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  • You

  • One today I have the good fortune to be speaking with Jamil. Jivani

  • Jamil is a Torontonian. He's an author lawyer

  • Activist and host of the road home podcast, which was launched just recently

  • December 2018

  • He recently completed the seven province book tour visiting thousands of young men across Canada in partnership with the Michael pinball

  • Clemens foundation

  • He's 31 years old grew up in the Toronto area raised by a single mother

  • Considered illiterate in high school at age 16 had the highest grades at Humber College by the age of 18

  • Scholarship to Yale Law School by 22 was a lawyer by the age of 25

  • He's taught at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto worked with JD Vance author of hillbilly elegy

  • To start a non-profit in Ohio corporate lawyer at Tory's LLP leader of police reform and voter education

  • Initiatives. He had a book published by HarperCollins last spring in Canada

  • The book was why young men raged race and the crisis of identity

  • U.s. International

  • Publication by st. Martin's Press in may 2000 nineteen

  • He's also

  • And unfortunately being diagnosed with cancer

  • Battling stage four non-hodgkins lymphoma cancer being on chemotherapy drugs and undergoing radiation

  • therapy since February

  • So we have a lot of things to talk about Jamil and I so we're going to start

  • We're going to start conversing as a consequence. So thanks a lot for making the time to talk with me

  • Thank you for the invitation

  • So, why don't we start with with your book and your tour

  • Yeah, well, it's the book came out

  • Actually just a month after I was diagnosed with cancer. So

  • The it's it's it's Bennett last year a lot of highs and lows like that

  • The highs have been incredible because I've had the privilege of you know

  • Like you being able to go around and speak to people about my book and my ideas

  • Certainly, not as large audiences as you have but you know been able to go to places in the country that I think young men

  • need to hear stories of self empowerment and what individual agency can accomplish and

  • shared though that that experience with in in areas where I think

  • You know books are often not seen as relevant to the lives of

  • everyday people I think I've been able to learn a lot about the disconnect between the literary industry and

  • Everyday Canadians and I think that's true in other countries as well

  • where

  • books

  • sometimes aren't written for an audience of people who might most benefit from those ideas and

  • I feel very privileged today and we'll go around and talk to people about

  • the struggles young men face the tools that

  • are often given to them in terms of how to overcome those struggles and

  • Also the tools they find in the absence of better options. Do you have a copy of your book just behind you?

  • You should maybe hold it up so that we could all see it. Yeah. Yeah, let's take a look

  • Yeah, so here's the book. The the US Edition will have a similar cover and

  • Yeah, it's been it's been it's been a heck of an experience

  • you know, I think there's something very humbling about people caring what you think about anything quite honestly, so it's a

  • And there's a there's a responsibility that comes with to take

  • the opportunity of an audience and do something meaningful with it, and I've tried my best to do that with the book and I'm

  • Excited to do that in other countries next year as well. So

  • You said something interesting about books and it's something worth delving into a bit, you know

  • the number of people the proportion of people who buy books is relatively small and

  • It's not like books are everybody's friend

  • so that

  • The act of literate audience is actually a rather small minority of people and one of the things that's quite cool about YouTube

  • Let's say and also about podcasts is that it enables people who might be intimidated by books

  • But who are perfectly capable of understanding relatively complex ideas to?

  • Access them another way and it is really too bad. That reading is a minority taste because

  • Well, it's such an effective means of communication. But at least these other channels have been opening up. I

  • Agree and I think perhaps most effectively books are a

  • conversation starter

  • You know the idea of putting ideas out there and then being able to go to a city you've never been before and people

  • have a

  • Starting point in which they can engage you and talk about their lives and your life and what's similar and what's different? That's a

  • Maybe the most powerful part of a book to me

  • I actually think a lot about it in the sense of you know, the most read book for example

  • like the Bible and texts like that, which I think their greatest power is in trying to offer some sort of

  • shared kind of moral universe for people of different backgrounds and

  • Ancestors and in different parts of the world to kind of come under write and I feel like with a book you have that

  • Ability, I hope which is to tell a story where you have no real say or power and who picks it up

  • but you hope that it's

  • Powerful enough and truthful enough that whoever picks it up is going to feel like they're part of that that conversation

  • so

  • Maybe you could outline for us the main points of your book and also talk about how it grew out of your experience being part

  • Of what's really quite remarkable about your biography is the apparent

  • disjuncture between your status

  • Hypothetically as illiterate at age 16 and then no a very high academic achiever by the age of 18

  • It's like so I'm curious about the interplay

  • I'm curious about that period about how that happened and and and and what it Manton but then also about

  • The journey that you took so to speak on the road to writing this book

  • yeah when I was

  • 16 I I would maybe describe myself as someone who was the the depths of despair, right?

