Byron Sanders on the racial inequities in Dallas

President and CEO of Big Thought, Byron Sanders, speaks on the racial inequity in Dallas and the ways in which we can help create a better Dallas for the next generation.

Conversations like this are so important in fostering an awareness among white people of what life is like in Dallas for people of color. Byron shares a recent personal experience of having the police called on him for legally canvassing with his young daughter.

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

This episode was previously released in March 2019.

George Mason: What can be done to raise the sights of children of color in Dallas, so that they have an imagination of opportunity? Byron Sanders of Big Thought is going to talk about just that, and the work that they do with their nonprofit on Good God. Stay tuned.

George Mason: Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith, and public life. I'm George Mason, your host, and I'm pleased to welcome to the program today, Byron Sanders. Byron, we're glad to have you with us.

Byron Sanders: It's a pleasure to be here.

George Mason: Thank you. Now, Byron is the President, and CEO of a creative educational enterprise called Big Thought.

Byron Sanders: That's right.

George Mason: Big Thought, and it is a big social transformation organization that we're going to get to talking about after a while a little more, but Byron, I think because this is Good God, we like to talk about people's faith journey that got them into this work, and how it informs your work, and how you connect the dots between your own personal spiritual life, and the work you do. So, tell us something about your self identification in terms of your faith.

Byron Sanders: Absolutely. You know, so I grew up here in Dallas.

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: I grew up a church kid too. Most of my life was in southern Dallas, DeSoto, Oak Cliff, a little bit of Pleasant Grove, but it was kind of the southern Dallas life, and my mother is an educator. She was a teacher for the longest time. She just retired after 36 years not too long ago, and she's doing what all retired teachers do which is teach.

George Mason: Teach, exactly.

Byron Sanders: But still living her best life, right? So, education kind of just was in the atmosphere, right? It was in the drinking water growing up, but what was interesting was I started off in Dallas Independent School District, loved my school. Adelle Turner gave me a really solid grounding in who I was, my culture, my identity, and I learned to love, you know, my blackness.

Byron Sanders: I learned to love history about a culture that I really identify with, and then from there, went to the Talented and Gifted Magnet still in Dallas Independent School District over in Spence. So, went from Oak Cliff, to East Dallas, got a different experience there.

Byron Sanders: Oak Cliff, all black, excuse me, it was an all black school, and then East Dallas, it was a mostly Hispanic school, and then I was in the TAG segment, which was a little bit more diverse, but different environment, met a mentor in my little nerd outlet, which was history day, and history day, Donald Payton told me about this school called Green Hill. So I went, and I visited, loved it, took a tour, there were peacocks walking around. I'm like, 'I want to go to the school of peacocks', right?

Byron Sanders: So, went up there, and I thought I was hot stuff, and I was going to come in, and be hot stuff, because I'm hot stuff. That's what I do in school. This is what I do. Well, I got baptized in a different set of expectations, and it wasn't that they're using different books, or you know, Algebra is Algebra, is Algebra, right?

Byron Sanders: But I was not used to the inquiry that students were expected to have. I thought when kids were talking back to the teacher, I thought they were being disrespectful, as opposed to having an actual conversation, right? You know, it was a completely different cultural reference. Exactly, but I got the hang of it after two years, I got the hang of it, but I would never forget though that I would be patently aware that I was getting something really special at this school.

Byron Sanders: But I happened to be in the right place at the right time, met the right mentor who told me about a school that I'd never heard of, happened to have a mother, and father who were willing to sacrifice. We woke up at five o'clock every morning, so that I could catch the bus in West Dallas at 6:30 at the Boys Club, and then we'd go pick up some more kids in East Dallas, then we'd head up to Addison, and was able to do so with mostly a full ride, and wow, that was a lot of dominoes that had to fall in order for me to have that experience.

Byron Sanders: The kind of experience that allowed me to be on the Dean's list my first year when I got to Southern Methodist University. In school, college wasn't a shock for me, and I was patently aware that every day when I drove back home, and we crossed at Trinity, and I'm passing the neighborhoods that I grew up in, or the neighborhoods where you would take the exit to get to church, and you couldn't forget what was going on with the lives of the folks that were my classmates, or the people that I would play football with, or run track with.

George Mason: So, the goal shouldn't be that you have to get out in order to move up, that you should be able to move up by staying right where you are.

Byron Sanders: Opportunity should abound everywhere.

George Mason: Exactly.

Byron Sanders: And I knew I had to do something in education. I had no idea what I was going to do. Fast forward, fast forward, fast forward, graduate University of Tulsa, come back, I'm working in pharmaceutical sales, and there was a gaping hole in the fulfillment part of my composition.

George Mason: Here comes the spiritual.

Byron Sanders: And went on a really deep search for what that thing was, and I came to a mission statement. Mission of Byron Keith Sanders is to love my God with all my heart, and soul. To be the husband, father, son, and brother according to what pleases him, and to work diligently, and daily in my most sincere efforts to pursue my appointed purpose with honor, character, bravery, and love.

George Mason: Now wait a minute. That's a mission paragraph.

Byron Sanders: It's a powerful tool that helped me know what to say yes to, also helped me know what to say no to.

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: It crystallized my pathway, and became my north star, and it's something that I say every day, I have it stitched into some of my clothes. I mean, it truly is that thing, that anchor that I use to keep my purpose for being on this planet paramount, and forefront.

George Mason: Good.

Byron Sanders: And so, that's what led me on the purpose driven path toward working explicitly in the spaces for education. It started early, I was a few steps in, but that really started once I crystallized with that mission statement.

George Mason: All right, so there's your mission statement.

Byron Sanders: Yeah.

George Mason: And it starts with a very biblical language.

Byron Sanders: Absolutely.

George Mason: All right, so where'd you get that?

