Transforming Black Education Through Entrepreneurship: A Conversation with Gerard Robinson

Do you ever ponder over the significance of education and entrepreneurship within Black communities? We brought aboard a leading advocate for education policy reform  - Gerard Robinson, former Commission of Education in the State of Florida and Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Virginia. From the  Crenshaw District in Los Angeles to lecturing at the University of Virginia, Gerard's transformative voyage as an educational thought leader. He recalls the crucial role mentors, educators, and his tireless pursuit of learning played in escorting him to the hallways of Howard University. 

In his youth, Gerard taught fifth graders at the Marcus Garvey School in Los Angeles, and ever since he's been a fervent believer in the power of education. Post the Rodney King verdict, Gerard stepped into the boots of a policy-maker, dedicating his efforts towards building a more equitable educational system for Black students. We explore education's historical significance, from the Civil War era to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. 

Lastly, Gerard discusses the untapped potential of Black Independent Schools, especially in light of the recent pandemic. We delve into how technological advancements can redefine black education and how endowing chairs can bolster our teachers with necessary resources. Gerard also imparts his perceptive insights on mentorship, being an influential presence in diverse spaces, and learning from the past to shape the future. Prepare to be inspired by Gerard's wisdom and vision for transforming black education and entrepreneurship.

Transcript

Langston Clark: 0:15

What's good everyone. I'm Langston Clark, founder and organizer of Entrepreneurial Appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting black businesses. In this episode of Entrepreneurial Appetite, we feature a conversation with Gerard Robinson, former Secretary of Education and a Commonwealth of Virginia and Commissioner of Education in the state of Florida. Gerard is also the former Executive Director of the Thurgood Marshall Fund's Center for Advancing Opportunity. He is now a Fellow of Practice at the Institute of Advanced Studies and Culture and Public Policy and a Law Professor of Practice at the University of Virginia.

Langston Clark: 0:50

Today we have a very special guest, Mr. Gerard Robinson, who I met I don't know, probably like five years ago at South by SXSWedu on a panel discussion about school choice being the black choice. Brother Gerard has always been someone who is gracious to have conversations and just throw ideas about the way education could go policy. I appreciate him taking the time to be here with us today. Gerard, if you could just begin before we get into the conversation about education and entrepreneurship in black communities, talk about your educational journey and how it's led you to be where you are right now.

Gerard Robinson: 1:23

Thank you again for extending to me an invitation to talk shop about entrepreneurship and black education. So I'm the least likely person to be engaging with you about the importance of education, given my own black luster education growing up as a student. So I grew up in Los Angeles. Both of my parents were from the South. They were part of that post-World War II group of folks who left Louisiana, texas, my dad West Virginia, moving to California for better opportunities. And so I'm a high school football player.

Gerard Robinson: 1:53

I grew up in Los Angeles in the Crenshaw District, grew up in the Crip neighborhood, and you really had three options out of the neighborhood Academics, sports and violence. I wasn't a gangster, wasn't a punk. I knew some of the guys. This just wasn't my thing so I didn't go that route. Sports was my route. I was a pretty good football player. Academics was a joke, so I knew I couldn't go that route.

Gerard Robinson: 2:17

And so when I was a senior in high school was much larger than I am right now. I played offensive center and linebacker and I already had enough conversations with friends of mine who either went to my high school or rival high schools. They said Gerard, listen, when you get to college you're going to have professors like Langston ready to bring you in. You need tutor and we'll take care of that. If you need someone to do your homework, we'll take care of that Pretty much. You just need to play ball and that's all. And so the whole idea of taking schools seriously in high school just wasn't a part of the deal, because we knew there was a social compact. And so I got hurt. My senior year, a football helmet rammed into my left leg. Long story short, I was two inches from being purple for life. So imagine me now on crutches making my way through my final fall semester in high school. And now it's January and I go to.

Gerard Robinson: 3:05

One of the nuns at my school was a Catholic prep high school, which is why I tell people just because something is private doesn't mean it works well for everyone, and just because something is public doesn't mean that it's horrible. There are a lot of great public school students who've come out and done well. I went to a college prep high school but I was on the athletic track and, be clear, there were guys on the athletic track who got scholarships to go to school. I just wasn't one of them. So imagine me holding my transcript and speaking in one of the nuns and telling her that I wanted to go to college, and she said Mr Robinson, give me your transcript. So she looked at it and she looked at me and she said what month is this? I said it's January. She said what is graduation since?

Langston Clark: 3:41

May. She said you want to go to college. I said yeah, and she said you haven't had out drip.

Gerard Robinson: 3:45

No, you don't have a real English class. No, you got a D in drivers and health. Yes, all your A's are in PE right, and you have a 1.8 GPA right, and you want to go to college. In May I said, yeah, I'll never forget her saying that she pushed my transcript toward me. Mr Robinson, you made your bed, now you need to sleep in it. Oh, wait a minute, sister. Let's be clear. We have all been in bed together for four years.

Gerard Robinson: 4:11

No, I have problems reading and writing, but you pass me every single semester because my parents paid tuition on time. I was not troublesome and I was a good football player. And she said they're quietly like and tell me what I don't know. But see that now, all of a sudden, the social compact disrupted. So reality said and they gave me a 2.0, finishing the bottom portion of my class, end up spending the next three years at a community college, starting off from scratch.

Gerard Robinson: 4:37

John saw Sally run. I didn't pass algebra until I was 20 years old. I didn't learn to read or write with any fluency until I was 20. And it was a group of counselors and teachers at El Camino College in Los Angeles, california, who wrapped their arms around me as a young, insecure, highly frustrated 18 year old trying to figure out how did I get here and how do I look forward. And so those folks put me on a track. Long story short, like you end up going to an HBC. You went to Howard University, later master's degree from Harvard, became a teacher, but when you look at my bio you have no idea of where I got started.

