Michael Sorrell on the racial and economic disparities infecting our nation

Michael Sorrell on everything from the issues in the higher education model, 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 and public life. I'm your host, George Mason. And I'm delighted to welcome to the program today, President Michael Sorrell, Paul Quinn College in Dallas, Texas, and Michael, it's so good to have you with us.

Michael Sorrell:
Oh, it's great to be here. It's always a pleasure to be in your company.

George Mason:
Thank you very much. All right, now, we're going to give you the full introduction here. You were voted by Fortune Magazine in 2018 one of the world's greatest leaders. That's a pretty big honor. Oh, my goodness.

Michael Sorrell:
Yes, I tell you that it is not translated into getting me out of any chores around the house, but it's nice.

George Mason:
Very, very good. All right. Well, Paul Quinn College, let's just give a little, a quick background. Paul Quinn College is a school that started during the period of Reconstruction, I guess, in Austin, Texas, the ministers of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination. And they started that school. It is a historically black college and university in that genre and moved to Dallas, what year?

Michael Sorrell:
1990.

George Mason:
1990 succeeding Bishop College in the current location.

Michael Sorrell:
That's exactly right.

George Mason:
Yeah. So, you have been president there since when?

Michael Sorrell:
2007. So, it's been 13 years.

George Mason:
Fantastic. And boy, in those 13 years, have there ever been changes. My goodness. Well, Paul Quinn has become a real model in so many ways and a great gift to Dallas, maybe especially to South Dallas, as not just a place to educate students but as an engine of revitalization for the entire community. So, first of all, let me just say thank you for your leadership and congratulations on all you've accomplished.

Michael Sorrell:
Thank you very much. Really, I'm very, very fortunate to be able to do something I love on behalf of people that I love. So, I do not take it for granted one second of the day.

George Mason:
Not taking anything for granted is actually very much a theme we're all dealing with right now, isn't it?

Michael Sorrell:
Yes, it is.

George Mason:
This COVID-19 period of shelter in place and now the state opening up the county, trying not to open up as much, all those sorts of things, this has a tremendous impact on colleges and universities. And last Friday, the Atlantic magazine published a column by you called... It's titled Colleges Are Diluting Themselves. That was the headline. And tell us the essence of that op-ed. I have read it several times and appreciate your perspective, but I think it's an important one for a wider audience to get.

Michael Sorrell:
Sure, sure. Well, first of all, let me thank you for reading it. I don't take that for granted when you write things that someone will actually read them. But the real point of it is that we as leaders have a moral obligation to the folks who are following us, who we are stewards of, and that starts at taking care of them, right, their health and their safety. And in the higher education space, and I would argue in the larger space, people are rushing back to reopen and rushing back to claim normal simply because they are tired of the sacrifices that are being mandated upon them and to the point where you see individuals really making decisions that are not supported on the basis of facts or science.

Michael Sorrell:
And the article, I really just sort of challenge people and say, "Listen, first of all, excuse me, you have to tell people the truth. You have to say to them, 'If there's no vaccine and there's no widespread testing, our ability to keep you safe is limited.'" And there's this great study by Cornell University, these researchers there, that highlights the issue. They basically say that on a college campus, it is impossible to prevent the spread of an epidemic because of the way they're constructed. So, you're only two to three students away from being in touch with everyone.

Michael Sorrell:
So now, when you think about that, right, this is a disease that is spread through close human contact. The virus is capable of living outside of a human host for a period of time on metal, on rubber. It needs certain things that a college campus has an abundance of to spread. So, as my peers have rushed back and said, "We're definitely going to reopen," and what they're not saying to people is the reason we're doing this is financial because we are afraid that we cannot afford to remain closed.

Michael Sorrell:
And listen, I get it. I do. I mean, I'm president of a institution that is not a wealthy institution, but what we have always tried to do is to honor the faith that people have brought to us, right? We have worked very, very hard to fight the fights that people need fighting, to be frank with them even to the point... I mean, we practice something. We say, "Look, we choose the harder right over the easier wrong without apparent regard to self-interest." And this is that test. So, that's what I wrote about. And it was pretty interesting to see the response that it's gotten.

