Episode 106: Michael Sorrell on the racial and economic disparities infecting our nation

Michael Sorrell is back to talk with George about everything from the continued need for HBCU's, the tragic racial disparities revealed by COVID-19, and that campus football field he turned into a farm.

Listen here, read the transcript below, or click here for the full video version.

George Mason:
Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith in public life. I'm your host, George Mason, and I'm so pleased to welcome back to the program president Michael Sorrell of Paul Quinn College in Dallas, Texas. Michael, good to have you back.

Michael Sorrell:
Oh, it's wonderful to be back with you. Thank you again for the invitation.

George Mason:
Great. So, Michael, you are the president of a school that started in 1872?

Michael Sorrell:
Two.

George Mason:
1872, that's just a few years after the Civil War. It started at a time when, during reconstruction, the country was being reconstructed. That is to say black people had been worshiping in white churches, generally in the balcony, right?

Michael Sorrell:
Right.

George Mason:
And there was a kind of a social accommodation where people sort of understood how they were going to be together. But after the Civil War, white churches basically said, "All right, if we can't own you, we're going to separate from you. If you're going to be equal, fine, but we're going to be separate." And so here's the church and all these churches began, right, and we have the legacy of white churches and black churches that is with us still today. But part of that was then, okay, well what about higher education? And so the birth of the historically black colleges and universities, the HBCU's began during that period. And there are how many of those schools now in America today about?

Michael Sorrell:
103.

George Mason:
103. And I think an awful lot of people might say, "Well, it's been more than a hundred years. For heaven sake, don't we have a time when there's no longer racial separation and there's opportunity at state universities and other private schools. Why perpetuate a historically black college or university?" And I think there are a lot of good answers to that, but I think it would be great to hear yours. What would you say about that?

Michael Sorrell:
Sure. Well, here's the thing that I would say. Slavery existed for 400 years, and we haven't yet had a country where we've existed half as long without slavery. I mean, when you think about it-

George Mason:
That's pretty generous actually, to be honest with you. When you think about it, we 18, what, 65 is the end of the war, and we have a brief period of reconstruction. And then we move into a period of separate but equal, and Jim Crow laws, and all the kinds of ways that one thing after another. We can outline all of this. That includes things like voter suppression and poll taxes and unequal schools in the name of equality. And then we have the war on drugs and mass incarceration, and it's just an extraordinary history of every time we think there's a chance for equality, there's another innovation of how to maintain this inequality. Right?

Michael Sorrell:
And look, let's be very, very clear. We have not been a country that has been welcoming to the idea of equality, right? At every step of the way, I mean, we don't want to invite anyone to the table, right? Women got to the table begrudgingly. We can look at what's going on now with immigration. We can look at all of this. I mean, the piece that I don't understand about our country is we were founded on these extraordinary set of principles and documents, and we don't want to fully live up to them. Right? I mean, we embrace them for the convenience of our preconceived notions, and what I've never been able to understand is why we claim an abundance and yet embrace scarcity. Right?

George Mason:
Oh, preach. There you go. There you go.

Michael Sorrell:
Look at the way we behave is with a scarcity mentality. You can't sit at my table because if you sit at my table, I won't have as much. And listen... And then the other piece of it is we wrap all of that around Christian principles or faith based principles, and I have yet to find anywhere in the Bible where it says you should be a jerk. You should be selfish. You should be mean. That's just not there, okay? It is not there. And so, well, what is there? Well, not in the Bible, it is part of our principles, is this accommodation to evil, right, where we have been willing to co-sign destructive, negative, hateful behavior in exchange for our water not being troubled. And that to me betrays everything that we could possibly be as a country.

Michael Sorrell:
And so when you look at how we wounded needing historically black colleges in the first place, right? So slavery existed, okay? I mean, I know we try and write stuff out of history books, all right? People were not workers. They were not indentured servants. We were enslaved. We were brought here. It was horrible, and we just have to own that. Right? That is part of our collective experience in this country. Right? Now, that doesn't mean that the person I have lunch with today whose ancestors might've own slaves, that doesn't mean that that person is an evil person. Okay? But we all have some people in our family trees that did some stuff we would have preferred that they not do. None of our folks were angels. Okay? I saw this great saying once, and I quote, "All the saints and all the sinners are never on the same side forever." Right?