Gerard Robinson: 5:13

So for me, education is a calling, it's not a job. And I had many articulations of the same calling. So for me, I do this because A I know how regular working class kids like me black, white, asian, hispanic, native American, multicultural, multi racial I know how that dynamic happens. But in particular, I know what happens to black communities, and particularly the black boys. Now, at the same time, I'm at the community college to get a hold to Dr Conjufo's book, the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys. Now, at that time in my life I'm like nah, as that's no conspiracy, that's not true. Three or four years later I said yeah, there is a conspiracy in different ways that we've thought about then. So that's a long way of saying that I'm in this because it's a calling, because I know how students like me got left behind, and how important it is to have mentors who said hey, you're not tied to your past, we're going to tell you to a better future.

Langston Clark: 6:07

Yeah, and you know it's crazy we talked about this before. My educational journey in some ways is similar to yours. My class background was very different though, so I went to elite public schools. So the public school I went to in New Jersey is in Princeton Junction, new Jersey, so that just gives you some idea of proximity to Princeton University. And, like I'm pretty sure there were students I was going to school with whose parents were professors at Princeton University, I'm pretty sure of it, and I was at this school, I had a 2.3 GPA, like I wasn't doing any work. I was like I thought I was playing football and I think everybody else knew I wasn't playing football. I did my hands Look, I can't catch a football, I just drop it all the time. I'm just fast, like that's the only thing I got going for me All right and lo and behold, like A&T at that point was like many HBCUs in some cases, was basically open admissions.

Langston Clark: 6:58

Right, my SAT scores were high enough for me to go, but I thrived in that environment and so for me, thriving education didn't happen until I got to my HBCU, until after I left my K through 12 experience, although teachers knew I was smart, I was reinforced as being smart. The expectation for me to achieve in the same way didn't occur until I got to A&T, and I think this kind of relates to this idea of school choice right, of people being able to understand all the options that are available to them, or maybe, in some ways, black communities being part of creating the options for themselves. And so, before we get into that, there's two things I want you to talk about. I want you to talk about, like, your time as a school teacher, but then also your time as a policymaker in Florida and in Virginia.

Gerard Robinson: 7:44

So a school teacher is really a couple of ways. I started off my career as a fifth grade school teacher at the Marcus Garvey School in Los Angeles. Marcus Garvey was started in the early 1970s by an entrepreneur I called him an education entrepreneur named Dr. Ian Palmer, who had two PhDs and was fired with tenure. And he tells that story because he said you can't be fired with tenure. And so he took his life savings and decided to open up a school Today we would call a Afrocentric school and still open today. And I had heard a lot about the school. My elementary school was three blocks away from that school. So as a kid I remember, you know, coming up of age. But I think what really drove me into teaching were a couple of things. So when I'm at Howard I ended up volunteering a lot in after school or what would be called out of school time programs. I was a tutor to elementary school students in the DC public schools. I had a chance to be a volunteer and a recruiter for a program called Project 2000.

Langston Clark: 8:39

Now think about this.

Gerard Robinson: 8:40

This is in the late 80s. There was a guy named Dr. Howard. Dr. Spencer Howard earned his PhD from Columbia in psychology, was working at Morgan State at the time and he said listen, we've got to find a way to put our hands around an entire class and follow that class from grade one to high school. And so in doing the math they said we're going to grab a school in Southeast DC. Southeast DC, one of the more challenging zip code areas for the district. And they said basically to the teachers, the principals and others, the families if you can keep your kid in school, do X, y and Z by the time they finish the year 2000,. We'll support them to go to college. And there was some support for that.

Gerard Robinson: 9:20

When that happened and that got me involved, I think the real push for me was meeting the sister named Tanya, who was working with a program called HITS. Now HITS is an acronym for High Intensity Training Seminar and it was created by a forward thinking superior court judge. To this day I don't know who he or she is, but they were working with young men between the ages of 16 and 19 who had one foot on the banana peel and one foot on jail or prison and on a wrong slip, you knew where you were going to go.

Gerard Robinson: 9:49

And so the judge said tell you what rather than sending you to Juvie or spent on age to a jail prison, let me divert you to a program where you get a chance to work with DC elected officials, with college students like Gerard and Tanya, who's in the community, and others.

Gerard Robinson: 10:05

And so what I thought would be maybe a one month. Hey guys, what can I do? How can I help? Can I turn into a two year commitment?

Gerard Robinson: 10:13

I remember both years going to the community celebration where the parents come. Parents are crying. I remember one because it was primarily Hispanic and Black. Most of the Spanish were Salvadorian. I remember one of the dads walking up to me and said I want to thank you for helping my son. I said, listen, I'm just glad to be helpful. He says no, I want to thank you for helping my son because he listens and respects you. And then he just got quiet, understanding that he didn't feel that his son did that for him. But a program like that helped. So I think being involved in the community at a place like Howard, at a point where the community said education matters, just made a big difference. So yes, I went in. And I also have to say and unfortunately I never had a chance to meet John Singleton before he died, but it was watching boys in the hood.