George Mason:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, we'll get to the response in just a minute because... So, you say in the article that the reason these schools are caving in boils down to fear and acquiescence, those two things, so fear of financial ruin, I suppose, and acquiescence also, to just the desire of people to go back to a normal before they really should do so, right?

Michael Sorrell:
Yes.

George Mason:
And so, you're a faith based institution, and you're operating here out of values that are human before they are economic. Okay, so we're human beings before we're human doings, things of that nature. So, these are the kinds of things that are informing you. And yet, what we've seen just this week is another faith based institution, Notre Dame University, announce that they are going back to campus pretty much business as usual, August the 10th, I believe. Now, they're going to finish their semester at Thanksgiving so that they don't have students going back and forth. But nonetheless, there's a major institution, a faith based institution, coming back into business, and other schools are doing the same. And yet, you have a conviction that you need to hold off until the science and the medicine catches up to where we need to be. What sort of reaction have you had from some of these schools that are making a different decision to the article you wrote?

Michael Sorrell:
Sure. Well, I mean, I'm not going to be invited to give the commencement address at Notre Dame anytime soon, right? There will be no honorary degree for me from there, okay? But listen, I understand Catholic culture. My father was Catholic. I went to Catholic schools from fifth through 12th grade. I am a proud graduate of a Jesuit high school. And I understand some things about the Catholic faith, right, that I've always had reason to question a little bit, right? I am not Catholic, right, that there's an element of taking things that the church puts forward with a sort of trust.

Michael Sorrell:
I remember very clearly being in fifth or sixth grade. I guess it was fifth grade. And we were talking about the Pope being infallible, and my question was, "Well, but the Pope was born, right? The Pope has a mother and father, right? How is the pope infallible, and I'm not infallible, right?" I mean, which, I'm not making fun of that. My point is there's just certain things that... And every religion has that, right? There's certain things we take on faith. But here's the thing, my question that I would ask the folks at Notre Dame that they would have to answer in the quiet of their own time is, if football was played in the spring, would they be rushing back to school?

George Mason:
Oh, my goodness, there we go. There we go.

Michael Sorrell:
Let us understand, Notre Dame football is sacred, all right, the idea to people that you would forego that revenue stream, to forego that significant aspect of your culture. The second question I would ask is, how exactly are we going to play football given the nature of this virus? How exactly are you going to maintain crowds? And by the way, I give no one a pat on the back for canceling classes at Thanksgiving. We stopped holding classes after Thanksgiving years ago. It wasn't because of the virus. It was because students couldn't afford to travel back and forth, and we didn't want to make people feel as exiles on their college campus. And so, I just think that we justify things that... Let me put it differently, we use facts as we like to interpret them to justify the decisions that are important to us to make.

George Mason:
Right. Right. Well, your own faith, not a Catholic faith, but nonetheless, a faith that is personal and practiced and real leads you to different conclusions in leadership, but those conclusions are not just about valuing students generally. They're also about how you build them into the institution. So, the motto of your school is we over me, for instance, right? So, at the very beginning of this, when you just begin to scratch the surface of Paul Quinn, what you find is something counter-cultural, that is in a culture that values radical individualism. You are saying the community comes first. That in a place that values personal achievement, what you're saying is loving and caring for your neighbor is the first line of a business for the people that come to this school. So, how do you talk to prospective students and their families about what role faith plays in the values and the ethos of your school versus others?

Michael Sorrell:
Sure. Well, what's interesting to us is that we don't ever sell people on Christianity, right? We sell people on this idea that we have a responsibility to each other, that we over me is our ethos. We have the four Ls of Quinnite Leadership, leave places better than you found them, live a life that matters, lead from wherever you are, love something greater than yourself.

Michael Sorrell:
Now, look, you don't have to have sat in the church pews on 10 years of Sundays to understand that we are deeply faith based institution, right, that we believe these things. And what we tell families is this might not be for you, okay? If you are not open to the possibility that service and loving each other and putting each other to the forefront, that that's uncomfortable for you, if you can't do that, that's okay. There are all these other schools for you to attend, okay? But for us, we are laser focused on teaching people the value of doing for others, the value of just making a sacrifice.