Byron Sanders: Well, when I first started it was to be, 'cause I had to start somewhere. I had no idea what this statement was going to be, but it was to be the best pharmaceutical sales rep the world has ever known.

George Mason: It's a long way from love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul strength, and mind, yeah.

Byron Sanders: But you know what? I mean, I just had to write something down just to get the ball going, but what happened was I went through the why exercise.

George Mason: Very good.

Byron Sanders: I kept asking myself, 'Well okay, if that is it, then why?', and I just asked so many why's, studied, prayed, fasted, and it took literally, it took about three months to get there in 2007.

George Mason: Okay.

Byron Sanders: And every single word is intentional, and the priorities even in the statement are laid out when I said to love my God with all my heart, and soul, it's an action word that really is kind of the core constitution of who I am from which everything else flows.

George Mason: Right. Right.

Byron Sanders: And what it became more for me was not just, 'Hey, this is what I'm going to do', it became an identity.

George Mason: Yes.

Byron Sanders: And so no matter where I go, I carry that with me no matter what job I'm doing, that mission statement hasn't changed.

George Mason: So, this is an important thing to say I think for all of us who I think a lot of people do jobs, and they don't get the difference between a job, and a vocation.

Byron Sanders: That's right. That's right.

George Mason: So, I like to say that a job is an occupation.

Byron Sanders: Yeah.

George Mason: A vocation is a preoccupation.

Byron Sanders: That is good.

George Mason: You know what I'm saying?

Byron Sanders: Yeah. No, I get it.

George Mason: That a job is something you can do. A vocation is something you can't not do.

Byron Sanders: That's it.

George Mason: And so when you have a mission statement like yours, then what's happening is, really the particulars of how you carry that out are less important, than whether those are being driven by the main thing.

Byron Sanders: Amen to that.

George Mason: Yeah.

Byron Sanders: When I realized that I didn't have a bullseye that I had to hit somewhere down the line in the future.

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: When I realized that it was much more about who I'm trying to be in this moment, in this time for my God, and being present to the purpose that he's given for me at this moment in time. There's certainly been a trend, but man, every five year plan that I'd written before ends up getting balled up, and tossed out the window.

George Mason: Sure.

Byron Sanders: Because I don't have enough imagination to dream up exactly what God has for me.

George Mason: But the mission doesn't have to change.

Byron Sanders: That's the beauty.

George Mason: Exactly. So all right. So, let's move from pharmaceutical, to Big Thought.

Byron Sanders: Yes.

George Mason: All right. How did you get from one to the ...

Byron Sanders: How in the world did that happen? Yeah, well when I was in pharmaceutical, I was like, 'I'm gonna make a ton of money, then I'll do something later on when I'm like 60, or so.'

George Mason: Hey, your 60's not so bad.

Byron Sanders: 60's a great age. It's a great age, you wear it well.

George Mason: Okay, thanks.

Byron Sanders: But honestly, everybody has a different purpose, and different reason for being here, right? And God puts a different little seed inside of you.

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: For me, it was that I needed to be like you said, for my job, the thing that I was doing the majority of the day that needed to be where I was living my purpose.

George Mason: Me too.

Byron Sanders: Yeah, I can tell right, right? And it comes through. So, I resigned, and went to Group Excellence. It was actually a mentor, and tutoring company that we started when we were undergrads at SMU.

George Mason: Wow.

Byron Sanders: And I came over at the end of 2008 was when I was making that transition, started top of 2009, it was a bunch of mid to late 20 year olds. So we were a social enterprise before we had the terminology, which really would have helped with the capital raise, but our whole premise was using college students as both mentors, and tutors in schools that needed the help, and with lives that needed the support.

Byron Sanders: And we grew, and in 2011, we were in INC 500 companies, so we were the fifth fastest growing education company in the country, and I think we did about 15 million top line revenue, 'cause we were working in all the urban centers, major urban centers in Texas except for El Paso.

George Mason: Okay.

Byron Sanders: And it was a joy, because you had all these purpose driven young people out there working alongsides equally brilliant, but unaware students in marginalized communities, and magic was happening all over the state. I think we worked with about a couple of hundred thousand students that year.

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: And several schools got off the bad list, you know, with state accountability, because of the gains they were able to make. That was Group Excellence, and that started the journey, the first step.

George Mason: Well, and let's just stop there for a moment, and just reflect on what you just said, and that is, when you put these mentors side by side with people in underprivileged educational settings, the magic starts to happen, and this is something I think people who grow up in privileged communities don't understand in the sense that, that's already happening for them.

Byron Sanders: Yeah.

George Mason: I mean, it's just the air they breathe, the water they drink, it's the normal course of life. They have people who look like them, they have people who are successful in their homes, and in their communities, and they aspire to be like that person, but that is not always true in underprivileged, and pretty much generally speaking in underprivileged areas, and so when you do that, you up the human capital imagination, don't you?

Byron Sanders: Listen, you hit on something amazing right there, because we stretch for the capacity that we believe is reasonable, or rational to attain, even if it's somewhat bold, and audacious, right?

George Mason: Right, right.

Byron Sanders: The analogy I always use, if you tell me to go, and make the Olympic four by one relay team, right? I'm actually not going to work very hard for that. It's a little outside of my range, and so I'm like, 'Okay, all right, all right, yeah, sure', right? But if you tell me there's a $500 purse for flag football rec league for 30, to 45 year olds locally in the community, I'll go to practice, I get into shape, I'll stretch, right?

Byron Sanders: I will go, and play for that, because that's attainable. For a lot of our kids in these communities where they haven't had a role model, their parents themselves didn't have a positive experience with the education system, so they don't have the degree, or whatever, they haven't seen things, right? The world is as small as that block sometimes. Well, telling that guy, or that kid, 'Hey, you can go, and you know, be a doctor, you can be a lawyer'.

George Mason: Be anything you want to be.

