Robin: Hi, my name is Robin, and I am 63 years old and I'm from Grand Haven, Michigan.
Robert: Hi, my name is Robert. I am 34 years old. I am originally from Chicago, but basically you could say I'm from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Robin: I grew up in Grand Haven, Michigan, which is, if you know anything about this area, it's very white. It's also very conservative, but I didn't realize that as a kid. We only had like one black family in our town, and they were celebrated actually. In my twenties, I moved to the Caribbean, and I lived in the Virgin Islands, which is a huge melting pot. And people from every walk of life in different countries all over the world live there. And so, I got a chance to live in this beautiful community of so many different types of people. And it really opened my eyes from coming from a small little town. I didn't realize just how narrow a lot of my upbringing was.
Robert: Initially, I was born in Chicago, Illinois, in an impoverished neighborhood, predominantly black neighborhood. Single mother, five children, four boys, one girl. So, us boys were finding something fun to do every day. And sometimes we're busting holes in the walls, breaking windows, hammering up basketball hoops on the garages and really destroying property where we would move into an apartment and be kicked out of apartment by the end of that month where we're having to go shelter to shelter all throughout the city of Chicago.
I remember I was about eight years old. I used to love watching Malcolm in the Middle. And I realized his day-to-day life was totally different from me. Where he was able to experiment with joys of life than I did. Where I kind of prayed to God, like, will I ever have the opportunity to live a life like that?
It just so happens that my father ended up moving to Big Rapids, Michigan and getting married and buying a house. And at one point in time, my mother was like, hey, is it okay if the boys come stay up there with you for a while just so I can get on my feet. It's kind of a burden trying to juggle five children at the same time. Where we moved up to Big Rapids in late ’99. I remember the first day of walking into the house, mind you my stepmother already had children from a previous relationship where my two little brothers, Jesse and James, had their own room where they had the mats with the parking lot printed on them. I was 10 going on 11 years old. It was just so exciting to be in that space, to be able to play with toys and not be worried about my surroundings, but also like having the financial fortitude of we look in the refrigerator, it's a ton of food in there. I felt like I was rich even though my dad wasn't really wealthy. I just felt like I was.
When you said that there was a lone black family in your school, like what prompted you guys to like want to show love and shower that family and those, that girl?
Robin: Well, first of all, they were great people. Her brother was in my class. The girl that was a homecoming queen was I think two years ahead of me. And then her brother was in my class, and they were just nice people. I hate to say it, but they were a little bit of a novelty in our school because we didn't have a lot of diversity. It was pretty white bread around here. I think we thought it was cool, and they were just nice people. That's really what it was.
You know, I didn't have any ill feelings. Like I said, my grandfather was a professor at Michigan State University and he had international students all the time. So, from a little kid, I had exposure to other cultures. People would come from all over the world. I've just always found other people different than me fascinating, you know, because there wasn't a lot of exposure. But I have the same perspective is that we're all God's children and we all are human, and we have so much more in common than we have differences.
Robert: First day of school, I went to Hillcrest Elementary School, and I was the only black kid in my class. And like, so in Chicago and predominantly black schools, your first day of school, it's kind of traumatizing. There is guaranteed going to be a certain level of judgment of you. Although there was a level of judgment when walking into the class in Big Rapids, I felt like they didn't know enough about me, and some of that judgment was based on a lack of knowledge about me, that I could still have a sense of self-esteem versus the judgment in Chicago was you don't have them the same kind of clothes as me. Like you're guaranteed to be poor. And like nobody wants to be considered poor. It’s like, we were poor and like, I wasn't really educated to put our own fronts and fake like I'm something that I'm not.
Extremely traumatizing, even to this day as an adult, like I'm very conscientious of the stereotypes that the low-income community continue to promote to this day and being counteractive to those.
And part of reason why I do what I do for a living and working in climate change is recognizing that we're all humans. We all want to create a safe and healthy environment. It's just really a lack of opportunities being created to make those bonds. And that's part of why I think my parents say that my story is so powerful. It's just, I refuse to let the negatives just overwhelm me and stop me from making movement, you know?
Robin: I wanted to know more about your community activism. You kind of dropped a hint it's in climate change.
Robert: Yeah, so initially I started off working in voter advocacy and education and through networking at different events, I ended up meeting a guy by the name of Ned Andre. And he exposed me to the whole world of environmentalism and climate change and understanding that climate change is getting worse. And oftentimes the low income disadvantaged community are hit first and worse by that climate change. Simply because oftentimes they lack the resources or the advocacy power to be able to provide resources so that they become resilient.
The city of Grand Rapids has been really innovative in providing a space for avocation on behalf of disadvantaged low-income communities and being able to create not only city plans but offer resources to the community. So, tree planting, electric mobility, waste management.
Me myself, I started a program doing climate storytelling. I heard of climate change, but I hadn't took the time out to really understand how it's affecting me today. And a lot of people don't realize that we have issues of legacy pollution that's causing health disparities. We have economic disparities that's exacerbating those disparities.
Robin: Wow. That's, that's very admirable. And so, is that kind of tied into your small business then too?
Robert: Yes. Yes. So, my small business is the Voices of the Disadvantaged and recognizing through those networking and relationship building that I do with C4, I'm able to introduce and pull in disenfranchised individuals from the community and being able to bring about equitable impacts.
Robin: That's amazing. So, you're kind of bringing in the disenfranchised to give them some work to do good things, right?
Robert: And understanding that even for myself with my upbringing, I saw in a philosophy that nobody cares about you. It's a dog-eat-dog world. It's really an opportunity to be innovative and say, no, give yourself the chance. It can be done. Plenty of people in our community that do care. It's just really trailblazing and being a vanguard in that space.
Robin: I have the same perspective is that we're all God's children and we all are human. And we have so much more in common than we have differences. And maybe my move to the Caribbean, I think it really opened my mind. But also my research as a professor, trying to understand why there was such a diversity gap in the advertising industry, because it's mostly white male.
And in my research, we had a political question on there. One of them was, do you identify as more conservative or more liberal? And then when we were able to cross section that the answers that people gave to certain things, like, do you think your creativity thrives in a more diverse culture or not? And we could parse that out by political affiliation. And the liberals are like, yeah, the more the merrier, the more perspective, the better. Whereas you know the conservatives were saying, no. Creativity is not a skin color. That was kind of their answer. There was a lot more to it, but I started doing more and more interviews with people in the industry and marginalized people that I knew in the industry.
And I didn't realize growing up in a very protected little community, small town, I didn't recognize or realize the disparity that marginalized or people that weren't white had to go through. I remember talking to a friend of mine that's pretty big in the…very big in the advertising industry. Grew up around here, but he lives in L.A. now, black guy. And I'm interviewing him for this thing. This was around the George Floyd time. And I said, I am just appalled. I can't believe people, you know, and this is so awful. And I said, I just didn't know. And he goes, well, why not? I'm like, I don't know. Why didn't I know that people were so disparaged?
We didn't grow up affluent, very middle-class, you know, teachers don't make that much money, but we weren't hurting for anything. I kind of just had this slow realization of how disparity is, it's just unfair and I don't know how to fix it, but I want to understand better.
Robert: Yeah. Yeah. I totally get that. I totally get that. Talking about your experience throughout school, I really felt like it was impactful to see how you guys embraced the differences that you guys shared with the Black community. To me, it was very enchanting just to know that what I believe this entire time, which is that we're all human, we all have the ability to want to love and want to be kind to others, was really exemplified in your life just as much as it is in my life every day.