[Bonus Episode] From Real Good: The Six Degrees of Segregation with Yohuru Williams

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Welcome to the $100 MBA show. And today we're gonna do something a little different. In the feed, we wanna share an episode of a podcast called Real Good. It's a show that started last year at the beginning of COVID to highlight nonprofits doing work on the ground to help with the pandemic. But the big message of that season was that most of the problems people are facing in Covid weren't new when it hit. They're intersectional problems concerning race, class, gender, and a lot more. The second season is out now and it's broadening out a bit to focus on the people fighting systemic issues Covid highlighted. I am proud to be sharing this awesome podcast that's really making a difference. You're about to hear an episode of the podcast about educational equality with the founder of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas. If you like what you hear, you can listen and subscribe to To Real Good. Wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Real Good by US Bank, a podcast.

About helpers here in the Twin Cities in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, there was conversation about what I like to call the six degrees of segregation, these six firm barriers to equality that continue to impact communities of color, particularly African Americans. Housing, education, access to places of public accommodation, Jim Crow justice, which is the most intractable. It's what we it's most visible. Then we have voting rights, disfranchisement and then unfair labor practices. And if we think about inequality in this country, they tend to pivot around those issues.

I'm Faith Staley. This show was born out of the coronavirus crisis. In our efforts to understand where work needed to be done to help communities in need during the pandemic, we learned that the issues they were struggling with didn't crop up during COVID They're long standing concerns with roots in racial disparity, socioeconomic opportunity gaps, and so much more. We're here to give you a chance to meet those who are fighting against inequality. They're people who span a wide range of fields and enact very different missions. But one thing remains the same for everyone you're going to meet. They're helpers. They're doing real good this week. Our guest is Uhuru Williams, a multi hyphenate in the education world. He's a professor, associate dean, education activist, and the founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas. There are dozens of cliches about how important education is, and I'll spare you those. But it is vital to understand just how powerful education is as an enabler of opportunity. Its ripple effects are vast and generational, but educational experiences and opportunities aren't the same for everyone. Access is limited for less affluent communities, many of which have high populations of non white students. And classrooms across the country are filled with students who don't see their culture and their history in the curriculum they're given, making it difficult to truly engage. Educational inequality manifests itself in and out of the classroom, and it's something people like Yohuru are working to change. Doctor Uhuru Williams, I'm so happy to talk with you.

I'm happy to be with you. Thank you for having me.

Would you tell me about your first name? I don't think I've ever met anyone with that name.

It's unique. My parents were very much influenced by the civil rights and black power movements and were students of African American history and African culture. And so they chose to name me Uhuru, which is a derivative of the Swahili word uhuru, which is the word for freedom. So my name means freedom.

That's really beautiful. You're born with a bit of an expectation with a name like that, aren't you?

You certainly are. It certainly is a lot of responsibility. Also, it kept me in line because you can't do anything wrong when your name is Uhuru. If anybody yells Uhuru in a crowd, I'm the only person turning around. So Kind of keeps you on the straight and narrow.

You know, just in telling me what your name means, you start to answer some of my questions about how you grew up, because it sounds like you were born to parents who really, really not only cared about civil rights, but knew about it. Is that right?

That's right. They were activists in the sense that they were deeply committed to issues of racial justice, but not really on the front lines in any way. Just kind of everyday, ordinary people who, through, you know, the work that they did. My father was. Is a musician and worked with young people and so taught African drumming, and my mom was a teacher for toy lending. So just in the nature of their professions, they were constantly involved in kind of exposing us to the importance of black history, of black culture, and really just trying to have us be connected to the community, the broader community.

You said your mom was a teacher in what?

She was part of a program called Toy Lending, and it was an innovative program.

Toy Lending.

Toy Lending.

That's what I thought I heard. Okay.

It was a great program. The idea around which you could really help young people through play. And the idea was that if you think about all the benefits of play, growing one's imagination, giving one a sense of belonging, connecting at a more intimate level, that's what she did and worked with students, young people who have been impacted by trauma through this programming, to lend toys, but then also to teach them to grow their imagination and to develop a sense of confidence, vocabulary, all through play.

That's really beautiful.

Yeah.

So where was this? Where in our country did you grow up?

I grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in the 1970s. I was born in 1971.

Me too. Happy birthday.

Hey, happy birthday.

We're about to turn 50 this year, my friend.

This is the big five O. Yeah.

You look really good, though.

You do, too.

Oh, well, thanks.

1971 was a good year.

Yes, it was. So, you know, you just told me that your parents were both in teaching roles. So I presume that education played a big role in your life.

It did. It was the foundation for everything that I knew as a young person, and it's become the foundation for what I do for a living. And I think it's absolutely essential. In fact, a lot of what drives my work today is focused on the importance of education. I think that when you think about challenges that we have in our larger society around division, education is the cure for that. When we think about how to elevate our democracy, elevation is. I'm sorry. Education is the foundation of that. I also think Just in terms of grounding young people and giving them a sense of identity, a sense of belonging, kind of recognizing how they fit into not just the larger narrative of the nation, but how they fit into the narrative of their community and what they can do to help support change. Education is essential.

It's interesting because as you may or may not know, the first line of your Wikipedia entry is that you're an American. It's a lot of alliteration. American academic, author and activist. And I was wondering sort of what you lead from. And it sounds like maybe academic, but they're all kind of inextricable for you, aren't they?