Byron Sanders: 'You can be anything you want to be. Listen, this is the land of opportunity, go get it'.

George Mason: And that can be crippling, because then when they find out that, that's not really possible for them, now it's their fault, and the self loathing that happens, the loss of self esteem. Let's pick it up there when we come back from our break, because there's so much more that this is gonna pursue. Big Thoughts.

Byron Sanders: Big Thoughts. So, fast forward a few steps.

George Mason: Hold that one here. We're gonna promote Big Thought, and we'll come back, and talk.

Byron Sanders: Cool.

Jim White: Big Thought is a nonprofit organization that works with partners across the city to provide creative learning programs that enrich the lives of young people. With a mission to close the opportunity gap for youth by making imagination of part of every day learning through educational programs, and system wide community partnerships, Big Thought provides access to high quality learning experiences that power creativity, and foster social, and emotional wellbeing.

George Mason: We're back with Byron Sanders, and Byron, we were just talking about Big Thought, and about more generally, the capacity for people in underserved communities really to imagine a future that is both of filled with promise, but realistic at the same time, and how to pull that off, and this idea of mentors coming alongside is a crucial part of it.

Byron Sanders: Absolutely, without a doubt. You know, what a mentor does is it gives a young person permission to succeed.

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: And it gives them permission to dream, it gives them access to a arsenal of dreams that they might not have had access to before just by simple exposure, right? Just 'cause you don't know what you don't know.

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: You can't dream of what you'd never seen, or have any type of conception.

George Mason: Well, and this is actually one of the things that most people don't realize was the negative impact of the school's desegregation in that before desegregation of schools, every black kid, and person of color in their schools had teachers who looked like them, principals who look like them, people who they could look in the eye, could look at them, and they could believe in, they could aspire to, they could see these role models.

George Mason: You desegregate schools, and all of a sudden what you're doing is you're busing kids into white schools, black principals, and teachers don't get jobs, and they're finding other places to be instead of integrating everybody, where now there's somebody to look up to for everybody, now you put black kids into white schools, and who do they have to look up to?

George Mason: But then those of us in the white privileged communities say, 'Well look, they're not achieving, because their family structure is bad', you know, that sort of thing, but they don't understand that there's a whole systemic issue involved in all of this that we're now able to get some distance, and reflect upon.

Byron Sanders: That's right.

George Mason: And in doing so, we're starting to make progress in shifting all of that, but every hand on deck here, nonprofits like yours have to play a role in this too.

Byron Sanders: Absolutely, without a doubt. You know, what you're hitting on is the whole notion of this concept of stereotype threat.

George Mason: Yes.

Byron Sanders: And the risk of it grew when we did desegregation the way we did it.

George Mason: That's right.

Byron Sanders: And I think what's important for folks to know is that desegregation as a goal was the right target, the process that we used was the one that was ultimately shown to have long term, some positive effects in closing the opportunity gap, but the way it did it was traumatizing, and it removed those really powerful, and important role models, and people who had just cultural context, and belief that these kids actually were capable.

George Mason: Well, that's exactly right. I mean there is a kind of cultural intelligence that has to be in play in every context, in order for people to thrive, and you can have all sorts of other kinds of intelligence, but if you lack cultural competence, then there's going to be some irritation, and some failure take place in systems, and so that's what I think we've found in schools that, because we'd never fully got there, and then once we did that, we had White flight.

George Mason: I'm proud of what I see happening in DISD, I think we have some tremendously innovative progress going on there, and achievement just coming back, but that hasn't actually changed yet that the demographic dynamics, and part of what you're talking about here is strengthening, and supporting those role models that I think are gonna make a real difference.

Byron Sanders: Absolutely. You know, and mentoring is certainly a part of our work at Big Thought. You know, another really important part of our work is this notion of social and emotional learning, right?

Byron Sanders: There's a very important body of research, and evidence that is overwhelming, that highlights the effect that trauma has on the life of a human being, and I don't want to limit this to children, because you see it there, but it has long term effects, this whole notion of adverse childhood experiences, right?

Byron Sanders: There was research, it was a landmark studies done in '97, '98, Center of Disease Control Prevention out in the Western part of the country, and what they did is they actually did the study with a relatively affluent population, because they wanted to show that adverse childhood experiences are fairly universal.

George Mason: Ah, okay.

Byron Sanders: But the problem is well, one, they saw that you could actually predict long term health, negative outcomes based on experiences that a child had that would fall in these categories of witnessed maternal abuse, experienced neglect, themself experienced sexual abuse, right?

Byron Sanders: Those types of categories, there were 10 different categories they were looking at, and what they saw was that you can actually predict not just if they're going to have any mental health issues, but if they were going to have diabetes, or congestive heart failure.

Byron Sanders: You're actually able to predict early death based on trauma that a person undergoes before the age of 18. That was powerful research. You can understand the implications in the health care, but you also understand the implications in the education sphere, right?

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: Well, bringing that forward, think about if they saw that, I would say ubiquitous presence of trauma even amongst a relatively affluent population, think about what you see in concentrated poverty, and typically those are communities of color, those are black, and brown communities, and the difference is having trauma does not doom you to having the negative outcomes that come from it, but having trauma without buffers to address it, without a strong, positive, consistent role model, adult role model, without having mental health resources, or being in a place that could be able to provide support, afterschool programs, things like that.

Byron Sanders: In those instances, you're much more susceptible to long term, negative effects of what childhood trauma brings, and you're not able to flip that into turning kind of that resilience into a strength, and it can have a long term, very significant deleterious effect on a young person, and that's one of the main things that we're dealing with in communities that have been under resourced, that again are always, or typically communities of color.

George Mason: Well, and let's talk about what happens in under resourced communities, and their schools. What's the first thing that gets cut in those school programs. It's the support systems, and it's the arts.