George Mason:
I like that.

Michael Sorrell:
And we just have to make peace with these things. And so the fact is that this happened, and because it happened, because slaves weren't allowed to read... They weren't allowed to write. They weren't allowed to own land. They weren't allowed to build wealth. They are freed, and then you have millions of people who just basically said, "All right, you're free. Good luck."

George Mason:
And 40 acres and a mule did not happen.

Michael Sorrell:
That did not happen. Right? There were no 40 acres. There were no mules. And by the way, those people who did get 40 acres were sharecroppers, and they were cheated out of their land. Okay? So nothing worked. Nothing worked. And so you get these institutions that are given the impossible task of uplifting a race, uplifting a race without adequate funding, uplifting a race without adequate instruction, uplifting a race for people who couldn't afford to pay to go to school. Right? I mean, it was a recipe for disaster, yet and still here we are. Right? Paul Quinn College is 148 years old, and at no point in our history have we sat on the banks of billions. Right? That hasn't been our experience, but what we have always done is kept going.

Michael Sorrell:
So when people talk about how is it possible that you stand up for these principles, that you live up to these values? Because candidly, sometimes those values are all we've ever had. Right? And so you hold on to the things which have sustained you. But I will tell you the miracle to me about this country, looking at where we are now, looking at where we've been is I'm shocked that we ever succeeded in getting rid of slavery given the economic sacrifices that people had to make. You had to convince people to act against their economic self interest, because if you use just... I mean, let's just use the current pandemic as an example. We're only asking people to make sacrifices for a couple of months so far.

George Mason:
Right, right. All right, so let's talk about this legacy and what it means for historically black colleges and universities. Since the Civil War and before that, of course, we have the legacy of slavery. Today black Americans have about 10% of the net worth of white Americans. And we can say, "All right, well, that was then, and this is now. You have every opportunity. Go to it." But the conversation about reparations came up in a big way during the democratic nomination process in the debates. I think the whole nation heard for the first time a serious debate about what the whole nation owes to black Americans and possibly to it's institutions like HBCU's. And so there were some proposals made. What is your take on all of that? Do you have a particular position to advocate for?

Michael Sorrell:
Sure. It's just funny. I actually taught a class this semester on reparations. I teach an elite problem solving class each semester, and we pick a different topic. And so the spring's topic was design a pathway for reparations to actually succeed and be paid in the current political climate. And was a little bit unfair to the students because the answer is you can't. Right? You can't, because if you somehow manage to get people to vote for it, everyone who voted for it will absolutely lose their jobs. We've seen that kind of backlash, right? So here's how I look at this. There really is no question that reparations are owed. Right? I mean, we can dress it up. We can fight about it. We can do lots of things, but really, really at the end of the day, an egregious harm was done. It was done because at the time that it existed laws that were unfair were truly immoral were in place. It's part of the reason why also I don't have any fear of standing up to conventional status quo wisdom, because I know there are times when there's the tyranny of the majority. Right?

George Mason:
Right, right.

Michael Sorrell:
And so when you look at this, this happened. Okay? Historically speaking, when things like this have happened to every other group reparations in some way, shape, or form had been paid. The only group that has not been paid to has been the folks who, by the way, arguably had the worst lot. So 400 years-

George Mason:
And let's also say the only group of people in an immigrant nation who were brought here against their will did not come by their own choice.

Michael Sorrell:
That's right.

George Mason:
All right. Well, we could talk through that in great detail. I think that's a whole episode for us probably, but from my point of view, you can just go to almost any aspect of the notion of repentance in the Bible. And it is not enough simply to say I'm sorry or to feel sorry. It is about making things right. So Justice Walter Brueggemann said is figuring out what belongs to whom and giving it back. And Zacchaeus was famous for being the one who, when he was converted, so to speak, he said, "Okay, I've cheated all these people. I'm going to pay back four times what I owe them." So I think there is a model for us even in a Biblical sense.

George Mason:
But going forward, you have figured out an economic model at Paul Quinn that we talked about in our last episode, it being an urban work college, the only one in America, the only black college that is a work college where all students are working and making their way through and graduating with very little debt. But you also made a really significant decision back in 2015 to do something that really changed, again, the ethos of the school in that historically black colleges and universities have had a lot of school spirit across time with their athletic programs. And you had a big football field there, and you decided to tear it up and plant a garden, to cancel the football program and build an urban garden. And that was an extraordinary decision. Let's talk about that somehow.