Gerard Robinson: 10:57

About a month after I graduated I was in DC watching, trying to figure out the next move and I was like do I teach, do I do something else? By the time I finished that movie and walked to the car and cried for 20 minutes. Because I grew up in that neighborhood, I know that story. I know brothers who were the dope boys and no brothers who got out. The whole story is I'm going to go and teach, so start off with Marcus Garvey. Move forward was in Jersey City, worked in a Saturday and summer program for two years at a full-time job running a nonprofit, but decided to teach African American history and philosophy to a group of high school students in Newark and Jersey City, because at that time if you didn't pass the high school exam, you didn't get a high school diploma in Jersey City and Newark. And so there's a forward-thinking educator named Dr Perry who got to get a group of people from in fact, I'm still in contact with one of them, In fact he and I just spoke a couple of days ago.

Gerard Robinson: 11:50

He's now doing his doctorate in ministry, but anyway I ended up working in that kind of work. So I won't say that my full career has been a classroom teacher. It's been different types of articulations in teaching but where I really got fired up was in the policy. So imagine in 1992, I'm in Los.

Langston Clark: 12:07

Angeles teaching at Marcus Garvey School.

Gerard Robinson: 12:09

The principal walks into the room and says the four police officers involved with beating Rodney King have been exonerated, found not guilty. And everybody's like wait what? And I remember a teacher well, a parent coming to me about a month before and said listen, I'm going to talk to you because I hear you're talking to my children about a possible riot. I said, as an educator, my job is to walk as many lanes as possible. You grew up in the 60s and I'm saying if those guys are found unguilty, there's a very good chance you're going to have a riot. And if you do hear the things that happen. I talked about what happened in Watts 1965. I talked about after King was killed 205. So it was just put into context. Well, of course that happens, we know what happens. But I spent the next three, four months in the community going to meetings where we had Congress members, local officials, state officials, people finding from the feds. George HW Bush would have been president then. So I went to a meeting at a black church in South Central LA where he sent in his members to talk about a weed and seed program. I'm like weed and seed. I mean, what are we weeding? Who are we, what do we see? So all these dynamics, and so I ended up running into. At that time he was a federal judge, al C Hastings. He later became a Congress member from Florida.

Gerard Robinson: 13:27

He died, I believe, a couple of years ago and he was in my class and I was doing my presentation. He said young man, you're doing a great job working with these students. I said, judge, what we do here is in rocket science. We have high expectations. We believe students can learn. We've got good development for people like ourselves and others. And he said yeah, yeah, yeah. He says I know what you really want to ask. I said what he said how are you getting good results with 30 kids? And we had a nice mix Title I, not Title I. But down the street, same kids, same dynamics, same drama, same issues, same goals, different results.

Gerard Robinson: 14:00

He said that you want to answer that question you have to get involved in public policy. So why don't I get forward public policy? He said because right now, with 30 children, you're having a micro impact and that's great. You want a macro impact to help 30 million. You need to get involved in policy. So I struggled with it, thought about it. You know what?

Gerard Robinson: 14:15

Lo and behold, an application came across my desk.

Gerard Robinson: 14:18

I applied and was one of 17 people in the United States chose to do a one year fellowship in the California State Senate, and that just opened up the door of policy, because it gave me a chance to see the macro and the micro, to see how education links to small business.

Gerard Robinson: 14:35

And so when I'm on the committee, I'm staffing my senator, because we put together a bill called the LA Superzone Bill and the bill said if you live in a neighborhood or geographic area impacted by the riots in Los Angeles now I'm using the term rights others may use rebellion, others may use civil unrest, that's fine. We're going to let you write off up to $75,000 of income. We're going to allow you to have all kinds of financial, economic benefits. I couldn't have done that from a micro perspective, and so from there, when I was appointed Secretary of Education of Virginia for two of those four years, just some work and a chance to work in Florida. So I have enjoyed being involved in public policy. But it's not just being appointed, it's also now using ideas of policy, working through nonprofit institutions and through universities.

Langston Clark: 15:23

Yeah, and I know that the way that your philosophy of education manifests in and policy is very much rooted in school choice, and so I think in some ways we're in like a neo-nadeer right, and so, for the listeners who don't know, the nadeer period in America is like what's thought to be the lowest racial point in the history of the United States, and so that's where lynching and all of that stuff, with that aside, is right after reconstruction, and so I'm not saying that the point that we're in right now is as bad as it was then, but in terms of like that, that nadeer period was also the point in time where, like a lot of black institutions were built churches, universities, schools and so I think about the way affirmative action is being dismantled, the way critical race theory is being thought of and dismantled in schools it's not really critical race theory, but my point is it's really a different period in time in schools than it was maybe even like three years ago, when it comes to talking about race and access to quality education for black folks.

Langston Clark: 16:21

And so how do you see now as a time for institution building and really an opportunity for black folks with an entrepreneurial spirit who care about education, to start actually building for black folks educationally.

Gerard Robinson: 16:35

Well, since you mentioned the nadeer, I'm going to talk about Dr Rayford Logan, who was historian at Howard University, in fact wrote a text about the black nadeer and just the low points, because we know in our low points we find ourselves going up While we even took this point. School choice. School choice is part of what I would call my bandwidth of the work I do. I prefer to use the term parental choice because putting parents or families as the subject of the conversation, not the object, when you say school choice, we often do that. But let's look at different nadeers in American history. So let's think about 1773. This is a year before people in Boston pour tea into the Boston Harbor to protest what was going on in England.

Gerard Robinson: 17:18

A year before that there were a group of enslaved Africans in Massachusetts and free Africans in Massachusetts who put together a petition, submitted it to the legislature and said we want you to abolish slavery. Now this is three years, or actually four years, before the Collins decide to sign the Declaration of Independence to 1776. They wanted to break their freedom or break their slavery with Britain. So even before the Americans as a national, a Collins decided they wanted to break away from freedom, Enslaved people themselves said they wanted to do that. That was surely in a day or period, not just for the.