George Mason: All right. So, when we talk about what produces healing is the activation of those parts of the brain that music, and the arts, and science, and the like, they create opportunities for people to imagine the world differently. It opens up possibilities for them beyond being locked into where they are, and yet those are the programs that go first.

Byron Sanders: That's right.

George Mason: Because we think for all the good that STEM does, you know, that science technology, and junior year math, because we want people to be able to get jobs, and to work productively and all of that. Nonetheless, the holistic approach to being able to be a full human being, and to be well, and to be a leader, not just an automaton, not just a worker bee, but actually to be a leader, to think creatively, that's where the arts comes in, and it's through the imagination, and whatnot.

Byron Sanders: That's right, the arts, the creative process. Human beings create.

George Mason: Yes.

Byron Sanders: Right? Living in those places of what could be on the frontiers of what's possible, if you have not built your creative muscles that comes through the arts, comes through project based learning, comes through service learning, things where you get to go, and you have to create, then we're doing us as a society, but also the individual a tremendous disservice.

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: The thing that is really powerful about the advance in technology in our lives, in the workforce is that it's really revealing the things that have always mattered most, but it's stripping away those other things that we used to think were the most important.

Byron Sanders: Here's what I mean by that. Automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, the technology boom that we're in the middle of right now. The Federal Department of Labor is saying that 65 % of kids today in school are going to be working in jobs that don't yet exist.

George Mason: Wow.

Byron Sanders: That's actually a pretty conservative estimate, some estimates are as high as 85 % by 2030.

George Mason: Wow.

Byron Sanders: New, completely just unimagined jobs, right? Well okay, if that's our reality, how in the world are you going to prepare them for that?

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: As educators, as a system right now, how do you prepare a child for a world that's so dynamic, we can't even imagine it?

George Mason: Right, right.

Byron Sanders: Well, what you have to do, and what futurists are saying, what macro economists are saying, what entrepreneurs are saying is that they're actually is going back to the basics. They're saying that we need to teach kids creative problem solving.

George Mason: Wow.

Byron Sanders: The second thing they say is most important, we need to teach kids. Martin Ford has a great book, it's called Rise of the Robots. The two elements that he says best prepare people for this new, and dynamic world. One is how to be a creative thinker, two is how to build complex human relationships.

George Mason: Wow.

Byron Sanders: Because turns out, you talked about automatons. You know who's better at being an automaton than a human? An actual robot, right?

George Mason: Yeah, right.

Byron Sanders: So, all the things that are process-oriented, predictable, repetitive, redundant, things like that, those things are being done by the machines, and they're being done a lot better. So, where is the human beings place in society? Anything that requires creativity, and anything that requires a human interaction, and we actually see this at a macro level as well.

Byron Sanders: If you look at 1975. 1975, you look at the valuation of the S&P 500, you had about 84, and 85 % of that valuation of all of those companies, hard assets, inventory, real estate, the widgets that they made, right? Fast forward to 2015, it's completely inverse.

George Mason: Wow.

Byron Sanders: 83, 84% of the valuation are things that are creative assets: IP, brand equity, the expectation of you being able to do well, right? That's what's even moving our large macro economic systems, creativity, and human beings.

George Mason: Well, and let's just say if we were to think about this in terms of the current dynamics of the workforce in America, that the people who have lived, and worked in jobs that they feel are no longer profitable for them, or they feel left out by this economy.

George Mason: You know, we talk about retraining for new jobs, and all of that, but when you take that entire workforce, and they haven't learned from a young age to think creatively, and solve problems, what are they left with? Well, they're left with fear.

Byron Sanders: That's right.

George Mason: Fear of the future, and when you operate out of fear, then you do things that you wouldn't do otherwise to protect yourself, and that doesn't produce a healthy society.

Byron Sanders: Amen to that. It means that we're not fit for the future, and this is why there's a tremendous sense of urgency that we should have in order to change our systems, and while we're moving, you know, the fairly inertia ridden systems, and not just education systems, I'm talking about healthcare systems, I'm talking about all these different kinds of systems, we have to have really important partners in the meantime, because the kids get one shot, right?

Byron Sanders: They can't wait for us to get our act together. That's why Big Thought's work, and organizations like it is so important, because we come alongside a partner to the K-12 system, and we provide a space that's outside of the accountability based systems that we have to run in our public education.

George Mason: Of course.

Byron Sanders: Right?

George Mason: This is alongside.

Byron Sanders: This is alongside, and we create space for those creative learning opportunities, and we can connect those to explicit career paths that youth get to explore themselves.

George Mason: Wow.

Byron Sanders: If we can build systems that actually encourage youth agency where they're thinking, deciding, and moving of their own accord, then we're better preparing them for a 21st century workforce, because those are the kinds of the jobs that will require human beings where there is agency, forethought, and imagining what's possible, as opposed to waiting for things to roll down hill.

George Mason: Well, Byron, thank you for your leadership with Big Thought, and for helping us understand the big picture of what's going on in all of this. We're grateful for your work. Thanks for being on Good God.

Byron Sanders: What a pleasure.

George Mason: Terrific.

Byron Sanders: Thank you.

George Mason: All right.

Jim White: Good God is created by Dr. George Mason, produced, and directed by Jim White. Guest coordination, and social media by Upward Strategy Group. Here's grateful appreciation to Evolve Technology for location production facilities, Evolve Technology for home, audio, video, and lighting design.

Jim White: Enjoy more, think less with Evolve. See their great work at Evolvedallas.com. Thanks to Wendy Krispin Caterer for guest parking accommodations. Good God, conversations with George Mason is the podcast devoted to bringing you ideas about God, and faith, and the common good. All material. Copyright 2018 by Faith Commons.

Jim White: Big Thought is a nonprofit organization that works with partners across the city to provide creative learning programs that enrich the lives of young people. With a mission to close the opportunity gap for youth by making imagination of part of every day learning through educational programs, and system wide community partnerships, Big Thought provides access to high quality learning experiences that power, creativity, and foster social, and emotional wellbeing.