Michael Sorrell:
Sure, sure. So it actually is ironic. We terminated the football program in 2007, and then in 2010 we planted the farm. It was-

George Mason:
Man, time flies.

Michael Sorrell:
Oh, it flies. And I tell people we built the farm without a feasibility study, without a real plan. We built the farm on the back of righteous rage. I mean, it should never have worked. The idea that a school with no agriculture program, no one on staff that knew anything about farming... In fact, the person who was our original farm director, she got the job because I had mentored her since she was 16, she was the youngest staff member, and I knew that she wouldn't tell me no. Right? So I said, "Hey." And she said, "Well, I don't know anything about farming." I just told her to Google it, and that's how we wound up with the farm with no tractor really with no irrigation system. And we're so incredibly thankful to you and the church, because you all bought us our first tractor, which by the way has made a world of difference. Turns out automation is your friend on the farm, okay?

George Mason:
Oh, that's right.

Michael Sorrell:
But again, it goes back to just the simple principle of what's right. What's right? I mean, we could continue to play football or we could address the needs of the community you serve.

George Mason:
Well, let's say a little more about that because you are in what's known as a food desert, right? So your community is without a large grocery store where people can go within several miles of where they live. And so they are left to convenience stores and to the high sugar count and carb count of the kinds of foods that they can buy. And then also the increased price of those fast food goods and whatnot. So here you are. You're going to plant a garden, have a farm, and produce fresh greens and stuff, vegetables, for your community. What an incredible gift.

Michael Sorrell:
Well, when first decided to create the farm, and I went to my board and I said, "We're going to turn the football field into a farm." And they all looked at me as if I was pretty much crazy. And I said to them, I was like, "This farm is going to be the thing that saves our school." And one of my trustees said, "Are we going to make that much money farming?" And I laughed. I said, "No, you can't make that much money farming anything legal on this lot [crosstalk 00:18:21]. No." I said, "But, what this farm is going to do is it's going to show people who we really are. It allows us to reframe the conversation." We're going to turn this around. Instead of being focused on us, we're going to say we have something of value to contribute. And it's made a world of difference for my students. It's made a world of difference for the community. It is a source of pride, and, again, it speaks to this deep seated belief that we have that there's nothing better than to serve.

George Mason:
Right. Well, so for people like me who live in north Dallas and who have to make a decision every time we leave the house to go to a grocery store, which one am I going to pass to get to the next one, because they're competing with each other within half a mile of each other, the good news for people like us is that we can come home with a kind of nutrition plan that enables us to live fairly healthy lives. But COVID-19 has revealed a great deal of the health inequities between the black and white communities of Dallas as well, that hypertension that leads to heart disease, and that the diet that leads to diabetes is making... When an African American essential worker in this town gets COVID, it is more likely that he or she will die from that than if a white person does. So nutrition is a really important part of a healthy life and lifestyle.

Michael Sorrell:
Yeah, it is. I mean, listen, there is a price that you pay for being poor in America.

George Mason:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Michael Sorrell:
You are robbed of the ability to do simple things simply. And let me be very clear. People aren't poor because they're lazy, right? I mean, the way you have to work when you're poor is... I mean, I'm looking at my students and their families, and they're willing to work two and three jobs to try to cobble together a living, so these aren't people who are lazy. But yet we blame them for their circumstances. And I just don't know why we do that. I don't know why that makes us feel better about ourselves. It doesn't make us better. It doesn't make us good people. And so what COVID has done is it's peeled back the curtain. But frankly, I'm not sure how much more peeling back the curtain needed to be peeled back.

George Mason:
Right. But it made us pay attention, Michael, well, some. I mean, you can be willfully ignorant, but this is at least raised to the front page above the fold the fact that we have this kind of inequality of access to healthcare, of health outcome inequality, of a vulnerability to the disease. All of these things are now right in front of us, and we have to be willfully ignorant not to pay attention to it.