Michael Sorrell:
And what I like to point out to people who are wedded to their own selfishness and to their own self-aggrandizement is that it's almost like, look, I am, if not the most decorated college president in the country, I'm certainly one of the top 10, okay? And all of those individual accolades came from putting other people first. There was nothing that I've done that's me, me, me, I, I, I. This whole feeling... I don't even... My wife teases me because she said, "If you ever want to see my husband become tongue tied, make him talk about himself." She said, "It's almost uncomfortable to watch."

George Mason:
Yeah, very good. Well, you've been able to make this decision about how you're going to proceed with campus life and remaining online partly because you've already prepared for an eventuality like this. So, the argument you make in your op-ed piece is that it's time for us to use this to rethink the entire higher educational model, right? And you are one of nine U.S. work colleges, right, that changes the understanding of how students finance an education. So, let's talk a little bit about what a work college is, the only historically black college that qualifies in this category. And at the end of this process, your goal is that no student have more than $10,000 worth of debt with a degree in hand.

Michael Sorrell:
Yes. Yes. So, we think that higher education needs a reboot, okay? And it needs a reboot because effectively, we are preparing students for a society that no longer exists. And that, to us, is problematic. In all fairness, we don't think any problem is ever permanently solved, right? We think because of the pace of change, the way that things are evolving, you have to accept the fact that you're going to do the best you can do for today, but let's equip you with the tools for you to be able to continue to thrive in a different environment.

Michael Sorrell:
So, first thing we did was we said, "Well, if we're going to build a school from scratch, what do we think would be important?" We thought experiential learning is important, giving people an opportunity to develop a skillset that they would not normally get. We said, "What's also important?" Well, holding down the cost of attendance is really, really important. And so, we need to be able to give people more for less. We said, "All right. How do we do that? Well, we're going to have to incorporate students into the day-to-day activities of the institution. All right. The work college allows us to do that."

Michael Sorrell:
Now, we created a brand new model of the work college with the urban work college where students work off campus as well. Because in America, something like 75% of our students work more than 20 hours per week, and most of that work occurs off campus. So, instead of stressing people out, we said, "Well, what if we bring all of the work piece of this in-house and we found the job for the students, help manage the schedule, and all of that, so people have the ability to reclaim a little bit of their lives back?" We cut tuition and fees by $10,000 so that we could try and help people not go into lifelong debt because 80 to 85% of our students are Pell Grant eligible. So, they were borrowing that money, okay, or their parents were borrowing the money, or their grandparents were borrowing the money. So, you were looking at generations of families going into debt in the pursuit of this college education.

Michael Sorrell:
So we said, "All right, we cut the price. We alleviate the need for that to happen. But what if we gave people more value for their educational dollar?" And so, what we do now is you come to Paul Quinn, and we cut tuition fees again this year down to 12,000 in anticipation that we're probably going to have to go to school online, right? And it didn't make sense charging people the same thing that we would have charged them if they were on campus. So-

George Mason:
And you refunded money as well this semester.

Michael Sorrell:
Absolutely. We did. Because that's the right thing to do. Now, there's some people like, "Well, it would have been nice if you'd just given us the cash." And we're like, "Well, I hear you. But if you're going to come back to school, how about we just give you a scholarship?" We gave the graduating seniors back money, but we said, "Look, take the scholarship, right, because otherwise, you were going to have to borrow this money. So, why don't we keep you from having to do that?"

Michael Sorrell:
But you get your subject matter education at Paul Quinn. You get what you major in. Then, you get your experiential learning. If you're there for four years, you get four years of experiential learning through the work program. And starting in the fall, every year, you pick up a credential, a digital credential that you can use that allows you to be competitive in the workplace. You can start with a Microsoft Office certificate. You can learn how to code and everything in between so that that way, if you look up and you say, "You know what... " Because I was a government major, right? If I had decided, well, I don't want to be a government major. I don't want to do what government majors do. I don't want to practice law. Then, I did internships, but many of my internships were in business, were sales and trade or investment banking. Well, I don't want to do that. So, I would have the credentials and the certificates that come along to give me another option, which we think is important.

George Mason:
Fantastic. All right. Now, you mentioned seniors. So, Friday, you published this piece in the Atlantic. Saturday, now, Saturday was a day. All right. So, let's talk about Saturday. I want to know how it all came to be. I want to know what your role in... Because you had a role in this. You had a part. And what we're talking about is this HBCU commencement that was a nationwide commencement service essentially. And President Barack Obama, I love calling him president still. I'm sorry. I can't help myself.