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George Mason: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," Dickens said. That could be Dallas Texas in this very time. In Dallas, we have tremendous wealth and tremendous poverty at the same time. And race has a big factor in how that plays out.

George Mason: How do we begin to close those gaps? Byron Sanders of Big Thought will be with us, and he'll be helping share his insights into that on Good God. Stay tuned.

George Mason: Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. I'm George Mason, your host, and I'm pleased to welcome to the program Byron Sanders. Byron, welcome.

Byron Sanders: Thank you so much George. Really happy to be here.

George Mason: Yes. He is the president and CEO of Big Thought, which is an educational entrepreneurial enterprise that helps create imagination for kids about their future and helps to give them creative problem solving tools so that they can think about where their lives go from here. Thank you for the work you do.

Byron Sanders: What a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

George Mason: You're welcome. So Byron, we've gotten to know each other a little bit, and one of the things that Big Thought tries to address is the opportunity gap, the value gap that exists in this city that my colleague and friend Freddie Haynes likes to call a tale of two cities. Just as in the Charles Dickens book, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," this is also the case in Dallas. We have a city with enormous wealth and equally enormous poverty where the education gap is wide.

George Mason: And when the Urban Institute did a study just a few years ago of the 274 major cities in America, they looked at the economic recovery. And what they found was that Dallas ranked 274, not in terms of economic recovery generally, but in terms of the participation rate. The equity inclusion of people of color and across educational lines as well.

George Mason: But this is a city of tremendous racial disparity. And if you talk to most white people in north Dallas, they would have no idea what we're just talking about right now.

Byron Sanders: That's true. You asked a lot of the same white people in north Dallas, many of whom are dear friends of mine, how often they've driven south of 30 or the Trinity, and you get to know why they would have no idea the disparity. But you know, southern Dallas is large enough geographically to fit the entire city of Atlanta in. There are thousands of people who live in southern Dallas. I was one of them growing up. And I hope to soon be one again. We've got a move planned.

George Mason: Okay. Good.

Byron Sanders: Planned in the upcoming years.

Byron Sanders: But you know, one of the things that we have to get very honest with is that you know, it's not a... we didn't get here by accident. And it might not necessarily be the responsibility or the decisions that have been made by the people who are currently residing, right? Or even currently alive.

George Mason: Currently alive. Exactly.

Byron Sanders: And you know, Michael Sorrell, Dr. Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn. A good friend of mine, a mentor, he said you know what? Let's just say that we, today, are not responsible for our present state. All of those decisions that were made years ago that have absolutely led us to where we are today, you don't have to feel ashamed about that. We just have to kind of acknowledge what it is.

Byron Sanders: However, 30 years from now, whatever Dallas we have then, that's on you.

George Mason: That's on you. That's exactly right. It is on you. It's on us.

Byron Sanders: And so if we're going to actually be honest about... If we're going to get to where we need to be 30 years from now, where there is equitable participation in the growth of our city and the economic boom in the Texas miracle here in Dallas, then we're going to have to be very honest about some tough conversations. Not just conversations but choices and actions that we're going to need to take.

George Mason: Because we've made choices that have led us to this place.

Byron Sanders: Absolutely.

George Mason: And whether you want to say that they were motivated by racial bias and animus or simply by being privileged people who failed to recognize the consequences of the decisions they were making. Nonetheless, the effect has been to drive racial divides in this city.

George Mason: And for people who are scratching their heads right now, I think we can just say that there are several things that we can point to for example. I mean red lining in neighborhoods created the possibility for people who are white and middle class to grow by being able to get home loans and to build equity in their homes and to have generational wealth created. And that was denied to people of color who were in neighborhoods that were red lined off from banking and from home loans.

George Mason: When we decided where the roads would go, the highway system divided neighborhoods and broke access of neighborhoods of color from public services and those sorts of things.

George Mason: When the school desegregated, white flight led people out of the city and into suburban schools, leaving what is today still 95 percent non-white Dallas Independent School District. Which is not wicked on its face, it simply means that we have taken out a historic legacy of education and success from these schools, and then said perform anyway.

George Mason: And so we have one thing after another, we could go on and on about this, that has happened to get us to this point, right?

Byron Sanders: That's right.

George Mason: But having an honest conversation about that and recognizing that that is so is the first step to being able to do something about it. And what needs to be done? Where do we contribute to the future?

Byron Sanders: Well the first thing that I think we have to do is actually put real numbers to the disparity. Because I think sometimes it's conceptual, and people don't understand how large the gap is.

Byron Sanders: I think that people also feel as though things are getting better. You know, the beauty of the... I guess the triumph of the 1950s and '60s civil rights movement here in America was that we were able to knock down these really glaring infractions against justice. Right?

George Mason: Right. Right. Right.

Byron Sanders: You know. And there's a white's only sign, that's bad. That should come down, right?

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: Or you're telling me I can't eat here, that's bad.

George Mason: Right. I got to go to a colored school-

Byron Sanders: Exactly.

George Mason: ... Yeah. Okay.

Byron Sanders: Okay. So yeah. I can sit where I want on a bus now. I can walk into any building theoretically, right?

George Mason: What do you people want? What else can we do for you?

Byron Sanders: We took away all the boundaries, now everything's equal, so come on.

George Mason: Exactly. Exactly.

Byron Sanders: Well the reality though is because we didn't address structural issues, because we didn't address access as opposed to just allowance-

George Mason: Right. Good. Good.

Byron Sanders: Because we didn't address being included and actively welcomed in, then we have what we have in Dallas. These are the statistics in Dallas. 1980, in 1980 the average income for a black household was about $40,000. $40,000. In 2016, you want to know what that is... And this is not an inflation adjusted number.

George Mason: Actual number.