  • I was a really angry person. My father had left my family

  • My mom was raising me and two younger sisters by herself

  • I was in a neighborhood where I saw what I regarded as a lot of unfairness

  • You know things like racial profiling by police officers

  • Disproportionate poverty a lack of job opportunities. This is in the suburbs of Brampton where most of the people in my neighborhood were

  • newcomers to the country or children of newcomers and

  • I was kind of I think being weighed down by a perspective that encouraged

  • Hopelessness and victimization in my life. So I was a cognitively capable young man

  • that's how you go from, you know illiterate to a Yale Law student in less than six years, but

  • What was was missing was the desire to show that that those good parts of me to anyone?

  • So what do you taking was? What do you think? It was exactly that?

  • produced that

  • sense of

  • Despair despair that possessed you when you were 16

  • I mean you you outlined some of it, you know

  • You lived in a neighborhood that was well an immigrant neighborhood and and and you saw

  • What you regarded as Manifest social unfairness?

  • but then it's obviously the case too that for some reason when you decided to I don't know if you dropped that idea or

  • Transcended it

  • You did something different and all of a sudden your life took off in in a variety of extremely positive directions

  • Like, how do you how do you account for that initial possession by that set of ideas and then more importantly?

  • How do you account for the fact that you somehow managed to let's say

  • Escape it

  • Hmm. So for my situation

  • I think this describes out of my peer group as well not having a father around

  • And and the kind of dysfunction that that often comes with

  • put us in a position where we were looking at a lot of the wrong places for cultural leadership and

  • Pop culture right hip hop gangster movies things like that filled the void in our case

  • So the tools I was given to understand my life, too

  • Explain my frustrations were tools that encouraged me to I think live in us with a certain kind of

  • Victim identity as my default right that I could for example lit

  • Believe that being a gangster and a criminal was acceptable

  • for me and my peers because we

  • Experienced unfairness, right the way the world treated us determine the kind of morals that we picked up, right?

  • so it's justifiable revenge in some sense against an entire system, right or at minimum it winds up becoming

  • Just you lower the expectations of yourself, right you walk around thinking that

  • What you know to be good is something that you don't have to achieve you don't have to strive for goodness

  • Because the world has put you in this unfair position and therefore anything is possible. So we think so. Ok

  • So how much of that I'm curious about that?

  • I mean that it's a common it's a common human attitude to adopt that sort of perspective and you know

  • plenty of people have reason to be

  • doubtful about the

  • Appropriateness or fairness of their life in their situation but that you know, there's two things there that get tangled together

  • I think and one is a sense of thwarted justice

  • Right and that might be the optimistic viewpoint that people look out in the world and they see that it's unfair and that bothers them

  • Morally, and and there's nothing wrong with being bothered that way but the problem too is is that adopting that?

  • Victimization stance and worse maybe adopting a stance that justifies a certain amount of antisocial or criminal

  • Attitude towards society given its unfairness also provides young people

  • That's a young man in this case with an excuse

  • not to do their best and not to put effort into anything and I think that that that

  • excuse is often masked by a

  • self justification that's associated with

  • That hypothetical stressed striving for justice

  • You know because it's it's one thing to be

  • upset about social injustice

  • but it's another thing to use that as an excuse not to strive forward and

  • Right because there's a psychological element and a sociological element there that are at play. So so

  • Tell me what you think about that then tell me how you progress despite

  • Having that attitude accepting that attitude or having it inculcated

  • yeah, I think you're exactly spot-on, you know like later on in my life when I was a

  • University student, for example, I would hear all of the same arguments over again

  • but they but you hear them differently when you have the privilege and opportunity of being at a university right when you hear about how

  • rigged the world is and that history is burdened you and and an

  • Opportunity is fleeting because of what you look like or what your parents come from

  • in a university environment people take those as

  • you know, they pat themselves on the back for making those assertions because they think they're

  • Virtuously looking at the the problems of the world that we often overlook or take for granted

  • But when you're in the thick of it when those problems are your life?