Gerard Robinson: 17:56

Africans, but also for the Americans. So they fast forward to 1787. We know we get a constitution In the same year. If you get a constitution the same year that we have. Lawmakers in New York support the Northwest ordinance, which created, let's just say, a philosophical idea about what role the federal government can play in education. At the same time that's happening, a group of enslaved Africans, a group of free Africans in Boston, prince Hall being one of them submitted to the legislature a document that says we want good schools for our children. And if you read the language, they said we've never been late on our payment. Wait a minute. They're paying taxes, they're paying for a system. They said we've been good people, good citizens, we've been involved, and yet the free public school system you don't give us access to. We want good schools, we want our children to be economically sufficient. The same thing we're saying in 2023, they were saying in 1787. Why is that important?

Gerard Robinson: 18:56

Also still in the day period but you don't have a free, universal public education system in 1787. They understood then the importance between education and freedom. And so, while Prince Hall and their work weren't waiting per se for the Massachusetts schools to do it, churches were rebuilding private schools, churches started creating businesses, teachers educating themselves. Well, let's move to another name, dear. Let's talk about the Civil War. That part is a little easier. But we forget something to boys talk about in his work on Black Reconstruction is that one of the first things the newly free, former enslaved Africans would do in the South states like Virginia, where I am right now, is they introduce legislation to create free, universal public education in the South. Let's be clear free universal public education in the South that was not an institution that existed in the South Exists today. But most people don't make the link that it was our ancestors who made that push. We had common schools in the North, the whole horseman movement, the whole push for that. But even they benefited from this. And it wasn't just African American men, of course, giving the right to vote, of course giving the right to do things. It was Black women then and now holding up and playing roles in leadership in another nadir by education, because the South lost nearly one fourth of its men in a war and now the country got the war. But that region is trying to figure out. What do we do? They end up benefiting from education.

Gerard Robinson: 20:22

We move to the nadir. You're talking about race riots in Tulsa, race riots in St Louis. A lot of hangings, a lot of lynchings, howard University students, others making a push in NAACP making a move. Another nadir go to the 1960s, point being every nadir that we've had. We found a way, out of no way, to make sure we use education, entrepreneurship, business, economic development and religion. That's a tougher one to fight right now. We'll get to that later, but they use those five pillars to help build where we have to go. So the nadir that we're in right now and I agree it's not like it was 1773, 1865, 1924, but I will say it's one nevertheless because the pandemic hold everyone's underwear down and everybody's behind was out Rich, poor, whatever character so we're in the nadir, but in a different way. I say that we this too, will pass, because we'll just draw what we've done before.

Langston Clark: 21:23

Hey everyone, thank you again for your support of entrepreneurial appetite. Beginning this season, we are inviting our listeners to support the show through our Patreon website. The founding 55 patrons will get live access to our monthly discussions for only $5 a month. Your support will help us hire an intern or freelancer to help with the production of the show. Of course, you can also support us by giving us five stars, leaving a positive comment or sharing the show with a few friends. Thank you for your continued support. Yeah, you know, it's interesting I don't know if it was in a conversation with you or somebody else and it's like school is shut down. We knew the way schools were working before wasn't working for everybody. The pandemic is over. It's not over, but you know what I'm saying. The height of the pandemic is over, but everybody just went back to doing things the way they were before.

Gerard Robinson: 22:14

So that's why, within the field of economics, we have behavioral economists, and these are people who are taking economics and psychology Straight. Economists would talk about the rational person, that we would do things rationally and in some ways we're doing what we rationally would do. Oh, we have COVID, okay, we'll stay home, we're done Business and we'll go back and somehow we're forgetting. Behavioral scientists will say, or economists will say oh, maybe not so fast.

Gerard Robinson: 22:40

What we need to do is figure out what happened, and people are behaving not all but many in ways they did not before. Now, speaking of criminal shorts, you would be surprised the number of people who reached out to me who said, gerard, my school is closed, but charter school A down the street is open. What can I do to either get my child in charter school or create a charter school? I said now wait a minute. You've been talking about charter schools like a dog for 20 years. Someone called St Catharines of Catholic School had the money, the public schools getting they open 90% of the time. Oh what you said? The vouchers were going to underfund public education, they were going to destroy public schools, and yet you now want to figure out how to get a voucher or a micro grant to put your child and then let me shut up. The reality is, when it's your child, it becomes more real, and that's why I'm saying, now that everyone's behind out, it's like, hmm, we have to think differently.

Gerard Robinson: 23:33

So I went to a dinner in Richmond a few months ago with the group of entrepreneurs black, white, male, female, different age ranges who, by themselves, with no one's permission, not calling experts on education policy, not calling entrepreneurs, not calling the school board, asking you know, give me a guide on how to build a school. They created micro schools because they saw a need my child's out of school, the school's not going to open and they've created a network of co-op schools, micro schools and I went to dinner and it was a two and a half hour dinner and I returned home and told my wife this was a few times in a long time. It just felt good for me to have nothing to say because I don't know what to say. I don't Nothing in my background per se prepared me for a conversation like that, because the people led themselves independent of what we wanted to do. So, needless to say, they moved forward and they're telling us we don't know what the next 100 yards looks like. We're going 10 yards at a time. I just look behind every now and then and see what debris is there or to see who's going to come and chase me, but I'm moving and guess what?