They're all tied. I mean, I got that from my dad in a lot of ways. He was a musician, but he was much more than that. You know, it's kind of interesting when I think about his work because in growing up in Bridgeport, one of the. He worked for a program called the Cultural Arts center and it was offshoot of a Johnson anti poverty program that provided money to the city of Bridgeport to teach music and the arts to inner city young people who were in the projects in the city at that time. But my dad was much more than a music teacher. He had to know. He always led by talking about literature and about poetry and about art. And the Art center was this incredible space where you had young people who were living in extreme poverty who had an opportunity to interact with teachers who look like them, who privileged art and culture as a way to elevate them and to elevate their sense of self. And so that's kind of where I got that from.

Man, I'd love to interview your parents. I mean, I love my own parents, but we retroactively adopted to grow up around musicians and people who privilege play. That's all infused with a sense of promoting justice, like you were on your way from a young age.

And it's interesting because that was actually born of injustice. The funding for the Cultural Arts center came. The second wave of funding came in the aftermath of the death of a young man named Gary Crooks. And he was killed by drowning in a sewage drainage ditch. And it was adjacent to one of the city's largest public housing complexes. And the argument at that time was young people didn't have a place to play. They didn't have playgrounds, they didn't have basketball courts, they didn't have parks. And they certainly didn't have anything like the Cultural Arts Center. And so in response to Gary Crooks death, you had this big push in the city to fund the cultural arts center and to create a space for young people in PT Barnum, which was the housing complex, to really create that opportunity for them. And that's where my dad worked. That's where I spent my formative years with him.

Thank you for sharing that story. What was his name again?

My dad's name is. No, the young person is Gary Crooks.

Gary Crooks. I feel like in this past year we've had a lot of opportunities to say people's names who must not be forgotten.

Absolutely. It's interesting you would frame it that way, Faith, because I think during most of this year, what was really compelling to me is that as we were witnessing cases like Ahmed Arbery and Breonna Taylor and certainly George Floyd here in Minneapolis, the idea of naming and remembering becomes important. That the traumas that communities experience are not simply what happens in the moment, but sometimes they're much deeper and they go back generations. And so, you know, I like to say my parents grew up in the shadow of Emmett Till. I grew up in a shadow of Gary Crooks and Yusef Hawkins, and my children will grow up in the shadow of, you know, Jamar Clarke and Breonna Taylor. And at what point do we say that no future generation has to grow up in the shadow of some person who's killed needlessly?

That's right. And not to dig too deep into the metaphor, but how do we take the shadow and turn it into light? Right.

Yeah, absolutely.

Can you tell me about your educational journey? I know you went to a Jesuit prep school in Connecticut. Right. And then you ended up going back there to teach at the. At the sister or brother university to that.

I did. I was very fortunate. My parents, I wanted to go to trade school, so I was convinced I wanted to be an electrician. I had everything mapped out. I was going to be a musician and then be an electrician on the side. And an opportunity came for me to go to Fairfield College Preparatory School, which was an all male school. And I was not interested at all. And my parents insisted.

Were you not interested at all because you were more interested in girls?

Is that I wasn't very well. It was partly that, and it was also partly I just wanted to play music and I wanted the freedom to be able. I thought being an electrician would give me the opportunity to make money and at the same time pursue drumming and pursue, you know, artistry in that way. And my parents were pretty insistent. They were like, this is a tremendous opportunity. My brother and I both had the same opportunity. My brother somehow got out of it. I ended up going, and literally, it changed my life. The Jesuits. It was a transformational experience for me, being in that environment and having an opportunity to having grown up kind of steeped in a particular kind of education, have the value system that I bought from, you know, having been at the Cultural Arts center and having experience with my parents, then meet the Jesuit value system of men and women for others and service and the importance of giving back and recognizing ways that you can take your spiritual gifts and then elevate your community. So it was a good marriage for me.

With how many black kids did you go to high school?

There were three in my senior class. So that was hard. We were the first wave of integration for. Well, that's not exactly true. As the school began to take integration seriously, I should say. And they hired a woman named Donna Andrade, who was amazing, huge influence on me. And she committed the school to bringing in a critical number of students of color. But I was part of that first wave, so there were only three of us in the senior class.

Did you, at that young age, feel any kind of burden or responsibility when you look around and you're like, I'm one of the three young black men here. I better be a role model.

I felt a lot of tension and stress. I can't say that my freshman year in particular was in any way fun. There were a lot of situations that I was put in and a lot of things that I had to navigate that actually, in retrospect, helped to build a lot of character and have helped to inspire the work that I do today. Because I realized how deep the problem is when we talk about division, the stereotypes that people have about people of color, about African Americans in particular, and how when you have spaces that are not diverse, it's easy for those ideas to proliferate and to really continue without really challenging that. I feel like, in some sense, I was kind of drafted into the movement. But because of my upbringing, I was ready for that. I was ready to address those misrepresentations, those stereotypes. And it was hard, but at the same time, I wouldn't trade it for the world. I think I learned a lot because I had to grow up very quickly in that environment. And I also had to recognize, in a lot of ways, my limitations. I think one of the great things about that was the Jesuit philosophy. And being in that Catholic Jesuit environment was actually really a good thing because it set this kind of objective truth that you could appeal to when you were dealing with the more Extreme racist attitudes that sometimes manifested themselves in school. You could always appeal to that. Our shared humanity.