  • When you have a choice to make every day

  • Do I tell myself it's worth doing my home working going to school or do I just stay home? And

  • Smoke weed in the basement do I?

  • Make the effort to see how the little bit of

  • Agency, I might have in a difficult circumstance could make the difference of where my life turns out. That's a

  • Yes, you know that's when those talking points

  • Become a potential

  • You know kind of poisonous moral environment for you to live in because

  • maasai collage achill concept that my friend JD writes about hillbilly elegy in the context of

  • poverty in Appalachia called learned helplessness

  • right, and I think that's a lot of it which is you disassociate your actions and behaviors with the outcome of what you

  • experience in life and when you get to that point

  • It's really hard to find the motivation to work hard or believe that there's a meritocracy at all in the world around you

  • All right, but the funny thing is about learned helplessness, you know

  • And then this is something that I think it's really reasonable for us to delve into is that in the animal in the animal?

  • Experimental world which is where the concept of learned helplessness emerges what happens that to produce learned helplessness

  • What you do is you you punish an animal for any sort of active behavior

  • No matter what it does

  • It's hopeless and it and it truly is hopeless

  • right because the animal keeps trying but every time it tries to do whatever it's going to do it ends up being punished and

  • sooner or later it will just

  • Cease to act and that has been put forward at least in part as a model for depression

  • And and I think there's a certain amount of validity to that. Although depression is a very complex concept

  • the situation you're describing is somewhat different because

  • what you pointed out was that when you were sitting at home as a as an

  • Adolescent let's say and you had the choice between doing your homework and putting forward your your motive agency. However,

  • forceful that might have been

  • and justifying doing something like

  • Slinking off to smoke dope and avoiding your responsibilities

  • You could justify the avoidance by making reference to the fundamental unfairness of society

  • But that isn't the same as actually having tried really hard a dozen times or a hundred times and failed each time

  • It's like it's more like the premature presumption of learned helplessness. And I do see this very frequently among young men

  • is that they they've adopted this attitude that the world is such a

  • catastrophic ly unfair place and life is so unjust in its fundamental essence that

  • There's no sense even trying to begin with that. You're only a fool if you do that

  • Yeah, I agree

  • I think what happens is you see other people's failings or other other

  • young men whether they're your peers or people you even just

  • listen to in the music and music or you see on television or whatever the case you see their attempts and failures as

  • Evidence of your own right?

  • And so if hmm if everybody

  • You know has struggled for example to go to college or university then that is in some way you trying right?

  • You don't see a distinction between your own efforts and those of other people

  • not that's how I would describe my mentality at the time, which is for instance I could

  • you

  • Go on

  • Turn on the news and see a story about

  • Let's say like when I was really young kids seeing Rodney King got beat up by police officers in Los Angeles

  • Right and that could stick with me and become

  • an example of what someone like me would have gone through but for not being there at the time right and so you see that

  • right empal and you internalize that as an instance of

  • Well people like me when we walk around the street we get treated that way by cops

  • So I might as well have gone through that too because I see that as an example of me

  • Potentially exert, you know asserting myself in society and then paying a deep price for it, right? So it should emulate those right?

  • So that's done. That's the the price paid for

  • for adopting a certain dimension of identity and I mean

  • I think it's inevitable to do that to some degree because we do belong to different group identities

  • But you're saying that you you classified yourself

  • Let's say or you saw yourself in the same group as someone like Rodney King

  • You saw that the group that he was attributed to you you believed that that was a valid group

  • attribution and then drew

  • Conclusions that weren't favorable to your own striving and that but that also still sets you up so that you're not really testing yourself

  • Against the world, right? You're starting out with these assumptions about

  • About the privacy of group identity. Let's say it now you

  • curious about that too because you also talked about the negative consequences of fatherlessness and

  • One of the so I'm inferring from that that you see a link between the presence of a father

  • And an antidote to that

  • Socialization by by what by popular culture group identity something like that

  • I mean, we know that fairness isn't good for people by any spy by any measure. It's it's a catastrophe

  • Yeah, well I think like if you're in that that that frame of mind where

  • Those instances of group identity starts you tell you something about yourself then having a man in your house

  • Who's not getting beat up by the cops is?

