of The Coming of John, who goes away to school and while he comes from this black community in the south he goes off and he gets educated around whites. And now he's displaced. He's somewhere in-between. He's suffering from double consciousness sort of these two souls in one body that are duel as in two, and dueling as in they're always fighting. Because now he's always looking at himself through the lens of someone else. 
	All of a sudden race became real to me. That moment I thought about the ways in which I could change the community that we had at collegiate. I thought about the ways in which we had sort of been grappling with these issues but not really talking about it. So at the point I was a part of JAMA which is a minority affinity group and we sort of have these conversations with the guys about what it's like navigating collegiate, how we can get through, how we can provide support for one another. That space was often threatened because the school wanted to know how we could be discriminatory why weren't we allowing white students to be a part of this group. Interesting enough we often had open sessions where we invited everyone to come and see what we talked about. But students never showed up so then we decided to stop having them. 
	While I realize the importance of JAMA and what JAMA did for us, I also realize that these conversations weren't things that we could have entirely separate. There were some conversations that were supposed to be amongst us, but there were other conversations that we needed to use to engage the rest of the community. That year I decided you know what, I'm gonna sign up for this trip. I signed up for a trip to go to the student leadership conference, student diversity leadership conference. And the first year I spent three days in Miami with other students of color from private schools just like mine across the country working through and talking about the issues that I had faced, other students talked about theirs. I eventually met my college room mate there but in that space it became real that this race thing that I kind of wanted to run away from, kind of didn't wanna listen to my mom thinking she was maybe a little paranoid ... that race was so real and that it was the beginning of so much more. 
	The preparatory component had opportunities that I did not want to accept, did not want to do. During the leadership development component Prep started sending us more and more applications to different activities we could participate in. One of them was called "Surger into the Past." Again I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to do it. My mom said, "Oh look, something came in the mail today from Prep, guess what you're gonna do it." 
	Surger into the past. Two weeks of spring break is spent going down south going to the solid south visiting Montgomery, visiting Selma, visiting Birmingham, going through the entire Civil Rights movement and reliving it and experiencing it for yourself. 
	So when I joined Prep I didn't think about this racial component, I didn't think about these opportunities I would have to learn, but while you're literally standing at the Lorraine Motel where Dr. King was assassinated and looking at the splotches of his blood in the ground in the cement you start to see things you start to understand what the words in his speeches meant. We visited Stone Mountain in Atlanta which stands as sort of a Mount Rushmore for the confederacy. So like Stonewall Jackson, General Lee, all those guys who were fighting for the confederacy they have their own Mount Rushmore in the south. And we sang in ego spirituals and let them bounce off of those rocks. And we ... learned that Dr. King and everyone else who had come to work towards civil rights who had worked to make any sort of change to fundamentally change the way that we think, had done so by believing. Believing. Like simply just dreaming and believing in the possibility that this thing can be real. 
	Have you ever had someone believe in you? Have you ever had someone believe in you? Like not someone who says, "Oh yeah you can do this." Like someone who legitimately believes in you who makes you feel like you are silly when you doubt yourself. That if you think there is something that you cannot do, they look at you and say "Hey I know you can do that, I have no questions about this." My mom was a believer. I often doubted myself and questioned who I was what space I maintained, if I was the cool guy with the Jordans or if I was the nerdy guy who went to private school who wore suits too often. 
	There were these days in middle school during the preparatory component and particularly frightful as an adolescent when you have a large backpack, you know the kids with the large backpacks? And you got like a bunch of text books in it? So as a prep kid and as a [inaudible 00:27:51] scholar kid I had a very large backpack. I had my uniform on but because we had classes on Wednesdays after school and classes on Saturdays on the weekends you couldn't have just one backpack if you're a prep kid. So you're in this larger very large public school and you have your regular backpack on, and then you also have one of those little rolly bags. And you became a target, you were literally a moving target. Like "oh look at me guys, tease me. I'm the kid you should be teasing." 
	Those are the types of moments ... that make it difficult for everyone for all of my friends who I grew up with who have had a path as similar as mine. I wanted to in so many moments to quit to take it easy, to be regular, to be normal. But my mom never saw me as normal. I saw myself as normal. Back to collegiate. 
	It's college time right? And everyone has to meet with the college guidance counselor. At collegiate the college guidance counselor was this guy named Bruce Brimer and they called him "the boss". He was around 400 pounds, very large man and he had the power at that school. Cause he's the guy that decides where everyone goes to college and eventually what their lives will look like. He would walk down the hallways and literally kids would like step out of the way and let him pass because you would do whatever Brimer says. He's the man. Admissions officers around the country know him by name, he says "Tell them the boss says hello" and they just have this rapport with admissions officers everywhere. 