Byron Sanders: Actual number in 2016 it's just over $30,000.

George Mason: So it's declined by $10,000 during a period of time that I would guess typical white household... Come on, what is it? Do we know?

Byron Sanders: So the white household is about $70,000 median income.

George Mason: Alright. So the increase has been significant in the white community, but... And I know that in Dallas for example, a black man earns 54 cents on the dollar to a white man in terms of income.

Byron Sanders: Correct.

George Mason: Now how can that be a just system?

Byron Sanders: Exactly. And why do you see the exact same thing that happens with our Latino community?

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: In the Latino community, that was actually about $40,000, and they've seen about a $10,000 decrease in income per household as well over that same period of time, while we've seen a tremendous growth in the population of Latino neighbors here in the city of Dallas right?

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: So you look at that. Then even if you were looking at total net worth, like the total balance sheet, this is the stat that punched me in the gut. It's well over $130,000. I think the number's actually closer to $150,000 total net work for the median white house.

George Mason: Right. Exactly.

Byron Sanders: For the Hispanic household, median is a little over $5,000. And for the black household, it's a little over $3,500.

George Mason: Right. Now we're talking about net worth now.

Byron Sanders: Net worth.

George Mason: We're talking about all assets.

Byron Sanders: Everything.

George Mason: Everything. Exactly right.

Byron Sanders: And we're talking about $5,000 and $3,500 compared to $130 - $150,000. Now why does that matter? Well it should be self evident. But if we're talking being able to climb out of poverty, if we're talking about being able to... Let's not talk about just one generation, let's talk about the next generation. 20 percent of wealth is determined by inheritance, right?

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: If you only have $5,000 to your name, what are you passing on? Typically not a lot.

Byron Sanders: So you bring all of those statistics to the forefront. You show them for what they are, and then we start talking about solutions that you can bring to the table. And the solutions that we can bring to the table is a wide range of different things.

Byron Sanders: I'm in the education space. And I will acknowledge that there are things that we have to do to make, yes, race conscious and income conscious decisions on how to we're going to apply resources.

Byron Sanders: Dallas ISD has actually taken a really big step here recently. They created an office of racial equity. Racial equity, the whole thought that you are being aware of and making decisions, policy, budget, based on the reality of where we are with racial equitably-distributed access to true opportunity. Right? So if there's schools in southern Dallas that don't have enough resources, put the resources there in order to not just say okay, now it's all equal, but to account for the deficit that we're having to make up.

George Mason: Precisely. And that is actually part of the strategy of DISD now, put the best teachers in the most challenging places, to pay them more, and principals as well, and to improve the facilities, the spirit of the school, and all those sorts of thing. And we're seeing the change that takes place.

George Mason: And outcomes is a result of that. I mean it's not that much of a mystery. It's just that we've lacked the political will and we've lacked the willingness to pay for it. And that's beginning to shift, as we're starting to see. We just passed the TRE, which is going to cost us all a little more in our school taxes. And we've decided, finally, that we think it's worth it.

Byron Sanders: That was one of the best things that happened this year, in my opinion. To take a Dallas based swipe at inequity in our city. Because going explicitly toward things that are not some pie in the sky, but things that we actually know work. Like early childhood education. That's one of the most powerful amplifiers you could do in an education system in order to close the gap.

Byron Sanders: And things like also funding TEI, which is the system whereby we evaluate but also help continuously improve educators in our city. But also to your point, identify who the best are so that we can put them in the most challenging schools.

George Mason: And we need to recruit them as well. And that means we need the bottom pay raised much more.

Byron Sanders: Absolutely.

George Mason: Alright. So we need to pick this up after the break. But we're now onto solutions, and I think this is an exciting time for Dallas to be able to realize. I think Byron, we are starting to wake up to some of these things in a way that we haven't in the time that I've been here. This is a hopeful time, but it's also an anxious time as a result of that. And I think we're up to it, but let's talk about some of those things after the break.

Byron Sanders: Perfect.

George Mason: Alright.

Jim White: Big Thought is a non-profit organization that works with partners across the city to provide creative learning programs that enrich the lives of young people, with a mission to close the opportunity gap for youth by making imagination a part of everyday learning.

Jim White: Through educational programs and system-wide community partnerships, Big Thought provides access to high quality learning experiences that power creativity and foster social and emotional well-being.

George Mason: We're back with Byron Sanders. And we were talking about race in Dallas.

George Mason: And Byron, in the time that I've been in Dallas, I would say that I'm more hopeful right now about the partnership between people in communities of color and the white community about seeking solutions together.

George Mason: Historically, it seems in Dallas, white people know what the solutions are supposed to be for everybody else. But I feel like we are listening and learning better than we have in the past.

George Mason: And I find that actually this is beginning to happen among religious leaders and church leaders. So your pastor Bryan Carter, a good friend of mine as well, a valued colleague. And a number of pastors, Michael Waters and Freddie Haynes and Vincent Parker and people in south Dallas that are people of immense ability and insight, and have tremendous influence and understand the circumstances on the ground. They are a new breed of religious leader for this city that is really important. Not one that depends upon north Dallas and upon white largess in order to succeed.

George Mason: I mean, just being honest about the history of Dallas and the accommodation and all those sorts of things that we know about. But I also think that that's a challenge for us to learn that those of us who have positions of influence in north Dallas, whether it's in the faith community or other areas, we are used to wanting to figure out quick fixes to things.

George Mason: But we're learning that there are larger systemic issues that we have to pay attention to. Race is one of those, but you said earlier you have to become more race conscious, which is a very hard thing for white people to get. Because we love Martin Luther King Junior's line about being a color blind society.

Byron Sanders: Right. Right. It's not the color of your skin, but the content of your character.

George Mason: Content of your character. We love that. But at the same time, before we can be a color blind society, we've got to be color conscious until we get to a place of equity, it seems to me. And then-

Byron Sanders: You know, and I would suggest that we never want to be a color blind society.