Michael Sorrell:
Well, so here's something else that I don't think people realize is what also contributes to your health is your environment, right? This blows my mind. We did a study this spring in one of our classes about the air quality in the city, and it gets released... I actually think it's released tomorrow, today or tomorrow, and it shows how effectively in the southern part of the city the air quality is so poor, and it's been legislated to be that way. Right? So everything that the people in the southern part of the city are experiencing, the law permits it. And so if you think about, if every second of your day or more often than not, you're breathing substandard air, then you are hungry, and you say, "Well, I'm going to get something to eat." Well, you don't have Eatzi's, you don't have Central Market, so you go to the convenience store. Money is tight, so you buy what you can afford. Maybe it's at the convenience store and the Burger King... I'm not speaking disparagingly Burger King.

George Mason:
I understand.

Michael Sorrell:
So Burger King will have you can get these two things for $5, right? Well, those two things aren't a salad, right? And so day after day, year after year, you are breathing poor air, you're eating substandard food, you're dealing with the stressors of everyday life.

George Mason:
Stress, two or three jobs.

Michael Sorrell:
Two or three jobs. And so then when something like COVID comes along, which feeds on unhealthy bodies and systems anyway, ravages them, well, of course... And then you don't have access to appropriate healthcare, and then when you do go to the doctor, you might be told, "Just take an aspirin and go home. You're not really that-"

George Mason:
And you might not have insurance to begin with more than likely.

Michael Sorrell:
And you probably don't have insurance. So all of them becomes the perfect storm that leads to the destruction-

George Mason:
I want to wrap up our time together just using the conversation about the tractor as illustrative of the question of how we as a larger community in Dallas can be supportive. So the story of the farm hits Sports Illustrated, right? And a young adult in our church in north Dallas reads this story and is captured by it and tells his parents. They have a family foundation, and they decide this is the coolest idea, it looks like they're basically using manual labor to get this done, what if? And they had some resources to do that, and we were able to connect and they donated a significant tractor that was able to expand your farm pretty quickly. Right? So that was one of the really great joys that the day I got to go down with them and meet you and see the tractor and the farm. So we're proud to have been part of that effort, at least.

Michael Sorrell:
Well, we are incredibly appreciative. It's one of those things where the real joy is for the students and staff that were down there trying to make this thing work without a tractor.

George Mason:
I know, right? Yeah.

Michael Sorrell:
They were so happy. I mean, one of them hugged me so hard that I just laughed and said, "I don't know what to do."

George Mason:
Well, the fun thing for me is when they called, I knew you enough and knew how to get to you. When you hang around for a long enough time and you meet people, you can make these connections and whatnot, so it was fun for me to be able to be just the intermediary, go-between for you. But I really want to make this a larger story, and that is Paul Quinn College is a treasure for their city. And it is obviously a historically black college, and there's a great deal of pride about it being so, and the leadership, the board being African American, but surely you need friends everywhere and supporters and whatnot. There are people listening to this program, and I'd just like to encourage them to consider that with their charitable dollars and their influence and whatnot that they consider you, Paul Quinn, not to direct how you're supposed to do what they want you to do with their money, but rather to find out what you're up to and join it.

Michael Sorrell:
Well, we would welcome the opportunity. I think when people take the time to come see what we're doing, they would be really, really impressed with what we're doing and the innovations that we've implemented. And we would welcome an opportunity for them. We can't give personal tours now, but we can give virtual tours, so call me. I'll get on FaceTime, and I'll walk you around the campus and tell you the story.

George Mason:
Well, I just think a lot of people I hear from time to time, they say, "Okay, racism is what it is. What can I do? I'm going to change my heart and my attitude and all that sort of thing." The fact of the matter is you don't have to scratch too deep before you can figure out a way that you can change systems, that you can concretely give back, that you can begin to be part of a solution that is not just about changing the way you think and talk about other people, but actually altering the way we live together and what that future can be. You're doing that in so many ways, Michael. I thank you for the great example and for our relationship, and I look forward to many good times in the future.

Michael Sorrell:
Well, I look forward to it. I am so, so just honored to be your friend and impressed with the work that you and the church, that you all do on a daily basis. And I just think you all are one of the brightest lights we have in the city, so it's an honor to be your friend.

George Mason:
Well, that's great. Well, a mutual admiration society then. Thanks for being on Good God again and have a great day.

Michael Sorrell:
You too. You take care.

George Mason:
Take care. Bye-bye.

George Mason:
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Speaker 3:
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