Gerard Robinson: 24:41

There are entrepreneurs and others who are investing into nonprofits Some of them are overpassed through to create these schools. One of them is an African-American woman who was at one point a teacher, who said my school was closed and I missed not only my children but other people's children. Now she's got a program. She's got phone calls from all over Virginia. What can we do to do this? So it's bubbling up. One thing I will say and I think this is language we should be very careful sharing is when people say we lost 20 years worth of learning in COVID, I said well.

Gerard Robinson: 25:15

I can tell you as a policy person, if you're telling me that for the billions that we've spent on education, that a year and a half school closure can lead to 20 years worth of loss, and then you're going to come back to me and ask me for billions more, not to move forward but to close that 20-year gap, it's going to take another 20 years.

Gerard Robinson: 25:36

Oh, and then we're going to do it. No, we've got billions that we've spent CARES money and other money at least six months ago and 15% have been spent. Rest assured, there are members of Congress on both sides of political fence going to have some really interesting questions about why wasn't that money all spent? Or, if it was spent, how much was spent in places it should have gone and places it should not. So we give a shout out to all the teachers, principals, superintendents and others who did what they could do in a very horrific time of trying to make education go, even when schools were closed because I had like you podcast with teachers who were doing beyond the pale work to help us.

Langston Clark: 26:15

So there's this new micro school movement that you talked about and it was one of the most interesting sessions I went to at South by Southwest EDU this past year. But I had a conversation with a friend of yours and I wouldn't have known about him unless we had had that conversation after EDU so many years ago. Will Crossley, or the Piney Woods, is actually the feature guest that's going to be right before this episode, right? And so he gave me like and the story of Piney Woods is just powerful. I see that as an option, right, it may not manifest in the same way, but like black folks starting their own private schools, I had this debate with one of my academic brothers, daniel Thomas.

Langston Clark: 26:53

Daniel's like no unchartered schools, no unpublic schools. We need independent black schools. That's the way to go. We can do the curriculum the way we want to. We can teach how we want to. There's not all these constraints on the teachers. We don't have to always bend to the test and things like that. So how do you see this landscape potentially being an opportunity for more black folks to actually build their own independent schools to serve the communities that they're in?

Gerard Robinson: 27:20

One of the conjunctions I think we overuse when we talk about education is, or it's got to be, into black independent schools or traditional schools. I'm just saying for me I use a conjunction and public schools and black independent schools and charter schools and boarding schools. So let's talk about boarding schools. So Piney Woods as a school that's over 100 years old, it's located in Mississippi, founded by people who can trace their roots back to enslavement in the United States, and it's a boarding school that takes some students from not only Mississippi but all over the country and there's even some international students who bring those students in for an education. During the pandemic I had an opportunity and if you're interested I can see you the link to it I had an opportunity to interview teachers at public and private schools who were sharing what they were doing during COVID to work with students on education and Piney was in part I picked because it's a boarding school.

Gerard Robinson: 28:16

I mean very few boarding schools in the whole globe of schooling. But how do you do that when you no longer can board, or you're boarding and the students are in the room and you're at another piece, so I can send that to you. But that school's been around again plus 100 plus years. Will Crosley is the president. Will Crosley is also an alum of that school. He grew up in Chicago. His family made a decision family choice, family decision to send him to Piney Woods. He goes from Piney Woods, returns back to Chicago to go to the University of Chicago. He and I met when we were both students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In fact, his wife, monica, where we all were in the same class, are now married with children. He later comes to UVA, here at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He works in politics, he worked for the Obama White House, he worked for the Democratic National Committee, and then he gets a phone call and says we would love for you to come back and be the president. And surely, of course, your listeners can hear his story about that. But he too saw this as a calling leaving a comfortable Washington DC where access to food, to people, to places to go are very different than where he is right now. There are places to go to school and there's people, but it's a calling.

Gerard Robinson: 29:28

So what about Black Independent Schools? There's a sister. Her name is Dr Gail Foster. She's the founding executive director of an organization that may or may not still exist, called the Tucson Institute, named after Tucson Lowell, and it was in New York City and for nearly two decades she was on a crusade to support the existing Black boarding schools. There was one in North Carolina, there was one, of course, in Mississippi, there were a few in the United States, but she also pushed the whole movement for independent schools. So, of course, when I met her, I mentioned Marcus Garvey. She was familiar with Marcus Garvey, she had been to Marcus Garvey, but she was looking at schools in Washington DC and New York. I mean the Black Independent School movement. If you want to really have an interesting conversation is go back and look in the early 1970s. Go look at the National Black Political Conventions in Iraq, arkansas, and in Gary I think it was Gary, indiana.

Gerard Robinson: 30:29

Yes, Gary and they were talking about independent Black schools, then while you're still in the civil rights movement, you're also in the Black Conventions movement, you're also in the Black Power movement and for many people that was a part of it. And if you were in New York, it was the Community Schools movement. So the whole idea about Black Independent Schools has been a part of our conversation. Now, post-covid, it may become more of a reality. There are people in Philadelphia who created Afrocentric charter schools because they can use public money, their own taxes, to create a school and work with it. Some say, yeah, but you still have government regulation. I got it, you become independent.

Gerard Robinson: 31:05

So that conversation I would say go back and read those documents, Go back and find information from the Tucson Institute and just go back and just read, because that's a very interesting part of our history, really going all the way back to the founding of the AME Church with Richard Allen and others creating schools for people. But that independent street has been there and I remember and I'll stop with this when archeologists were doing excavations on the plantations of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, what did they unearth? Pencils. What did they unearth? Tatlids. Even in the midst of slavery, we were finding ways to move forward education. Many of us here came here educated. Those who were born here, birthed here, had to come through it as well.