Byron Sanders: I Love Lucy, to me was so much cooler in Technicolor.

George Mason: Yeah. Right.

Byron Sanders: And you know, if we can... The goal, the aspiration is not to say hey guys, we're all the same. The aspiration, to me, is to say look at how different we are, and see the beauty in that.

George Mason: Nice. Nice. Yeah.

Byron Sanders: And what it takes in order to do that is actually a little more challenging, right?

George Mason: Mm-hmm.

Byron Sanders: Because the thing that I think we have to be really clear about is that all of us were born into a society that was largely based on a racial hierarchy that was set years and years ago for economic and power based reasons, but that we are the inheritors of, right? We are the heirs of that structure.

Byron Sanders: And it's affected us. It's dehumanized us in ways that we haven't yet even acknowledged. If not really troubling the waters, you'll never even see it acknowledged. Even for those of us who say I am a person who's relatively well adjusted, I've got friends who are black and Hispanic. I love my Indian neighbors. You know, people who have genuine relationships with people of color. I'm not even talking about folks who are just abject racists. That's the easy one.

Byron Sanders: But people who have not been able to even question what our systems and structures have yielded for people of color and why they're able to do that in a city that is technically blue, right?

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: With its-

George Mason: Political voting record. Yeah.

Byron Sanders: ... political map.

Byron Sanders: Well the reason why is the same thing that I use when I try and talk to my white friends about being aware of their privilege and being aware of bias. I talk about the journey that I've been on as a man, and being aware of women's equity issues. And how it wasn't even until recent that I noticed.

George Mason: This is intersectionality 101. Yeah.

Byron Sanders: Intersectionality 101. I didn't notice how I, myself, would over-talk in a board meeting. How I, myself, would hear what was being said. A woman might bring an idea forward, we'd talk and talk and talk, and then you know some guy, sometimes me, I'd say basically the same thing that she said-

George Mason: And suddenly it was a good idea.

Byron Sanders: ... three conversations ago. And everybody's like yeah, let's nod our head to that. That's a great idea, and move forward. Right?

George Mason: Yep.

Byron Sanders: I didn't notice that when I leave the house everyday, I don't give two thoughts about how I need to actually make it home safe. I don't think about that stuff at all, right?

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: But women, on the other hand, are taught how to carry their keys. They're taught to look around. They're taught to have a very specific, even step-wise process, to getting in the car at a gas station so that they can just be safe.

George Mason: It's exhausting.

Byron Sanders: It's exhausting and it's very similar for white people to not have to think about being in spaces.

Byron Sanders: White privilege is not having to learn about somebody else's perspective in order to have access to the things in life that one would want to.

Byron Sanders: I was talking with a good friend of mine here recently, when he was saying, you know when I go to a black community, you know I stand out too. I feel uncomfortable. You know it's tough for all of us to be in a place where we are other-ized. I was like, you know what? That's actually a really good point. You probably feel uncomfortable when you're going down to south Dallas or Oak Cliff or Pleasant Grove. And usually when you're going though, there's a choice. You're going for service. You're going because you're going to this event or this program for a non-profit that you're working at.

Byron Sanders: For me, I had to learn about white people. I had to learn to be comfortable, and not just comfortable, but proficient in white spaces. Because if I wanted the job that I wanted, if I wanted the car, if I wanted my kids to have access to the best schools, then it's not an option for me not to know that.

George Mason: Exactly.

Byron Sanders: And it can actually be detrimental to my very physical well-being if I don't.

George Mason: Right. Right. So I think one of the things that has to happen for white people is we have to recognize that perpetuating this system of privilege is not good for us either.

Byron Sanders: That's right.

George Mason: It feels good to us to be in a position of privilege. It is also dehumanizing to us to be in that role.

Byron Sanders: Without a doubt.

George Mason: Because we have put ourselves in a place God has not put us. We have usurped the order of creation, and we have pretended to be what we are not. And every time you do that, it is harmful to your spiritual health and it makes you subject to judgment as well.

Byron Sanders: That's absolutely right. Racism, whether intentional or unintentional is a hierarchy of human value.

George Mason: Absolutely.

Byron Sanders: And that is un-biblical, right?

George Mason: We have tried to figure out how to base racial hierarchies on the Bible, and it has been one of the most ridiculous exercises in nonsense in the history of human beings. That it's not there. We only read things into it in order to justify our privileges. And it's one of the great breakthroughs of more recent years that we've begun to read the Bible more from the underside, more from the margins, which is actually where it was written from.

George Mason: Which, you know, we think this is a novel interpretive approach to things. It's actually the way it was written. The children of Israel were slaves for goodness sakes. You know, and the whole history of this is God trying to get the attention of human kind, to say I made you all from the same place and the same people. And that you are supposed to care for your neighbor and look at the person next to you, and see the image, my own image, in that other person.

George Mason: And if we will learn to do that with one another and stop trying to use our religion to justify our prejudice, and instead use it to undermine prejudice and bring about equity, now we've got a super charge of social change that we can begin to see happen.

Byron Sanders: Right. You have a supernatural mandate in order to give you the freedom to be creative.

George Mason: Well exactly.

Byron Sanders: To be thoughtful. To be ingenious about the ways that we break down these structures.

Byron Sanders: And you know there's a ton of stuff that works. There's a lot of things that work. We can start lots of... And matter of fact, we have started, right? But we can have the will to push even further. Very simple solutions that most people can look at and say okay, that's not right.

Byron Sanders: But start with the criminal justice system. Right? The reality that one in three black baby boys born today will be incarcerated.

George Mason: Right. Right.

Byron Sanders: Think about that from a justice standpoint. Not just for the incarceration and the tremendous economic waste that goes into all of that. It's $150,000 to incarcerate a youth in the state of Texas. One year, $150,000.