  • Automatically what a complicated right having a man in your house who looks after his kids and goes to work and and takes responsibility

  • For his family in this community

  • who shows you how to love a woman and be kind to people that is a

  • Complication of

  • An other world view that might otherwise think that every other man who's not your dad has something to teach you about who you are

  • Yeah, okay

  • so that's identity centers a lot in that so the idea is something like

  • If and I believe this like is one of the things I've noticed about kids who are let's say neurologically intact

  • so so maybe these are there's lots of reasons why people

  • can develop psychological disorders and some of them are physical but imagine that you take a child who's physically healthy and

  • You put them in a given environment. My my intuition has been that a

  • Child needs to have at least one

  • positive role model within

  • Immitation distance now. Sometimes he or she can sort of piece that together

  • Fragmentarily also from popular media images, you know

  • The images of the heroes in movies and so on but it's really helpful to have at least one person in your immediate environment

  • who is

  • manifesting the pattern that characterizes individual success

  • and so maybe it's something like if that positive role model isn't there then the easiest

  • Default is to a victimized group identity. Does that seem reasonable? I

  • Think it's reasonable, especially if you're if you're from a community and you share an identity that has been

  • very strongly

  • associated with victimization in the first place and I think that's a big part of it is

  • You know when you when when I was a kid and thought of myself as a black man

  • that immediately came with a certain kind of baggage of historical and present-day victimization and

  • Because my father is black

  • my mother is white so him being gone and and in some ways being my

  • My kind of connection to the to a black family being gone

  • I was

  • Very vulnerable to how blackness was being presented to me

  • because I didn't have a black person house showing me something different and the blackness that I was presented was one that was

  • Deeply tied to victimization right and one that was constantly excusing

  • any poor behavior we might have

  • maybe not more than any other group of people but but associating any poor behavior we might have with

  • History, right? And so it's this idea that you are

  • inheriting

  • low expectations of yourself and of your behavior and

  • And you don't know what it would look like to look in the mirror and not see a victim, right?

  • Would that even be right great where I didn't know it also provides that Avenue for justification that we already described

  • And so okay. So so let's look at this two ways

  • well, there's an old psychoanalytic idea, you know of secondary gains and so if we're going to be

  • critical in our analysis about

  • victimization culture we might ask

  • Well, what benefits does it bring to the people who adopt it so and you know those can and when I mean benefits

  • I don't mean long-term

  • iterative

  • high-quality benefits, I mean short-term payoffs

  • Let's say you know how it is if you have work to do and you avoid it that's a short-term payoff. It's a benefit and

  • Because you don't have to do the work now. There's a medium to long term cost but

  • I'm very curious about about the the element of victimization culture that justifies I

  • Think antisocial and avoidant behavior is probably the right way of putting it now

  • You know where I grew up I grew up in a working-class community

  • And I had friends and associates who were who ranged from you know?

  • pretty decent kids to pretty solidly planted in the delinquent camp and

  • generally, the more delinquent types had a whole handful of rationalizations for their behavior and and

  • It's it's very dangerous to have those rationalizations at hand because most forms of anti-social behavior

  • Or avoidant behavior for that matter very bad medium to long term strategies. So

  • anyways

  • What negative psychological elements of yours do you think the victimization narrative?

  • Supported and what positive aspects did it suppress?

  • Well it the the negative ones is supported were

  • What it

  • wanting to be mad at my circumstances and

  • To not see anyway, I might be responsible for changing them, right? Yeah, so

  • Justification for I was looking for that justification

  • Yeah

  • the other thing that it does and I don't know if it was unique to me because I think it's they're

  • Variations of it in everybody, but it just means that you don't feel

  • The burden of solving a problem, right?

  • I mean, it's hard to walk around feeling like if you worked a little bit harder if you listen to people

  • who care about you if you

  • You know just made the effort and put the time in that maybe things could be different that makes you you you feel

  • Responsible for that and when and that comes with the possibility of failing, right?