Can you think of a specific time in high school in which you explicitly had to speak up and combat a stereotype?

Oh, many times.

Tell me about one.

Probably the worst was in homeroom. I had been at the school for about three weeks, and one of my classmates decided that it would be funny for him to comment on my jacket. And somebody had said, nice jacket to me, and he said rat tweed, referring to the fact that I came from Bridgeport and clearly my jacket had been made from rat hairs because of the pest problem in the city of Bridgeport. I was very angry. And there were always these moments where you felt like, as a young person, how do you handle that? How do you respond? I'm the only African American class student in my homeroom. If I respond in a way that invites scrutiny, that affirms their perception of me, then that's a problem. If I don't stand up for myself, that's a problem. So I was constantly navigating things like that. We ended up becoming very good friends later on. And I always mention that to him when we talk, even today, and he's deeply embarrassed by it, but that's how he grew up, and he thought that was acceptable. And I'm glad that you always fight the impulse to. We were young men and full of testosterone, and I'm so glad that I was able to not respond in a way that would have in any way made him feel justified in those erroneous beliefs that he had about young men of color coming from the city of Bridgeport.

Those are exactly the stories we need infinitely more of. Right. Where something horrible and ignorant that's said is not escalated and amplified.

Yeah, I agree. And recognizing the trauma that comes from that, because wounds produce narratives. So the more that people are hurt in conversations, the more that they see a lack of action. It was difficult for me to go to Fearful Prep and to see the abundance that many of my classmates lived in, to see the affluence of Fairfield and then literally to travel just a few miles to PT Barnum, where my father taught and where I often would go in the afternoon after school. And you're in the city's second largest housing complex. And the stark contrast. And that study, in contrast, makes you really want to work toward economic justice and racial justice for a better community, for better outcomes for all of us.

So you went to University of Scranton, right, for your undergrad, and then you got your PhD at Howard University, right?

I did.

And that's an HBCU historically black college or university, right?

Yeah.

Did you choose that experience on purpose?

I did. I needed, at that point, having. We left public school in Bridgeport after the teacher strike. There was an infamous teacher strike that happened in the late 70s, and the judge in that case actually imprisoned teachers. And after that, my parents were done. They felt that that was a bridge too far. And so we were able, with the assistance of my grandmother, to go to parochial school. And so from that point forward, I had always been in predominantly white environments with very little exposure to people of color. And there was always these contrasts between how I'd grown up, what my parents did, the neighborhood I lived in, and in my educational experiences. By the time I got done at University of Scranton, I really was craving the opportunity to study in an academic setting that would replicate what I felt when I was home. And among people who shared similar characteristics and not having to prove myself constantly or constantly have to navigate those spaces.

What is that like then? What is it like to go from an almost all white educational experience till you're presumably about 22? Is it like sliding into a perfect temperature bath to then go to Howard and be surrounded by people who look like you and have shared experiences?

It was both affirming and also difficult in its own way, because there was finally not having to be the representative of your race, finally being in a space where certain things can go unsaid because everyone's had those experiences, and so you've got that shared connection. But at the same time, it was a little bit of culture shock for me, in a sense, that you get so accustomed to those defense mechanisms. It takes a while to step out of that. That mold and realize that you're home. And it felt like home. I like your analogy of sliding into a warm bath. It felt a lot like you have a comfort level. And then also some of the things that I was interested in studying, some of the conversations I wanted to have, some of the deeper moral and philosophical truths that I wanted to debate, those were welcomed at Howard because everybody was talking about those things. Everyone was interested in those things in some way or another.

So at what point, I mean, was it when you were in high school where you switched out of, I'm not going to be an electrician. I'm going to be a historian? Like, when did you know that was your calling?

It's a great question. You know, I think I always knew because I always loved history, and I loved. We were in a youth program called African Guides, and they gave us this little 15 or 16 page booklet of, you know, vignettes in African history. And I just. I devoured that thing. It's so funny. I think I destroyed mine and I took my brother's because I would just read them over and over, and I would always read the encyclopedia passages on mythology and on history. So I always had that passion. I had a great teacher in High School, Mr. Hanrahan, who recognized that and basically said, look, you could be a history teacher. And I kind of looked at him sideways. I'm like, yeah, okay. But I loved him and I loved what he did. I think it speaks to the power of teachers. And my parents were teachers. So he had just provided a way for me to think about my future that involved marrying what I loved to something that had a great outcome. Because he literally had a huge impact on my life in terms of. He was a hard teacher, but he was very much invested in me.

And part of your future did become what you're doing now, which is teaching history at St. Thomas University. But like little destinations in between that we can't leave out. How did you become involved with the Jackie Robinson Foundation?

That's an interesting story.

And can you tell us what that is?

Jackie Robinson foundation is foundation that was started by Rachel Robinson in the aftermath of Jack's death. Jack, one of the things that people don't know about.

I'm sorry to interrupt, but when you work there, you get to call him Jack.

He hated to be called Jackie.

Really? Because it was like, diminutive.

It was. I mean, in some sense, we think about Jack. And Rachel talks about this a lot.

And Is Rachel his daughter?