Michael Sorrell:
I'm with you.

George Mason:
There's a certain whimsical longing that Saturday really represented to me. I'm sorry. I shouldn't be political here, but it is what it is.

Michael Sorrell:
You're not by yourself, okay?

George Mason:
Anyway. So here, I'm imagining Paul Quinn College and commencement ceremony being one of the really big events in your annual calendar probably because I'm going to guess that many of your students are first generation graduates from college. And so, this is a huge achievement. This is not necessarily expected. They're going to be denied this opportunity. So, this is true for all the historically black colleges and universities who decide to get together and have one big commencement. So, how did all that happen?

Michael Sorrell:
So, it's just so funny. I was literally sitting at the desk that I'm sitting at right now talking to you. And it was a Saturday morning and the Dallas Morning News, Sharon Grigsby had written this great article about the school and about what we were having to deal with, having to send the students home, and the pain of students missing commencement. And one of my seniors, Jennifer Fletcher, had talked about how brokenhearted she was. And then we had another student who effectively my wife and I have adopted. And she was talking about how devastated she was. And originally, I was sort of like, "Listen, guys, you're still getting your degree. You're going to get an opportunity to walk. It'll just be next year." And none of that was making them feel any better, okay? You know what? I could have used some coaching on my delivery I guess on that one.

Michael Sorrell:
And so, I'm sitting here, literally, it was like 9:00 AM on a Saturday morning. And I'm sitting here at my desk, and I'm just looking out the window, what I'm doing now. And it occurred to me. I was like, "You know what? We can't be the only school where students are feeling this way." I said, "What if we had a national commencement celebration for all the HBCUs and we give everyone a chance to have a community experience?" And I called my wife into the room. I said, "Hey, I've got this idea." And she's looking at me. And she says, "Huh." She says, "Well, how'd you come up with it?" I was like, "I don't know." I was like, "I literally just, I came up with it." And she's like, "Is this how you... " I was like, "Yeah, I'm telling you. It just... " Right?

George Mason:
It's a God thing.

Michael Sorrell:
It is clearly a God thing, right? I tell people all the time, "Look, we are so far past my natural abilities at this point, okay?" All right, so I call up some friends of mine, and I say, "Hey, I have this idea. What do you think? Would you be supportive of it?" So, one of them was Thasunda Duckett who's from the DFW area. She's the president of JPMorgan Chase's consumer banking division. And I call a good friend of mine, Oris Stuart, who's part of the executive team at the National Basketball Association. I called some other HBCU sector leaders. And everyone's like, "This is a cool idea." And once JPMorgan Chase and once the NBA signed onto it, we just took off. And in five or six weeks, we put all of that together. And we had 78 institutions participate, over 27,000 graduates, and about a million and a half people have watched the ceremony. I mean, it exceeded my wildest dreams. I was incredibly humbled by it.

George Mason:
And President Obama, how did he come about as being a part of that?

Michael Sorrell:
I will tell you, I always sort of hoped that we could get him, that when I thought about, since who would be the perfect speaker for this moment? He'd be the perfect speaker for that moment. And so, we had several entrees to him. I have some relationships through Ron Kirk and some others, but what got us was there was a gentleman at JPMorgan Chase who was good friends with their comms person, Obama's communications person. And he pitched it to the comms person who took it to the president. And the president said, "Yes." And I didn't know whether we were going to get sort of like that two minute, "Hey, great job." He gave a commencement address, and I was sitting there just like, "Wow." It was incredible.

George Mason:
Yeah, and even more so than the high school one that he did, right, which he did that evening as well, which was beautiful. Well, that's fantastic. Well, really, we were really proud of you and of that effort. And we always are, Michael, here in Dallas. Those of us who are awake enough to know what's happening in the whole city know what an influence you are and what a force for good. And we're just grateful and in your corner, and I want to talk a little more about all of this in the second episode, but thank you for your time with us on Good God.

Michael Sorrell:
Well, thank you.

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:
Good God is created by Dr. George Mason, produced and directed by Jim White, social media coordination by Cameron Vickry. 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 2020 by faith common laws.