  • Yes, Gary to think that you you could do something and if you don't get it, then you're failing out

  • yeah, so that's another interesting thing about that that

  • assumption of learned helplessness is that

  • if you don't try

  • Huh as Homer Simpson told Bart if you never try you can't fail

  • Okay, great. Right, right, so which is very comical

  • So that was that was definitely I would say like a negative part of my thinking that wanting to see myself as a victim supported

  • In terms of the positive stuff that it kind of pushed down. I think it

  • meant that I

  • For example was willing to put my mom through some really

  • I did some really difficult

  • situations where she had to stress and worry about me and what I was doing and I would later learn that I have a

  • positive power to actually

  • Burn value to her life and to make things easier for her and to help her raise my sisters and things like that

  • Those are strengths that I had

  • those are that is a desire for for responsibility and to be part of a family that I had that I was that I

  • didn't learn about myself until later on because I

  • I

  • Couldn't see myself as someone who had assets right who had strengths to offer

  • Yeah, there's always about

  • What other people were doing to me? Yeah, not about how I might positively affect somebody else or at minimum not negative. Right, right

  • well, which is definitely something well, yeah, so one of the things it's interesting with regards to the

  • Conversation about responsibility because one of the things that I've been talking to audiences about all around the world now is the idea

  • That maybe we find the sustaining meaning in their life precisely through the adoption of responsibilities

  • And you know you talked about reasons to be terrified of responsibility

  • And I think those are valid reasons what if you try and fail

  • especially when there's a fair bit of evidence around that that might be either the most likely path and it is in some sense because

  • You have to often try a lot of things before you succeed. Even if you turn out to be a successful person

  • but the price that you pay for abandoning that

  • responsibility is that that is where you find the meaning in life that can buttress you against the fact that life is unfair and

  • and

  • and

  • What would you call typify by suffering and also by malevolence and betrayal, you know?

  • You talked about discovering later in life that you could be a positive asset to your family and that's a big discovery, man

  • It's really something to be able to wake up in the morning or in the middle of the night and think well

  • you know, at least I'm

  • I'm doing something positive for the people that love me

  • To not have that's really a bad thing

  • Absolutely, the other thing is you you you tone you kind of tune out a lot of the people in your life who

  • Might have really important things to say to you right who might possess some genuine wisdom

  • but because what they're saying doesn't line up with the ideology you've

  • unknowingly in most cases

  • Clung to so strongly you don't hear them

  • and so the good people in your life that

  • Actually might be able to

  • Teach you something and put the right idea in your head and plant a seed that could grow into something beautiful

  • those people become less important to you and instead the the folks, who are

  • manipulative in some cases who want to tell you negative things and want you to believe that you can't do something like

  • Like you might you are you are destined to suffer until the evil system around right has collapsed

  • people who tell you that or variations of that message are the folks that you you hear from and and

  • That that's sad because when I look back there were good people in my life

  • and there were people who at my school who did do really well and

  • I would say in fact maybe most people in my community made really good decisions

  • And cared for each other and did really good things

  • And yeah, I was trapped in a world where I couldn't see them

  • They didn't even exist in my narrative about my life

  • Those people were either anomalies or they just didn't they were not part of my worldview at all. Yeah

  • Well, the thing is too is that people who start down the bad road?

  • let's say the bad road sake that's characterized by irresponsibility avoidance and and

  • Like a kind of a cruel rebellion a cruel and counterproductive rebellion, you know

  • They're also they also tend to be quite annoyed and irritated by counter examples and so they are likely to manipulate

  • Someone else a younger person for example or their peers

  • into

  • Participating in behaviors that aren't in anyone's best interest

  • Because they don't want the counter-examples

  • around and why would you if you you don't want to be you don't want to have your cynicism proved wrong because that's too

  • Shattering, you know, even though it would be the best thing for you

  • Yeah, absolutely. Right? I think that's absolutely right and the transition I wound up experiencing

  • Where I get out of high school and and kind of find my voice

  • comes out of some things that were completely

  • You know

  • Unintentional right? So I get to this point in grade 11 after I rewrite the literacy tests that we have to take in in

  • Ontario public schools I am

  • Finally considered literate. So that means I can finish high school and I

  • get very

  • Desperate to earn money because I didn't see a future where I could earn money legally