	I walk into Brimer's office for my first preliminary college meeting. He pulls up my forms and my grades and he goes "oh ... Collin hmm ... well first off you don't have any problems with white people?? Good good. So you don't have to go to an HBCU that's off the table." 
	And he's looking at my grades and he says to me that one of the schools I'm interested in UNC Chapel Hill, is potentially a reach for me. That I may not be able to go there, it's out of state it's really competitive it's hard to get in. He doesn't know if I'm qualified to be there. My mom in Prep for Prep ... created ... my mom was my motivation and Prep for Prep was my structure. Because of how strongly my mother believed in me, I was able to get into Prep and have the structure that coincides with that belief that leads to success. 
	When I asked my mom to let me drop out. I didn't know that I would be able to go Serge into the Past with Prep. I didn't know that Prep would also afford me the opportunity to study abroad in Spain for five weeks as an 11th grader. I didn't know I would get a JP Morgan internship in 11th grade, I didn't know I would get an Alpine Capital Bank Internship in 12th grade. I didn't know I would have the opportunity to visit over 30 campuses before applying to any colleges to see what they looked like. I didn't know I would speak to admissions officers and feel comfortable with them. I didn't know I feel comfortable to pick up the phone and say "hey I just had a question about this application." 
	Prep was the glue ... it was the middle man between believing and achieving. So you have just the simple notion the idea that you can believe and you achieve. And that's where it starts, it starts there. But then you have to have the structures in place to go along with that. That's what Prep was. 
	When I went to sit down to write my college essay I thought about not being good enough to go to Chapel Hill, I thought about everything that I had seen at collegiate in my time there. I thought about the struggles I thought about the laughs I thought about the cries. I thought about telling my story the way I wanted to. So I used that story in that student center that day for my college application. I submitted it early. But I submitted it early because I had known what my life had been I had known where I'd come from, and I had understood in ways that my 40 year tenured college guidance counselor hadn't understood. That my story was distinctly different from those of most of my classmates. So while he may have been the best when it came to college placement and access for upper middle class affluent white men, he had not known what the perfect application would look like for someone like me. 
	When I spoke to prep they said "Yes, Penn may be a reach but we see this obstacle and here's a goal and here are tangible steps that you can take to getting there. We want you to go visit. Make sure you're there. Make sure you meet some people at that space. Make sure you know things about that campus that other applications don't have. Drop this in in your essay about why Penn. Talk about how you would add to the diversity at this school." 
	Couple months later I walk back into Brimer's office to let him know that I had been accepted to Penn that I had a full ride, that it came from a leadership scholarship and that I'm happy for his help but I'm at a place now where I believe in myself, and there's nothing that he or anyone else can do to change that. The reason why I'm telling you these components of this story of this larger story is because these are moments where I sincerely doubted myself. As a black male in America trying to access upward mobility, trying to make any substantial moves you have to have someone who believes in you. The larger narrative does not believe in us. It does not believe that we are smart. It does not believe that we are capable. It does not believe that we are educated. It is not ... we are so misrepresented, so ill-displayed that not only is it hard for anyone in an American context to believe that we are as talented or as able but it then becomes internalized. It becomes the reality for us. 
	One of the reasons why I care so passionately about education is because growing up my closest friends were in church, and much of the explanations they would use to talk about why students don't do well do not fit them. They come from loving families, they have a parent who cares they have these structures that are there to some extent. But they did not have that unquestionable undying belief that I had in a mom. I promise you I promise you I promise you, I could not have fought back against these images, against this negativity without someone who believed. Someone who believed so much that that person would die for what they believe in. 
	Dr King, a lot of people don't understand much of the way that Dr. King was thinking when he was giving all of his speeches. For example when he did "I've been to the mountaintop" he was deeply prophetic in the fact that he knew his time had come. He knew that he had done what he was supposed to do for America. And he tells a story about a young white girl who writes him a letter about the time he got stabbed. And he says this one time I was stabbed and the person who stabbed me just missed like what it took for me to die. And if had he sneezed in that moment he would have died and he would have not been able to be at the march in Washington deliver I Have a Dream speech. He would not have been able to sit in the jails he would not have been able to boycott. 
	He knew what change looked like he believed change was possible and even when others were not able to believe or see that change, he committed to it ... people warned him, "Martin, not tonight don't go out. There are mobs outside. There are bombings, there are shootings. Do not go out it is dangerous it will take ... they will take your life for standing for what you believe in. For trying to put this image of not just black men in education, but people. Trying to put this image of equality in people's minds, you will die for that. 
	My mom ... and I got into some very very very heated arguments as a teenager. By 15 I was sure that I had figured some things out and I can make decisions for myself. And my mom would still say "you know what you're gonna do this, you're gonna do that." And we went back and forth. And in one argument she said specifically to me, "If it costs me my life if I die trying, you will know. You will believe in yourself you will achieve anything you want to and you will go on to change others. Others' lives. Others' trajectories you will inspire people." 