Langston Clark: 31:50

So long tradition Dealing with getting more Black males in education. I'm reflecting on my own experience and I'm like if A&T did for me what A&T is going to do for other brothers who are interested in education. There's this interesting paradox that exists. I wasn't thinking about going to teach Black students in Black schools before I got to A&T. I wanted to be a PE teacher in the same district that I came from. I just knew everybody there. I wasn't afraid to go teach Black kids, I just wanted to go where I came from. You know what I'm saying, right? So we did clinical teaching All the schools that we did our practitioner hours before we do student. All of that stuff was in basically Black and Brown schools. And so by the time I graduated.

Langston Clark: 32:34

That's where I wanted to be. Here's the issue and I was prepared well to be in those contexts. Here's the issue A&T sent me to study abroad in Brazil. We got to see an independent Black school in Brazil. A&t sent me abroad to Puerto Rico. We saw the Department of Defense schools. I wasn't a teaching scholar, I was an education fellow for people who were from out of state. So we did the same program that teaching fellows did their leadership seminars. I got all this extra stuff. So A&T didn't socialize me to be in a subordinate profession or in a subordinate position. So as much as I love being a PE teacher right, I love teaching elementary school students how to use their body and stay healthy it just it wasn't going to happen. I was told my sophomore year oh, we already know, you're going to get your PhD.

Gerard Robinson: 33:16

I was told that.

Langston Clark: 33:17

So I'm wondering what are your thoughts on creating avenues for historically Black colleges as historically Black teacher education programs, creating spaces that give Black males and others an entry point into teaching but then also provides the way out, provides the pathway for you to go from being in a classroom for, let's say, five years, but then we're going to put you in this policy fellowship or we're going to put you in this ed tech fellowship. Is that, if you're a part of this ecosystem that we create, because I think part of it is you know, the carrot isn't there and Kevin Samuels came out. Everybody wants to be a high value man. Now we got to provide more avenues for brothers to go teach, do that time, but then also be able to meet the aspirations that we've cultivated within them, if just being in a classroom doesn't allow for that. So what are your thoughts on creating pathways to entrepreneurship and innovation and education in that way?

Gerard Robinson: 34:12

So for your audience, just some quick numbers. 80% of the teaching profession in our public school system is female, so you've got 20% who are male. If you're looking at black teachers, male and female you're looking roughly at about 8%. Black men, 2%. You mentioned PE.

Gerard Robinson: 34:27

When I taught fifth grade I mean contact with a few of my students. They said you're the only black male teacher that I had in the classroom in an academic subject. I had a PE teacher or sports coach who was black. I said nothing wrong with that. They said no, we're just saying within the academic piece, but they're not the only ones. Rarely will you see black men in academic subjects across the board, for a whole host of reasons. Some of it, of course, will have to do with money, but I think that's just across the board. Now let's get to the HBCUs. So when you think about the fact that HBCUs account for 3% of the post-secondary institutions in the United States and they produce nearly one in every four engineer, a number of doctors we produce approximately 33% of the black teachers have a link to an HBCU we're punching way above our weight. That's like 2023 work we're going to go to 1903 work. Many of the HBCUs, those that are the 1890 schools or those that are the private schools, even going back to Lincoln University in Missouri, lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and the privates Education was a part of that, particularly with teaching. Naturally women were put in that category because you had to be their teacher or nurse to date or have any more options. But for many men as well, they became teachers to do the work.

Gerard Robinson: 35:42

As time moved on, doors opened up. People say, well, I can teach or teach or preach, or I can become an entrepreneur, teach or preach but work in government. So people began to move. The John Singleton thing moved from me boys in the hood In the early part of the conversation. It was about having the teacher in the classroom, about having fish burn as a man. So part of my reason for going so early in the game is because, you know, I realized even then 70% of the students who drop out of high school do so in 10th grade, because the stuff in the 10th grade will catch you that you didn't get in middle school. But that's not a middle school problem, that's an elementary school problem. So I wanted to start earlier to be helpful. There are programs right now in the country that are focused on black men. So have you had Sharif on the program.

Langston Clark: 36:30

No, but I'm familiar with him, I'm going to get him. Yeah, I've had him on one of my programs, you know he's a former teacher himself, former printable.

Gerard Robinson: 36:38

He now has a program focused on reading black men and in fact he's having a national conference in Philadelphia, believe, in October and November. You had that October man, but here's someone who said I've been in the system, I've seen a good back, hopeful, in the ugly. I'm going to focus on a program to do this. That's number one. Number two national board certified teachers. There's research to show that if you're a national board certified teacher, the type of impact you're having on your students is pretty good, academically and otherwise. The majority of these teachers in the United States are not national board certified. For the ones who are mini school systems, superintendents in particular are trying to either recruit them for the ones they have, keep them, and you have people like Peggy Brookings who's the president of the national board for teaching standards and it's basically the group that helps out with national board certified teaching. Couple of years ago she invited me to sit at her table with a group of black teachers who are going through the program to become nationally certified to get the kind of training, professional development, camaraderie that comes along with that type of standard and that type of accolade. So I want to give Kahooos. Congrats to her because she's using a national organization and pinpointing all teachers absolutely, but one focused black Howard University, clark, atlanta.

Gerard Robinson: 38:02

Your institution, hbcus, have focused on this for years. In fact, you mentioned the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. For years, in the summer, they've supported a teacher pipeline project. So this is what we can do now. How can we become entrepreneurial? You and I went to school with brothers and sisters who are now millionaires, either because they went into corporate America and have gone the ranking and older than you so I've got another to say 15 years, but I know people who are millionaires. All those millionaires pay taxes. Why do we go to our alumni friend and say you know what? For those of you who remember us when we were doing community service work, when you were going overseas to look at education, when they were going to Wall Street, here's an opportunity for you to endow a chair at ANT or myself and Dr Kara Kandel.