His wife. His wife, yeah. And she's still alive, and she is wonderful. It was kind of strange some days for me to. To work with Rachel Robinson, who's a living legend and has seen so much history, but she is incredibly sweet and caring, but she would share stories about Jack and she would say, you know, it was one of those ways that people could diminish him by calling him Jackie. He went by Jack. The public knew him as Jackie, and he didn't push back against that. Although he was a very proud man. He didn't view that as an offense, but his friends and his intimates and familiars called him Jack.

Thank you for educating me on that. I know. It'd be like Jackie Kennedy, right?

Exactly.

Nobody would diminish him in that way. So you end up there doing what?

I was working for an education company in South Jersey, and I was also working at Fairfield University teaching history. And I was invited to give an address at the Congressional Black Caucus on a product that we were working on at this ed company called Sojourner, which was a website for teaching African American history. The president of the Jackie Robinson foundation saw me speak, came up and said, I need you to come and do that for us. And I said, do what? She goes. We have been in business since the early 1970s, and we've been providing these educational outcomes for exceptional students of color. But we need to codify our curriculum. We need to know what it is that we're doing well so we can expand it. We think that we have something unique here. We have a 98% graduation rate among our students who are coming through this program. We have a mentoring and leadership program. We don't just give money for them to go to school, but we actually create these mentoring and leadership opportunities. Can you come and help us codify that in a curriculum that we can perhaps expand? I went to work for them and served three years there as the chief historian and vice president for community outreach. At the same time, I was working on that curriculum for them and trying to help them codify that into a space where they could expand the program.

Is 42 your favorite number?

42 is absolutely my favorite number.

That's just me showing off a little bit of my Jack Robinson trivia. But people should know that was his number, right?

And I love that because everyone knows the film 42, which was outstanding. But I love the Ken Burns documentary, Jackie Robinson. And I'm very blessed to be in that documentary, But I absolutely love you.

Well, he was blessed to have you.

And I love Ken, so no complaints there. One of the things that I loved about that documentary is it humanized Jack in a way that we often don't get to see sports heroes. And I think about our contemporary moment where we talk about people like Colin Kaepernick, or we're looking at what's happening with LeBron James and the very public statements he's taken on issues of racial justice. Jack did that post career. He actually did it in his last years in the league. But after he left baseball, he was outspoken on the issue of civil rights, participated in marches, gave money to the movement fundraised for Dr. King. And so he's a very complicated individual in that way. But what I loved about the film is that it also humanized him. And you understood where that was coming from. And it was coming from a life where he tasted the same bitterness that I think many people of color experience in the United States, where you have tremendous Opportunity. But it's always balanced against the backdrop of inequality.

So you go from the. Now I feel guilty every time I say Jackie. But you go from the Jackie Robinson foundation, which is what it's officially called. To St. Thomas. No. To Fairfield University.

To Fairfield, yeah.

And then you end up at St. Thomas, where you are now.

Correct.

And we're going to talk about the Racial Justice Institute, which you basically just started. Right. Before you tell us more about that, can you kind of give us an overview about the educational landscape? Because we've learned a lot about the opportunity gap in our series, and education comes up often. But this conversation with you right now is really where we're delving into that. So thank you for being our delver. What is the state of the opportunity gap in education?

Well, it remains in many ways problematic. I think about it in the context of here in the Twin Cities, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, there was conversation about what I like to call the six degrees of segregation, these six firm barriers to equality that continue to impact communities of color, particularly African Americans. Housing, education, access to places of public accommodation, Jim Crow justice, which is the most intractable. It's most visible. Then we have voting rights, disfranchisement, and then unfair labor practices. If we think about inequality in this country, they tend to pivot around those issues. Education is so important because. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Faith.

No. Are you the person who coined that phrase and broke those bullet points down?

Mm.

Okay. I'm checking off on my hands, thinking what we've talked about in this series and what we want to learn more about. So thank you for that.

No problem.

So, yeah, talk to me about education.

So education is foundational to those six degrees of segregation, because when you think about it, it's the pathway to better employment. It's the pathway to home ownership. It's the foundation for so much. When we think about inequality in education, or we think about, as here in the Twin Cities, the fact that the state of Minnesota lags behind every state in the union on educational outcomes for students of color. For African American students, that's a problem, because really, that becomes a weight that they carry for the rest of their lives. Educational equality is much more than what's happening in the schoolhouse. It's about equipping young people to be successful later in life and giving them the tools and foundations for a successful life beyond. There are so many things that complicate this conversation in the United States. Investment in public schools, whether we're putting too much emphasis on Test scores, whether we're creating appropriate opportunities for students to express themselves in ways that move beyond what many people would call a culturally insensitive pedagogy that focuses narrowly on things that don't really affirm their identity and their culture. And so why would they buy in? It's very difficult for young people to be excited about school, which doesn't reflect in any way their history, their experience, their culture. These are old arguments and old conversations. But to answer your larger question, this goes back to the promise of Brown versus Board of Education. The hope was Thurgood Marshall articulated this on the Eva Brown. If you knock down the Supreme Court's precedent in Plessy vs Ferguson of separate but equal in education, that would be the keys to the kingdom, because that would then open up opportunity in all these other areas because African Americans would have access to the same education and the same outcomes. In fact, what we've seen over the last 50 plus years is actually the opposite. And that has been in many ways intentional. And we can talk about how that's played out, but that's why there's so much emphasis on that in our contemporary moment. And people genuinely are conflicted about how best to handle that issue. But it's certainly an issue.

So I think it's inarguable that the educational system treats people differently based on race. Can you describe some ways in which that happens?