  • I thought I would have to be a criminal and I I genuinely

  • Believed that was my my destiny. And so I come close to buying a gun and I asked a friend for it

  • He quotes me a price

  • He says let me know

  • When you want it, and I go home on a day where I thought I was going to feel like a million bucks

  • cuz I finally had this tool of a criminal enterprise that I had been looking forward to and I wind up just

  • like crying my eyes out and I was devastated and I was scared and I thought

  • If my mom found out I had a gun she might give up on me and disown me I was okay

  • So that's oh that's interesting

  • so part of what called out to you when you were making what would have been a life-changing decision was the

  • violation of the of the

  • intimate relationship that you had

  • The love that you had that your mother had bestowed on you

  • So you were yeah

  • You felt deeply by all appearances that you were betraying that what else brought you to tears because you said, you know

  • You felt you thought that one possibility was that you'd feel somewhat

  • triumphant and finally managing this task and and joining the that the cast of outcasts, but that isn't how your conscience

  • responded

  • No, my conscience responded with with a fear knowing how owning a gun sends you into a spiral

  • I had seen other people go go down

  • You know when you own a gun as a young man, especially in a if you intend to use it

  • You wind up having?

  • problems with people who have guns and all of a sudden just to walk around the street you feel like you have to carry a

  • Gun on you for your own safety. Like if you look at the lives of young men who?

  • Wind up either victims or perpetrators in inner-city gang violence. Those are often young men who are committing what they call

  • Retaliatory bond. Yes, right. It is a web of responding to trauma and and killings and I was very scared

  • I would be in the middle of something like that

  • the other thing that really bothered me was a

  • concern that I was so angry at police officers for how I'd seen them shoot my father when I was a kid and

  • the treatment that I had experienced in terms of being followed around

  • The mall or followed home from the bus stop and seeing things like I mentioned, you know

  • the Rodney King beating and having that be part of

  • How I saw how the world worked and and and it presented a certain kind of

  • Almost like a disturbing rite of passage right as a black man

  • I felt like well when that happens to you

  • That means you're growing up because people are supposed to think you're dangerous and a criminal and so yeah

  • You know, there's even something about that

  • that's true because I

  • Think that people are supposed to think that you're dangerous when you grow up the question is what do you do with the dangerousness?

  • You know, so there is a yeah because you don't want to be naive and weak it's not help. Absolutely

  • But that there have a path there has to be a pathway to strength that isn't associated with catastrophe

  • yeah, well in my case it felt like I had Ari I had already felt like I was being treated like someone who carried a

  • gun around and there was something that really where I was almost disgusted by myself with the idea that I might validate that

  • stereotype by then doing that thing, right and

  • and and so there was this like conflate it was a it was a mix of shame that I felt right a mix of

  • fear and a certain sense of

  • You know worrying that I might never be able to come back from that decision

  • And so what the positive effect all of that had on me is I wound up isolating

  • Myself from my social network, like all the friends I had who I'd spent years talking tough with and sharing

  • you know gangster fairy tales and

  • And and and things like that. I wound up just not being able to show my face around them

  • Like I was scared they would think I was a punk. I'm a chicken

  • So you decided not to purchase the gun as a concept, I do not know

  • Okay

  • And so and that that and my life

  • Changed really quickly

  • Because all the people I've skipping class are that I didn't want to see anymore and the people I was smoking drugs with I didn't

  • Want to hang out with and the people who?

  • You know, I wasted so much of my time with the people who we cultivated that kind of victimization identity together

  • No longer were part of my life except for a few outliers. And so I

  • Unknowingly put myself in a situation where I could just think about the world differently and I started to go to class

  • Seriously for the first time and I wasn't a good student overnight

  • Like I finished I had to do day school in night school to graduate on time

  • And I just so badly wanted to get out of that building the high school. So I just left and

  • And the way to leave was to was to get my credits

  • So I graduate I wind up at Humber College because in one of the transfer program

  • Let's go through that in a bit more detail because it's pretty quite a remarkable story. So

  • Okay, so you had a choice point in your life and and the choice point was whether or not you were gonna well become armed

  • and dangerous fundamentally

  • Yeah and take that particular path and you decided not to you had a crisis of conscience

  • You decided not to and that in the that

  • Allowed you or forced you hard to say which to alienate you from your peers

  • But that must have been very lonesome. Like how did you put up with that?