Gerard Robinson: 38:53

We're going to have a policy paper coming out about the importance of endowing chairs at the high school level in STEM. So why don't I get five of my millionaire friends and say, why don't you go and endow a high school chair? Could be STEM, could be English, could be mathematics. The next way to walk to new worship is endowing chairs. Because when you endow a chair, three things happen. Number one you have principal money in a spot and you're paying the teacher off the interest You've taken off the table money.

Gerard Robinson: 39:25

Number two in the summertime you set up an opportunity for that teacher to work in a I guess it's about men him or a few other women his or her area. If they're interested in STEM, send them overseas. Send them to the couple of islands a family of friends of mine just to return where Darwin got his start and his big push on evolution. Make the summers matter, but also pay them the same salary they would have earned had they been in the private sector. Number three is use that to say that every year you have to publish a paper peer review, journal, public policy, we'll figure that out, but every year you've got to publish. So you've now made a high school teacher a scholar. You now give her, that high school teacher, an opportunity that you receive private or public sector salary for doing something in the world here she works in, then to go back not to worry about a salary because the interest is taken care of.

Gerard Robinson: 40:16

That. That's one entrepreneurial way. But we've got to create and endow more chairs. If you're paying taxes, they're nonprofit foundations at schools. You can make this happen for both HBCUs and high school. You can do it elementary. I'll just use high school for now.

Langston Clark: 40:32

It's interesting because I think about what if Anna Julia Cooper and Carter G Woodson at Dunbar had someone endowing them as school leaders or as teachers way back then, and I think we have more opportunity to do those things now and like for those people who are listening and don't know what an endow chair is is your art, was saying. It's basically you create an investment into an individual to pay them higher salary, but oftentimes they get a budget to do programming as well, and so that could provide an opportunity for a teacher, educator or a K through 12 teacher to really do some amazing and dynamic things with students throughout the educational ecosystem. I think that's a brilliant idea.

Gerard Robinson: 41:15

There are a lot of teachers who stay in the profession working with the money they have Now let's be real clear. There are thousands of teachers who retire every decade comfortable, based upon the kind of investments made in their teacher pension fund and money. They save everything else. So even teachers who say money isn't my issue, just imagine how free you are with an endowed chair because of the things that it brings in.

Gerard Robinson: 41:43

You're right. Imagine, yeah, carter G Woodson and the whole folks yeah, probably at that time they would call those people a patron Like Dr King had patrons. Dr King was able to do a lot that he could because he had patrons who were paying from him or doing concerts where there was this Harry Belafonte, where there was a black woman at the church raising money and doing things. Where there was black women with businesses who were investing in projects. That he was doing is just amazing. But I will say this, and the reason I bring up the HBCU Millionaire Park it was Kenzie Scott is taking care of the HBCUs and we're saying that 1% of the HBCU alumni can't do the same. Then are we really serious about black education?

Langston Clark: 42:25

Yeah, and it's crazy. I graduated from A&T in 07. I mean, it's some years on that. I mean we get close to 20 years. But I do have people in my network that graduate from A&T in 07 who are millionaires. Well, yeah, yeah, I did admit, millionaires. That's an interesting. I'm not. I'm not to steal that idea. Oh my goodness.

Gerard Robinson: 42:43

There's nothing new under the sun. Yeah, say in the book, please. He asked you. So you're not just stealing, you're just. We articulated.

Langston Clark: 42:49

Yeah, send me that paper when y'all get done with it, because I'm sure that's a my dean, because I think that's a brilliant idea. I want to talk about this ed tech piece. How do we get into ed tech spaces and become entrepreneurs? You know all the tech people they talk about. Like you got to have a world changing idea. It's going to change the way we do things. I remember I never forget you talking about an. Mj brings this up. He says man, that brother Jarrah, we're talking about holograms, teaching kids before the pandemic hit. So how do we get more brothers and sisters in the spaces where they can start shaping what's happening in ed tech in ways that do well and benefit black communities?

Gerard Robinson: 43:24

They're things that are off the cuff or off the perspective of what we would think. Number one I would say start reading science fiction work Octavia Butler or science fiction, but speculative or fantasy. Go back and look at some old, you know Star Trek shows, but read more science fiction and fantasy. When I listen to people who are in tech and they talk about their childhood, they're different influences, but the common thing at some point was reading something. That was just different. So I would obviously read beyond what you usually read.

Gerard Robinson: 43:58

Number two I would listen to talks where there's TED talks, talks at the university by people who are actually in tech doing it. So I think of someone like Gene Wade. So Gene Wade is the founder of the honors pathway college program in Oakland. Over 12 years ago he was identified by Forbes as the disruptor of the year because he and some others pulled their money and bought a college to make college education affordable. He's a more house grad, got his start in public housing in Boston, went to Harvard Law School and did an MBA award.

Gerard Robinson: 44:36

He's now, in the last five months, come on board as strategic partner with an organization focused on AI and the next wave of things, gene Wade is someone you should look up because I'm telling you he's usually 10 years ahead of the game and so, having had a chance to work with him, when I talk to him he's reading and thinking of things broadly. So I would say look, for examples, we have Gene, I think it's 51. And so he's in a range of people who can relate to. Another thing that I would do is we look at tech, is to ask where haven't we put a footprint? I was with a cousin of mine yesterday. He's entering right now Capitol Hill.