Byron Sanders: But think about what happens, because when those guys are out, usually we're talking about men, but there's an even growing population of women of color as well. But when those folks are back into the community, they can't vote, right?

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: Think about if one third of a demographic-

George Mason: In Florida now maybe-

Byron Sanders: ... Well in Florida-

George Mason: ... How about that? In Florida.

Byron Sanders: Exactly. Because this is the thing. It doesn't take rocket science. It just takes a political will.

George Mason: Common sense. And even the Koch brothers are for criminal justice reform. And president Trump today was on record about that just this very day. We are seeing some signs of progress in that regard.

George Mason: But it's got to be that... we have used the criminal justice system to continue to break down the families and social structures of people of color, and then blame them for being broken down.

Byron Sanders: Exactly. And then people are like why can't you get right?

George Mason: Right. Whereas we all know, in the white community, we all know intuitively that we might get caught with some marijuana or something like that, but because of who we are, we get off. The black kid in south Dallas doesn't get off.

George Mason: And once he's in the system, that magnifies and grows, and you're either going to go one way or the other. But we all would like to believe in second chances, but only some of us get them.

Byron Sanders: That's true.

George Mason: And so if we believe in redemption, if we believe as people of faith that that's our mandate. If that's what God did for us, then we're supposed to do that for one another. Then lets' get busy.

Byron Sanders: George, and building on that point. You don't even have to do anything wrong, right?

George Mason: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Byron Sanders: I had my own personal experience with this very recently.

George Mason: Did you?

Byron Sanders: So I was out with my daughter canvasing for the political candidate that I was backing in just this last race. And I wanted to expose my kids to the participation in democracy. Show her that it doesn't just happen overnight, but it takes us work. Collective participation and equity within this system in order for it to really abound.

Byron Sanders: I was walking in my neighborhood, and got to one house. At this time, my son, we had to run him back because he had to use the restroom. So he stayed at home. So it was me and my daughter. Two reason why I wanted my kids with me. One, I wanted them to have that educational experience. But the second was because I'm a black guy walking around a mostly white neighborhood. I was in Addison at the time. A suburb just north of here.

Byron Sanders: And I knew that there are things that I have to do to make myself non-threatening.

George Mason: Oh, my goodness.

Byron Sanders: And me having my kids with me, I had a process. The kids go ring the doorbell, I stand back three or four feet away. The person comes to the door, the kids say hi first. We're all wearing our stuff, so it was very clear why we're here. And then I talk, and then we engage.

Byron Sanders: So I was taking those steps. We had an interaction with a lady who did not like us being at her house, had a no solicitation sign. Canvasing's actually not soliciting. So we weren't breaking any rules or anything like that. She yelled at us. My daughter and I, we walked away. We said have a nice day.

Byron Sanders: And we knew not everybody's going to be great to you, but the vast majority of people had been up until that point. Moved on, two houses later we're walking to continue our work, and then we see a police officer pull up. And police officer gets out, he walks up and he says hey, I got a call that there were some suspicious people who were doing some illegal soliciting in the community. And I said hey, we're not soliciting, we're out working with a political campaign. He said do you have a permit? I was like-

George Mason: Permit?

Byron Sanders: ... I don't. Okay. Right? So I was like no, I don't have a permit. City ordinance, you got to have a permit to do this. So you have to stop.

Byron Sanders: And I didn't have any information to challenge that right then. And I'm with my daughter, I look at her face and she's crestfallen.

Byron Sanders: Police officer walks away and my daughter and I were about to start walking back to the car. I stop and make a real quick video saying hey, we were told that we just had to stop. We're pretty sure who called the police on us. But we're going to go find another neighborhood. I'm trying to cheer her up, you know? And to her credit, my daughter, she was plucky and she was excited to go to the next place.

Byron Sanders: But as we kept walking, I was like, you know what? Let's just sit down and check it out for ourselves. We looked up the ordinance. And it turns out you don't need a permit. Turns out political canvasing does not fall in the solicitation laws.

George Mason: Right. But the police should know that.

Byron Sanders: They absolutely should know that.

George Mason: Yeah. Right.

Byron Sanders: Well the interesting thing was, do I begrudge the police? He didn't know his stuff. Okay. You know, he's got to come and check it out when somebody calls in.

Byron Sanders: The question is why were the police called?

George Mason: Right. Exactly.

Byron Sanders: Right?

George Mason: Right.

Byron Sanders: And did my race have something to do with it? I don't know. I can tell you there's a whole set of experiences where I've had the police called on me or I've been tailed for doing things that a normal person should be able to do in this country.

George Mason: Driving while black, walking while black, working while black. I mean these are the things that white people really do not have any personal experience with. That it's not when you're doing something wrong necessarily, it's just that you are who you are in spaces that feel somewhat threatening to people who are white.

George Mason: We could go on. I can't believe we're out of time.

Byron Sanders: Oh, my God.

George Mason: This feels like we're just getting started.

George Mason: Byron, it is a pleasure to be in the city of Dallas with you, and to know what you're up to, and to be in good league with you as well. Let's keep working together for the common good.

Byron Sanders: George, I'm looking forward to it brother. Bless you man.

George Mason: Thank you Byron. Okay.

Jim White: Good God is created by Dr. George Mason, produced and directed by Jim White, guest coordination and social media by Upward Strategy Group.

Jim White: Good God: Conversations With George Mason is the podcast devoted to bringing you ideas about God and faith and the common good.

Jim White: All material copyright 2018 by Faith Commons.

Jim White: Big Thought is a non-profit organization that works with partners across the city to provide creative learning programs that enrich the lives of young people, with a mission to close the opportunity gap for youth by making imagination a part of everyday learning.

Jim White: Through educational programs and system-wide community partnerships, Big Thought provides access to high quality learning experiences that power creativity and foster social and emotional well-being.