It happens in ways that are overt and in ways that are more insidious. I think the overt manifestations of this find themselves in things like how we deal with poverty and how it impacts young people's preparedness for school. I went to Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, in the aftermath the killing of Michael Brown there to work with young people in a school district that was 98% free and reduced lunch. There is no better indicator of poverty in a district than the number of students who are free and reduced lunch. That tells you that these issues transcend what's happening in the classroom. They begin before students get to school and they start with issues of poverty. We need interventions around trauma and understanding how traumatized some young people show up to school and how poverty influences that as well. That's part of that conversation. Then the more insidious things are things that happen within the schools themselves that perpetuate inequality. Tracking is a good example. What some people activists call the school to prison pipeline, or the fact that you really have schools that have become martial in the sense that you've got suspension rates, disproportionality in terms of how they're applied to African American students than the general population of students. The fact that you have within schools, basically segregation within the same building, because you've got programs that allow for divisions of students based on honors, ap, special ed, so on and so forth, and a disproportionate presence of African American students in special ed. So all of these things, in their way, insidiously create and replicate inequality in our schools.

Right. And so often we find that children who qualify for honors programs or children whose parents can afford to have tutoring at home. And it's. Yeah, you know, we hear often, because it's true, that education is a way for people to grow and change their lives and their family's futures. What are the ripple effects of getting educated, you know, particularly for black students, relative to their white and maybe Asian counterparts?

Well, they're clear in the sense of better educational outcomes equate often with a better quality of life, the opportunity to be higher wage earners, the opportunity to be able to have access to, by virtue of that, better neighborhoods, so on and so forth. There is this ripple effect that extends beyond the idea that not just a high school education, but being able to go on to college and then by virtue of getting a college degree, being in the best position not only to do better yourself, but to do better for the next generation. This whole concept of intergenerational wealth for communities of color, African Americans in particular, who were cut out of the ability to own homes and were not in the same way, did not benefit from federal assistance for mortgages in the 1940s, so on and so forth. Education has been in many ways that singular pathway to success because they don't have the ability to purchase a home and then have that, over successive generation, sell that home, bequeath that home to your next generation so they have access to a resource. Those things actually really then have a ripple effect on communities of color. When we talk about African Americans in particular, the thing that's particularly insidious about the educational inequality and education gap is that then you're also looking at how that compounds and where those students wind up going, particularly when we talk about African American males. There's a reason that activists call it the school to prison pipeline, because a lot of those young people, when they drop out or when they're suspended, wind up in the criminal justice system. Michelle Alexander talks about this in her book the New Jim Crow. But this is part and parcel of the problem with schooling and race in America. And it's something that we can't Avoid, because by default, we should be talking about those deeper issues and how poverty really is informing a lot of this.

So you were about to leave St. Thomas in Minnesota last year to take a position at St. John's in New York City. And then, as you say, Mr. Floyd's death, his murder happened. And in the middle of COVID you make this decision to stay in Minneapolis. Right. And start something with the huge and lofty and urgent title of the Racial Justice Institute.

Institute.

What are you doing? What is the goal? What are you doing? And how are you pulling it off?

Well, I will just give you a little context. This has been, in some way, this work marries all those experiences that I shared with you earlier. It's an opportunity to do the work that gave my life so much meaning and it gave me so much opportunity. In education, it's about historical recovery, educating the broader community in this moment about the depth of racial inequality, not from the standpoint of what you see in diversity training. I don't go in and talk a lot about concepts such as white supremacy or white fragility. You'll get there eventually. I just need all of us to have the same set of facts about how we got here, what happened in the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, Why do we have housing inequality? Why does it look the way that it does? Why do we have these problems in education? By providing those historical, I hope to get people to a place where they understand three things. Number one, that even though we can't end these tomorrow, we got into these circumstances deliberately. And if we start to commit ourselves in a way that's sustained, we eventually can get ourselves out of them. So it's all about having that information to really empower us to think through how we can undo some of the damage that's been done historically. Secondly, to create real opportunities for people to. To think about how they can take action, both personally and in a more collective sense. And then, last but not least, putting us in a position where we don't lose hope. And I think part of the challenge in the aftermath of something like George Floyd's murder or talking about Breonna Taylor or Kenosha, this kind of endless cycle that we're in of one horrible thing after the next, that the worst thing that we can do as a society is to lose hope. Hope is what's going to compel us to believe in not only that we can achieve a just democracy, but that we can find a way to make our democracy better, not from the ashes of some imagined past that we believe that we have, but from the opportunity we have in this moment to create what we want to be.

So interesting. What's occurring to me as I'm listening to you is that we as a culture have, in our information silos, have turned to the media to give us the facts. And as you mentioned, we're getting different sets of facts, and I'm using air quotes because half of them aren't true. Right, right. And what you're saying is check with a historian. Right. Before we can get prescriptive, we have to get descriptive about what has happened as a fact in our country, what we can learn from it to move forward. That's what I'm hearing.

That's absolutely. That's the core of it. And it's so important because once people have those foundations and you're working from that, then you can actually start to think about what we can do. You can start to think about taking action in the way that you describe, because you then are working from the facts.

On your Twitter feed. Hi, new follower. There's a picture of you with John Lewis. What did you say when you got to talk with him?