Langston Clark: 45:15

I sent him a link from JP Morgan.

Gerard Robinson: 45:17

Jp Morgan now has I won't call it a division, but a section within his company focused on space investment, Investing in space. When you take a look at the movies we see now someone's landing some other place. Now we can look at this as maybe an early revelatory call from Gil Scott Herron when he had his song Whitey on the Moon. Maybe we can take a look at Star Trek and others. There was always a push forward. Why are we on the move? That's fine. Even take a look at places like Tuskegee years ago, grant from the federal government, how to grow food in outer space. If we're thinking about tech, we have to start thinking about what is it like to build a civilization that's off the planet earth? And then backward map to the earth, yeah, Figure out what we have to do to get there. Those are things that kind of mind for me.

Langston Clark: 46:08

That's Afrofuturism right there. That's it. Yeah, I had a Dan J Brail. He wrote this book called Borderland Blacks. He's from Rochester, new York. He talks about Rochester is a huge, significant place on the Underground Railroad. His argument is that those Black folks who were freeing slavery in the South the South meaning the United States, not the South of the United States they were Afrofuturist because they had to use the latest technology at the time to get the freedom. Not everybody was getting on a train. Do you know how some Black folk not get on an airplane? No, then some people weren't getting on a train across that bridge.

Langston Clark: 46:47

He talks about the courage that these people needed to have to get to their liberation, although we look at them as they're very much outdoors, because they had to travel through woods and the wilderness not to get caught, but at some point they had to get in that car. Maybe the car is brand new. They had to cross Afrofuturism in us. Getting to where we need to be is not something that is brand new For those who were thinking space is all the way out there. Think about it that our ancestors who fled slavery, they got on the spaceship of their day, getting on a train to Canada, some of us. So I appreciate you making that connection to Afrofuturism for sure. Last question before we go, mention that we have roots in being a book club. I'm wondering what books have you read? What books are you reading? I know you mentioned sci-fi and things like that that are giving you inspiration for the work that you're doing that you would suggest for our authors to read.

Gerard Robinson: 47:40

So I'm reading a book about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War in Washington DC, and it's a book that's totally focused on what it was like for him to be in the White House, having to fight a civil war in within the confines of the District of Columbia, so what we know today as Arlington Cemetery, when Lincoln was in the White House. He can get a telescope and look over to where today again is the Arlington Cemetery that was Robert E Lee's home, or one of the plantations. That's how close it was. It's a book about Confederates having themselves stopped crossing the bridge, trying to get in DC from his north and then from the south, the Confederates trying to come up from Virginia.

Gerard Robinson: 48:28

It's a book about his own cabinet and friends around him and it's just a really interesting dynamic of all the stuff we know about the Civil War just in DC and what he had to do to navigate it. I have a really big interest in DC, one of my favorite cities in the world, and so I'm reading that. You also know that I'm involved in criminal justice reform. I've got a really big push on helping people who are incarcerated get an education during incarceration and afterward. This book right here is one I had a chance to co-edit called Education for Liberation the Promises of Reform in and outside of American prisons. And so there's a book I'm reading right now in fact I'm looking at it From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime and it's by Dr Hinton and it's basically a book talking about the Johnson administration, which you know he's given a state-of-the-state address about a great society and within a matter of X number of months you've got watch, you've got LA, you've got all kinds of things and then a big war on crime. And if that war on crime continues to move through, richard Nixon when he said in 1972 that drug or drug use is enemy number one. And then you move all the way. So that book is interesting to me because it's really giving me a chance to do a deeper dive into the Johnson administration, the Nixon administration, moving forward because we didn't arrive at what we call mass incarceration 2023, 1.9 million people incarcerated Now be very clear smaller than it was even 10 years ago.

Gerard Robinson: 50:00

But how do you go from roughly 280,000 people in prison in 1970 to over 2 million in a matter of 25 years, most of them disproportionately us, and there are a lot of factors, but we often don't look at the role of the White House. So I'm reading that book as well. So it's just two, I would say. And whenever I find myself questioning how to look at the world differently, I go back and read Betty Barrables book about how capitalism underdeveloped black America. Now I'm a free market guy, so I support the free market system, support capitalism. I also understand the challenges that come with it, not only being black, but also not need a black and female, whole double aspect. But it just keeps being grounded to make sure that I'm rethinking not just the theory of this but how it's related to our people. So those are some of the kind of mine.

Langston Clark: 50:51

Yeah. So if there's one thing that I get from brother Jarrah Robinson is that, like man, this brother is everywhere, and so for those of you who are looking to elevate, to make an impact, don't be afraid to be in rooms that you may not think that you could be in. And so I brought up ed tech in this conversation because I randomly saw ed tech week video and I was like that's that brother from stuff by stuff with edu talking about ed tech. You know, I see him on other podcasts about incarceration, about education, and so he really is a wealth of information and knowledge and I appreciate you coming here and sharing what you know from your experiences with our audience, and I appreciate you.

Gerard Robinson: 51:26

There are times for us to you know, get discouraged that stuff is real and, given the current climate of anti black history, big push against DEI. Just remember, we've seen this through different lenses before we weren't born, we were very young. Go back and see what strategies worked for people who were through this before. Some of those things are still valid. But also look again 25 years ahead and then walk backward and figure out how to backward map, to move a spear.

Langston Clark: 51:52

Thank you for joining this edition of entrepreneurial appetite. If you like the episode, you can support the show by becoming one of our founding 55 patrons, which gives you access to our live discussions and bonus materials, or you can subscribe to the show. Give us five stars and leave a comment.