	"What are you talking about mom? What are you talking about?" Again regular kid just wanting to be regular. 
	On the trip "Surger into the past" the director he said ... he had a list of phrases that he said often. "Ordinary people do extraordinary things. Ordinary people do extraordinary things." And he started saying that from the first day. From the very first day. And I'm like what does me mean ordinary people do extraordinary things? What does he mean? 
	So have you all heard of the Little Rock Nine? Little Rock Nine in Arkansas, they integrated Little Rock High. Minnijean Brown-Trickey. Sat on the bus with her. She looked me in my eye and I told her about some of the things I was doing at collegiate and she said, "You are going to make a difference. You are going to make a difference. Believe it. You are going to be extraordinary." 
	When Carlene called me about today I wondered what had happened in my life to get me here. Every day I have these deeply reflective moments where I think about what it means to just be a regular person. What it means to use your career to change to inspire. This past year that opportunity presented itself. 
	So in the room Kiane McGuire whose also a doctoral student at Penn and Devin Minor they are members of a research team that we were on. And we did this project called "Succeeding in the City". And what was unique about Succeeding in the City, is that we often in education talk about the problems that black men face. They perform worse than black women, they perform worse than white students in general. They do this they do this they don't do that. The Department of Ed in New York said "We want to identify the students who aren't doing those things. What does success look like? We hear all these stories about doom and gloom and failure but what does it mean to succeed, how do those kids do that? What are their stories? Do they have stories?"  
	So my boss Dr. Harper he assembled a team of 13 grad students, and this team is all black men ... and all black and Latino men. So the 13 of us for the next couple months starting in January were traveling to New York City and looking for the factors that led to success for students from these backgrounds that are expected to not do well, to drop out, to amount to nothing. 
	What we found was pretty incredible. So on one hand you have the students who do have this belief right? They have these kids who want to do well who are working hard, who despite having sick parents, who despite being super poor, despite some of them being homeless they are doing well in school. But then you also have the structure. So you have the belief and you have the structure. But the structure isn't panning out for them in the same way because the structure itself does not have the belief. Does that make sense? The structure itself does not believe because if people don't actually believe that you can access these things that you can actually do them, if you can actually perform then they're not going to provide those opportunities for you. Those opportunities are going to be much harder to come by. 
	Ler me give you an example. One student that I interviewed told me about how much his guidance counselor loved and cared about him. And this is perhaps one of the most curious problems that we came across. How hard working the guidance counselors in these 40 schools were working. But the reality was they had too many students and they could not dedicate the amount of time. Another deeply troubling thing was this lack of belief and the ability of not just the students but in the belief of the system, and believing what education could do and what it would do. 
	So when we're looking at these kids credentials I see 3.7 GPA strong SAT score. And then I don't see the student applying to any schools outside of New York. I don't see the student applying to any Ivy caliber schools. In fact most kids were applying to the Suny's and Suny's. Not that there's anything wrong with those schools, but the way I understand in education is you sort of put the opportunity out there for students to achieve and be at the school that's best for them. Be at a Ivy or be at a state school. But these students weren't given the opportunity because the belief was not there. 
	What our research process did was disrupt that entire thing. So imagine yourself, or imagine me. Back to 12 year old me. Imagine me sitting in the classroom and then in walks this distinguished professor, black guy from the University of Pennsylvania and behind him are these guys over here. 13 black and Latino men who all have similar stories like them. Who these guys are sitting down and looking back in their faces and saying, "Oh my goodness your story's just like mine. My dad has cancer. My mom has been bed ridden. My brother is in a gang."
	These kids are succeeding despite the obstacles that are placed before them but they were not going as far as they could've been because the belief was not there. You wouldn't believe how many students after meeting us, just sheerly meeting us asked about transferring after their freshman year of college. You know what, I applied to these schools but I think I could do better than that. I think I can go here. I think I undershot myself, I think I was under-matched. How can I be better? How can I be greater? 
	We believed in those kids because we knew about it. We knew it we saw it, and those images weren't unfamiliar to us, we didn't stumble into these schools and say "oh my goodness look at all these smart negro children learning. Look at all the talent, potential they have." It's "No I've been in those schools, that's where I was raised and I saw that but I saw the lack of opportunity. I saw someone make one wrong decision the way I almost did, and their entire life changed." One wrong decision. Because like that kid said to me, had I hit him, maybe I would be working at McDonald's. Ten years later I'm standing here before you but maybe I didn't make that choice. 