  • Yeah, it wasn't easy and this is actually one of the hardest things

  • that I talk about with young men who are going through similar experiences as I'm describing in terms of negative peer pressure is

  • It's really hard to accept being alone

  • And I don't know why I was

  • Able to do it quite honestly because I look back and I think I'm not sure at 31 I could do it

  • Yeah, right exactly. That's exactly what I'm asking

  • It's it's it's quite because it's a it's a huge transformation not only to start buckling down at school

  • Especially at that age because you know, you had 16 years of not being disciplined. Let's say and also

  • isolating yourself from your peers at a point where

  • Arguably there's nothing more important than that peer Association

  • So and what did your mother make of this?

  • I mean all of a sudden you weren't seeing your friends and you were studying. I mean, she must have been shocked

  • I'm not sure she knew what was going on to be honest because

  • We didn't communicate much like we lived in the same house, but she was so busy. Just trying to

  • You know get to the next day and pay the bills and and make sure we had a house and and everything we needed

  • That I didn't really have an adult in my life who was providing any supervision. Right, right

  • For example, my mom never signed off for in all four years of high school. She never signed off those papers

  • you're supposed to say I'm acknowledging you saw your kids or poor card because I would just Forge it and

  • Bring it in and and she never said anything because she wasn't paying attention

  • I I didn't say anything to her

  • And so we had this this period of time where we were just ships passing in the night that we had barely any interaction

  • but she still revered there was a phrase you used in your conversation with a

  • Group of boys for the BBC radio at a boxing club where you said you need someone in your life who?

  • represents the light at the end of the tunnel

  • Yeah, and that's what my mom was to me

  • like even when we didn't talk

  • even when I was angry at her for picking my father and and and and and

  • Putting me in a situation where I had a parent who rejected me and I resented her for it and yet she still had this

  • belief in me that never went away this belief that

  • Some point Jamil could be better than he's proven himself to be right. So she was that's interesting

  • So it wasn't just her. It was also the fact that you had someone around that actually had more faith in you than you did

  • Exactly. Yeah, and and and and I think that's such a key part

  • Yeah, I agree when you really need that from a parent a if you get that from both parents

  • You're unbelievably fortunate but you desperately need it from at least one person. Someone's gotta believe in you

  • Yeah, so that the reason I get comfortable I guess with with loneliness is you know

  • And this is I think the role that the internet I think still plays in people's lives

  • Which is when you break away from us

  • From an in-person social network at a school or a workplace or whatever the case

  • The internet becomes the place where you can find an alternative social network and in my case

  • I was on these, you know, these like hiphop message boards all the time when I was a kid

  • I was always online reading about hip-hop and like conspiracy theories and I got caught up in a lot of

  • like Nation of Islam

  • doctrine and propaganda and

  • Those ideas were especially helpful to be honest in some cases. I think they delayed my

  • Ability to shake off the victimization identity I had adopted but what it did do for me was it just gave me an alternative?

  • Place to belong and so yeah those became the social networks

  • I had were online relationships and

  • I think that was part of how I was able to adjust away from my friend

  • circle was that I just had a bunch of stuff on the internet that I could I

  • Could go to and feel like I was connecting with people in another way. Okay now also now you said

  • Something interesting. You said that you really wanted to get out of that building and that

  • speaking about your school

  • But the way that you chose to get out was to path to graduate and pass was to accomplish the tasks

  • Now why in the world did you decide that that was a good idea. I

  • Suppose that's also because I wasn't sure what else I would do like at the point

  • You know, I was a kid who I did my grade 10

  • career

  • Project. My career's project saying that I was going to be the Canadian Suge Knight, right?

  • Who's a gangster who started a record label that produced Tupac and Snoop Dogg and these guys?

  • That's what I thought like my future was gonna be like and when that gets like taken from you

  • Because you realize you're not this game of chicken. You've been playing with yourself. You're going to lose it

  • And so you get off the train tracks

  • you don't really know what else to do and I just thought I have to just walk the path that was available to me which

  • Was okay. So go through school. Hey, well that that's a brilliant observation

  • I think because one of the things that people have often asked me when they're when they're directionless is well, what should I do?