He was. I had an opportunity to work with John Lewis in the city of New York on a curriculum on civics for all. And the great thing about John Lewis is that he was activated by reading a comic book. And it was a comic book that was put out by the Fellowship of Reconciliation on a Montgomery bus boycott. He read it. That's where he learned about the work of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. And then later in life, he teamed up with one of his aides, Andrew Aydin, to write the March Trilogy, which is a graphic novel comic book, essentially telling the story of his activism. New York thought this was so great that they wanted to kind of weave this into their curriculum and create a curriculum around it. And they bought me in as the educational specialist. So I had an opportunity to present with Congressman Lewis on several occasions. And he was a beautiful human being. I love to tell the story about him. I'll never forget this as long as I live. The last time I saw him, which was Last November of 2019. December of 2019, Mayor Bill de Plasio was there from New York, and there was a huge group of people waiting to receive him. And I walked up and I said, congressman Uhuru Williams, I'm not sure if you remember me. And he reached his hand out and held my hand very gently and said, of course I remember you, Uhuru. How are you? I almost cried. Just an incredible individual and so inspirational to young people. And, you know, I think about the final editorial he wrote to the American people last summer before his death. Even to the very last, he was concerned about the next generation. And in that editorial, which I call the Lewis Doctrine, one of the things that he said that could help get us to, you know, past our travails was reading and understanding history.

You know, when he touched your hand gently, I think he passed on a kind of energetic baton there because you two are doing beautiful work and I thank you.

Thanks, Faith. I appreciate it. And thanks for having me on.

It is truly my pleasure. Educational attainment and financial security are heavily linked to one another because oftentimes you need to financial support to have access to an education. A trusted financial institution like US bank can help people seeking those educational opportunities get the support they need to get into the programs they want and ensure they're equipped for life. After graduation, we spoke to US Banks Greg Cunningham and Reba Dominski about the role education has played in their lives and what the bank is doing to make sure others have those opportunities as well. Reba and Greg, isn't it kind of crazy that we've never met in real life? It is, it is.

It feels like we've known each other forever.

Yeah.

Well, I think if you know somebody through 2020, you've known them for almost ever.

I love that. That's true.

And I think after the holidays and all the, you know, the ways we had to connect with the people that we have met before and we love virtually, I do think we're finding ways to build these virtual connections. And it does feel like if you've been on a zoom call a couple times with someone, they're your friend. You know them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I put on mascara for y', all.

And now I know what your daughter's bedroom looks like. I mean, it's just. It's far more into.

You know what I mean?

Like, the. You get to know the real. The real person. This is cool.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a gift to talk to you all again. You know, last season we were lucky enough to get to chat with you together a handful of times, and I've gotten a chance to talk with a few of your colleagues. But now the dream team is back. I've got y' all together again.

Love it.

Yes.

We dug into some heavy topics last season, and I think we find ourselves in a time no less challenging, but I dare say a lot more, hopefully, so. So I think a good place to start would be, how are You. How are you both feeling and doing?

Well, I. I am grateful to be healthy, grateful to be safe. I share your optimism, Hope. It feels like this week, especially as we welcome in a new administration, as the vaccines continue to roll out across the country, I am feeling hope. I am feeling hope. And yesterday was MLK Day. And I know both Greg and I participated in a variety of virtual events. And there was something very powerful about the reminder of Dr. King and his perseverance and of Coretta Scott King and the legacy that she helped create and her powerful message to women about, if we want the soul of this country to change, it's women who need to be the soul. There were just so many moments yesterday where I felt renewed and uplifted and hopeful. So I'm entering the new year with hope.

Yeah, I'm feeling great. I mean, I, you know, faith, you know, I always feel like these moments, and I think we talked about this the last time you and I were together, that, you know, every generation is sort of faced with, you know, a problem that is going to define, you know, the future. And, you know, the things that have become an awakening for us, things like this racial awakening that happened last spring and summer, you know, it's taken centuries to make some of these problems, and they're not going to go away in the next five, 10 years. And I think that, you know, for me, it's just. I'm just ready to dig in and do the work, and I'm excited about it. I'm, you know, you know, I'm trying to build stamina for the long haul and to share that message that this is going to be something that we've got to have stamina around. But I'm ready to go, and I'm excited about the challenges ahead.

Yeah, I don't think you can maintain stamina without hope. Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, I mentioned this a lot to you guys, but I come from the perspective of a mom of young kids. And yesterday, my children and I watched different videos about Martin Luther King Jr. Sent by their schools, and we have books on our own kids, books. And I was, you know, I couldn't help but feel really heartened. Right. Books don't do it all, but books are a message. And I couldn't help but feel heartened that my children at ages 6 and 8 know more about Martin Luther King Jr. Than I did when I graduated from high school. And I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, where MLK Drive was, you know, a place I knew how to drive to. But, you know, I Had never. My parents didn't take me to Ebenezer Baptist and I've taken my half Jewish kids there, you know, so, so I, you know, I'm just one parent doing my best. But I think there are a lot of young people growing up with a lexicon of peaceful protest and civil rights and they know what Selma means and that can't but be a good thing.

Well, education is everything. I think that's why we're gathered today. The topic of our conversation, I mean, how we did my segue.

Ladies, you're welcome.