	My mom told me that she would do whatever it took for me to be the man that she wanted me to be. She lived her entire life here in the U.S. so I can get an education that she and I could be proud of and that would in some way do more for the society that we live in. I didn't know when my mom made me stay in Prep that I would eventually go to Penn. I didn't know that I would finish with honors, I didn't know that I would choose to be a sociology major just like Dr. King had because of the way he thought about the world's issues. I didn't know I'd end up in education. I thought I was gonna be a business guy. Go to school three years, get in out make money take care of my family send money back home to the Caribbean, everything would be cool.
	In college I met Dr. Harper and one of the things I struggled with at collegiate was writing. Not thinking that I was a great writer. Because evidently collegiate has a ton of great writers. So I get to Penn and get an A+ on my writing seminar. I'm like "Oh alright I'm a decent writer." And then I interact with Dr. Harper and he looks at me and he says, "You are one of the best writers I've come across. I teach masters students, hundreds of them and many of them cannot write the way you write and you are a sophomore." And I said "Hm I've never heard that before. I'm glad you believe in my writing because I'm still not that confident." 
	But then that belief was matched with some structure. Sean says "Hey you know what come take an independent study with me. You're interested, you have all these questions about campus things that are going on." 
	I do an independent study with Sean, and before the Succeeding in the City report I get a glimpse into what the research life is like. I get the opportunity to stand before students and just see that switch in their head. That switch when they see me and they hear about my experience and they automatically believe they can do it. I think part of it is being so ordinary that you make others feel extraordinary. So in certain spaces like when we were doing the project we didn't put on suits. We didn't go into the space and say, "hey look at us, we're better than you we're at a different place." We went in dressed normally so they can relate to us and they saw themselves. Literally saw themselves. And by seeing themselves they began to believe in themselves. 
	Sean gave me the opportunity by providing me with that independent study, and in those moments I began to glimpse how I could be like Sean. How I could come up and orchestrate research projects that would allow students to see their full potential and see who they are and where they are going. 
	Dr. King died aware that his death was coming but he believed. When I was supposed to graduate from Penn in 2010 my mom and dad moved back to the Caribbean because they had said they had felt comfortable they had believed in me, I had been here long enough, I was about to graduate things were good they're gonna go back home and live with the peace of mind that they're no longer undocumented, they're safe. They left. I was in school my last year, taking care of things. As graduation neared I realized my parents would not be able to come back because they didn't have the means to. They couldn't see me at graduation. 
	My mom started calling me and telling me she loved me that she was proud of me, but these are all things that are uncharacteristic of my mom. Because she sort of motivated but didn't often give me the pat on the back, it was like "I know you can do better" because she knew that I saw challenges and that I rose to them. And so she would challenge me "oh yeah you can't do this either." And I'd be like "yes I can!" Boom. I did it. 
	Something felt weird. That summer right after graduation I went home happy to put on my cap and gown in the Caribbean for my mom and dad who weren't able to be at my graduation. The day that I put my cap and gown on for them we had found out what seemed to be a malignant cyst on her brain was a cancerous brain tumor that was growing rapidly. My mom told me that she wanted to live long enough to know that I was going to change someone's life. That the work that she put in the belief that she had would make a difference in someone's life, even if it was just mine. 
	Less than a month after I graduated from college my mom had passed. She was my rock my strength, the reason why I thought I can do anything. But to honor her dream I did not stop there I did not let the hardest moment in my life discourage me from continuing straight into a PHD program. I went back. Went to school, went to class ... and I keep dreaming. I think about my mom all the time and all the things that are left to be done and she will never be able to see. To never see the dream come to fruition. The ways in which Dr. King has not been able to see many of his dreams come to fruition. But what was at the core of his message and at the core of my mom and his life it was believing it was being able to see something that no one else can see and proudly talk about it and proudly share it, and use that as a way to make a difference. 
	When we think about black men in edUcation and when we thin about any under-represented population in education the work must start with truly believing that the work can be done. We have to have confidence that our little boys and girls are just as smart as all little boys and girls. That despite the obstacles that are put in front of them, that they can make it. We have to believe that little black boys actually want to learn. Actually want to. One of the students in the study said to me ... one of the questions was "how did you resist the ... temptations of selling drugs gang violence, membership things like that within your community?" One of the kids said to me in the interview, "I was not allowed to do any of the wrong things not just by my family but by the people that were doing the wrong things in my neighborhood." And I said "Say more about that. Explain that to me." 
	The gang bangers on his block knew him as the smart kid and they knew that he had a future. He said that they pulled him aside and said to him "No one told us that this education stuff works. We don't have any examples of this. We don't know what this looks like. You are the first example that we've seen and we are not gonna let you mess that up."
	These are the gang bangers these are the guys that we know are doing things wrong that aren't about their educations, but there's a mystery in these communities about not having the belief because no one believed in them. Please please please start believing we have to believe before we can do anything else. Thank you. 

How did we do?

If you rate this transcript 3 or below, this agent will not work on your future orders