But I think how we educate our children, you know, it's fascinating that your kids know more about Dr. King than you did. You know, there is a really interesting opportunity to take this moment and to think about, you know, what is the history that we teach our children? Do we shy away from tough topics like slavery and race and caste and how it's shaped this country? Or, or do we have the courage to say, in order to not repeat these things, we need to do a better job of opening up dialogue and coming to a place where we're uncomfortable and willing to use that discomfort to make sure that our kids know better and know differently. So it's going to be fascinating to see the role that education plays in this anti racism and awakening that I think we're facing as a country.

Yeah, I would say not only education, I think too, Ray, but I think there's, you know, the role that technology plays because as I think about it, faith, you know, there was a, you know, when I was growing up and probably when most of us were growing up, there was sort of a single source of truth, right. Like your teacher was like whatever your teacher said was gospel. And I remember, you know, asking one of my white friends, like, when's the first time you had a teacher, you know, who was the same race as you? And she said like forever. And I said the first time I had a teacher that was the same race as me, I was in college. Right. And I think what, you know, so having someone who has a shared experience who is instructing you and is guiding you is so important. And what's so cool about what both of you had both suggested is that, you know, our kids are growing up in a world where technology makes access to information, you know, just so more prevalent. And so they're learning differently. Like they're actually learning how to have a much more nuanced sense of the history and they can form their own opinions based on actual historical facts versus someone's interpretation that you just had to sort of, you know, process and assume that it was true. So this role of technology, and then there's all these other conversations, which is probably a different session around how the technology gap plays into education and all of that. But it's a really important conversation to have.

Yeah. I mean, the double edged sword of technology and the ubiquity of it is that you can also learn a lot of things that aren't true. Right. And so I think something that we have to teach our children that's essential is critical thinking, which is always. Which is always what I think the most important reason to go to college is. It's not, in my opinion, what you major in. Right. Like, I majored in the history and literature of modern France and England, 1789-the present. Now, I may drop a few bon mots into conversation every once in a while to try to impress someone like a pretentious jerk, but what I learned to do was, was think and organize my thoughts and research. Right. So now you know what I studied in college. Tell me about where you two went to college and what you decided to focus on.

Yeah, I can jump in. I was. I moved to Atlanta. I went to Atlanta. I went to Clark Atlanta. I went to hbcu, part of the Atlanta University Center. I attended Clark Atlanta Atlanta University.

And Greg, will you tell people what HBCU stands for?

HBCU means Historically Black college or university. There are a little over 100 of them. And HBCUs were primarily founded when it was illegal for black citizens to be educated and to go to college. HBCUs were founded so that we could educate ourselves.

And so can I pause you there? Yeah, because you're always teaching me things. So you just said it was illegal for black people to be educated?

Yes. In the south, we were not permitted to get a formal education. And so historically black colleges were founded, you know, for the purposes of educating free slaves and so that they could get advanced degrees in education. Clark College, which was the origins of Clark Atlanta University, was founded in a railroad boxcar as an example.

Wow.

And so, yeah, so just a little bit of history about HBCUs, but I was a marketing major, business major, and if I could do it over again, faith, like you stated, I think if I would have taken much more of a liberal arts approach. And this notion of critical thinking, I think is far more useful in the longer term.

Well, Greg, I think you've achieved a lot in your career. You've done all right, my friend.

You've done all right.

And Reva, where Did you go undergrad?

So I went to the University of Michigan.

Go blue.

I'm legally required to add the go blue after I state the name of my university. So I grew up in Detroit, and so it was in state for me. I was an English major. Always loved the written word, still do the spoken word. So I was one of those artsy English majors, maybe similar to you, Faith, and got a great education at the University of Michigan and would argue that learned critical thinking was exposed to different people. I think the Peace Corps was founded on the steps of the Michigan Union. And so there's an incredible kind of history of civic engagement at the University of Michigan. And I definitely felt it on the campus. The first day I got there, there was like a protest against apartheid. This dates me. A protest against apartheid in our main square. And I was like, out there. I didn't really know much about apartheid, but I knew I was angry about it and I was marching. And so a lot of my passion for social justice really was about my family. But also the school that I went to supported me learning about those movements and that idea of critical thinking which you've both brought up.

You know, I feel like we can't have a meaningful discussion without pointing out that though you are both, quote, unquote, people of color, you're people of different colors. And I was astonished when I looked at the statistics for college and graduate degrees for Indian Americans. So, Reba, forgive me, you've told me this before. I forget your. Was your mom born in India or.

Both of my parents and I was born in India.

Both of your parents.

Yep. 100 Indiana.

You were born in India.

I was. I was born in Bangalore.

So maybe you know this, but, but check this out. So for U.S. born Indian Americans, 33% receive. This is from 2015. For U.S. born Indian Americans, 33% receive bachelor's degrees and 41% have a postgraduate education. Right, Right. So if you do the math that, that's 74% of US born Indian Americans. And by the way, for foreign born Indians, It's. It's the same. 32% receive bachelor's degrees, 40% receive a graduate degree versus all Americans, which is 19% of people born in America receive bachelor's degrees and 11% receive a graduate degree. And then let's look at the statistics for African Americans. So this is in 2019, 29% of African Americans aged 25 to 29 held a bachelor's degree. So that's up 11 percentage points from 18% in 2000. Right. That's a good news, I guess.

Right.

But the bad news, or the comparative news is that white 25 to 29 year olds increased from 34% to 45% of them received college degrees during the same time period. So I've just thrown a bunch of numbers out there, but maybe you can both sort of speak to how getting an advanced degree, getting higher education as representatives of your particular race, the meaning is probably a little bit different. Is that fair to say?

I think so. I can say, speaking from the Indian American culture, educational achievement, educational attainment is something that is instilled in you from birth. And I'll also point out that when you look at racial wealth gaps, Indian Americans specifically are doing pretty well generally. I don't have the stats in front of me, but many can afford to send their children to college. Those kids aren't graduating with debt. And so, you know, again, my mother, from the day I was born, was talking to my sister and I about college, the expectations. She started a college savings account for both of us, so our tuitions were covered. And generally in Indian culture, there's just the expectation of high levels of educational attainment. My sister, at age 52 or 53, just got her PhD. My mother is a doctor. And so I. And you know, it's just my mom and my sister and I. And after I went to my sister's ceremony, her Ph.D. dissertation, I looked at my mom and my sister and I said, I'm the only non doctor in the family. And they were both like, aha. And the expressions on their faces were like, maybe you could pick up the pace a little bit and do something with your life, you know, Loser.

So it sounds like as a member of an Indian American community, you meet expectations by going to college. Whereas, Greg, when you were growing up, do you expect expectations going to college and getting a graduate degree as a black person?

Well, it certainly was in my neighborhood. It was. There were very few people who attained college degrees and certainly I was the first one in my family to graduate from college. Not because we had less of a desire for the American dream or that we felt less about education, but it's important faith that we always sort of look at these, these things through the historical lens and the nuance, the nuanced truth that happens. What you have to sort of understand is that for many in the black community, there's a lack of trust in institutions, and rightfully so, because, you know, think about the fact it was just in the 50s when, you know, Ruby Bridges and so many other people and the situation Little Rock and the Little Rock where people actually had to be under armed guard, be led to elementary school, to integrated elementary school. So you think about what that means. How are you going to learn in that situation where clearly they don't want you there and the trauma that comes with that. And we don't talk enough about the trauma that has been instilled on the culture. And so it's not that African Americans don't want to be educated. We feel like we can't trust the institutions to accurately educate us. And so we have to educate ourselves. Again, going back to what HBCUs were created, and I would venture to say faith, that you can draw a direct correlation between that 11%, 11 point increase that you just identified and the enrollment at historically black colleges and the disproportionate number of bachelor degrees that HBCUs bestow upon African Americans thereabout. I don't want to quote the facts because I don't know them exactly, but HBCUs disproportionately graduate African Americans with bachelor's degrees in this country. And that's not by mistake.

And I've also read some statistics that the graduates of HBCUs graduate with significantly less debt than black graduates of non HBCUs.

Very true.

Which of course very true unburdens you in ways that are hard to explain. But you two are about to explain them.

Yeah.

Yes.

We spoke last season to John Hope Bryant about the opportunity gap in financial education for people of color. How does U.S. bank reach out to underserved communities to educate them about the savings opportunities available like the 529 plan.

So like everything we do at US bank, it's through our community partners. We want to meet families and kids and individuals where they are. So financial education is a really critical focus of our foundation. About 40% of our grants, support organizations and programs that focus on Financial Education. 77% of of those dollars serve people in low to moderate income communities. We have incredible partnerships with a variety of organizations including Junior Achievement, who does really great work in the space of financial literacy and helping kids make sure that they're financially well versed as part of their education. We give a significant amount of money as well as we have a lot of bankers who volunteer through Junior Achievement. They want to use their time and what they know to help serve kids and families, especially in low income communities. We've also got great partnerships with the YM and ywca, with Big Brothers, Big Sisters. So in a lot of ways we use our partnerships to get to those who need us the most.

Do you want to add anything to that, Craig?

I would just add we're really excited about a new partnership as well with a company called Goal Setter, which is a fintech started by an African American woman there in New York named Tanya Vancourt. And Goal Setter is a savings app and financial management program for kids and families. And, you know, it is a new partnership that we are really excited about and really helping to build financial muscle and capabilities in people even younger. And so helping kids really get started on their financial learning journey is a really important one for us to talk about.

U.S. bank also offers direct sponsorships. Are there any scholarship winners you want to shout out for doing important work?

Yeah. Our student scholarship program is accessible and available to all students. It offers these learning modules like credit. What is it? Why does it matter? What's a mortgage? And how do you start thinking about them? Really practical things that high school and college age kids should start to think about. And when you complete those modules, you can apply for a scholarship. During 2020, about 275,000 modules were completed. 60% of the students were students of color, and 95% said they felt more confident about their ability to to manage their personal finances as a result of taking those US bank financial courses. The story that I'll share is a pretty incredible one. You can't make this up. In 2019, we had a scholarship winner who won $20,000. He was working in a glue factory and he used the scholarship to pursue an undergraduate biology program. And he said that working, working in the glue factory actually inspired him to want to go to college because he started thinking about how is that glue made and where does it come from? So in 2019, our big scholarship winner was someone who worked in a factory and is now pursuing their undergraduate degree in biology. And I think it's opened up a whole world of opportunities for him.

You can't make that up.

You can't.

Thank you for sharing that story. It's sticky. I won't forget it. Right, Craig, I feel like you're a financial social responsibility vaudeville team. I love talking with both of you.

Thanks, Faith. It's always a pleasure. And Greg, great to see you as well. Thanks so much.

Always. Thanks, Reva.

Thanks so much for listening to Real Good by US Bank. If you like what you heard, listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you next week.

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