  • And the answer is well, you take the best path that's laid out ahead of you. All right, if you don't have an option

  • Where you are staying in despair not moving forward is a very bad option if you have a bad pathway forward

  • Or a suboptimal pathway forward let's say but it's at least forward then that's the one you should choose

  • And so you decided that you were gonna buckle down and get the hell out of school and you were gonna do it by passing

  • Yeah, well, I I don't know. I didn't feel like I was choosing

  • To do it by passing. I just thought that was my way out and I wasn't sure how else to get out

  • Alright because if I dropped out, I don't know what else I would do

  • So in the process of trying to you know, rush out right? I'm I'm I'm working as a dishwasher at Red Lobster. I'm

  • Taking night classes. I'm taking day classes. I'm trying to get out of my circumstances as quickly as I can

  • Guidance counselor says to me but you don't qualify for many programs

  • You were streamed in the in the applied system, which was what we call in, Ontario

  • Which means you can't go to university you've got to go to Community College, but your grades are so bad

  • There's no Community College program. You could get into except for what they call general Arts and Sciences program

  • Which in some ways is almost like what grade 13 used to be in Ontario

  • Which is you would learn a lot of the things you should have learned in grade 12

  • but didn't and so I go into that program and I

  • would say

  • What what what changed for me immediately in terms of my academics was this is the first time I had college professors

  • Who said to me?

  • Here you've got to write this, you know, twenty page essay you get to decide what it's about and it seems so simple

  • But it was a breakthrough for me because what that meant was the part of me that was interested in

  • You know hip-hop and the Nation of Islam and conspiracy theories and all that stuff

  • I was doing on the internet that no adult had ever seen before. Nope

  • My mom my teachers no one had ever seen a part of me that could think critically that had

  • Curiosity intellectually that part of me and and the version of me that was going to school merged for the first time, right?

  • Well, thank God that's that's the huge advantage of higher education is that is exactly what should happen, right? So absolutely. Yeah

  • Yeah, and that's what I try to tell young men

  • all the time is like you might be going through a hard time in high school and

  • It's hard sometimes to know how life could mine is going to be different if you just stay the course

  • Because you have no reference point to explain it

  • But in my case, I it was it was absolutely a meaningful shift like the idea that I could write 20 pages about

  • You know Malcolm X or about Tupac like all of a sudden

  • the the writing ability that I had never shown people before started to come out and

  • My analytical thinking and all it was just it flowed out of me and literally in less than a year

  • I went from barely getting out of high school

  • Say getting the highest grades in all of Humber College and and that was not something that ever felt deliberate

  • I was just kind of stumbling around in the dark and hoping things are gonna work out for the better my mom for example

  • When she came to my graduation

  • At Humber like she was shocked that I gotten of the President's Medal for highest grades

  • Like she had no idea that I was actually a completely different person by that point

  • Well, you said something interesting too about what you were doing in high school

  • You said that you were attending classes during the day and at night and you were working as a dishwasher?

  • As a dishwasher, right? Yes. Yeah, okay

  • so that's interesting too because one of the things that's very useful I think to point out to people who are in a

  • Situation that's analogous to the one that you found yourself in is that there is something to be said for trying to make yourself

  • So busy that it's absolutely ridiculous

  • You know to take on a big burden that's part of that burden of responsibility. It's like, okay

  • Can I go to school during the day and can I go to school at night?

  • And can I also work at a job?

  • Can I do all that because the answer is I've seen this time and time again with undergraduates who start to work in my lab

  • It's like they're already taking a full course load and they're busy and some of them also have work

  • You know, they have part-time jobs and then they come and work in the lab

  • and so then they're so busy that it's just

  • Ridiculous and then they have to get organized and they can't waste time and their grades almost inevitably go up not down

  • Yeah, and and it's one of those things where

  • Before you get to a point where you get busy like that you have no idea you're capable

  • Yeah, right accomplishing so many things and then it starts to become normal to achieve right? It's it's normal to say

  • oh, I could set out and accomplish something in a given day or

  • Well, it's always it. It also becomes it also becomes something that's really interesting to

  • Experiment with because once you stir once you start realizing that your capability for responsibility exceeds your original expectations

  • You start to become curious about what the limitations of that are. It's like Oh

  • Turns out I can do a lot more than I thought I could or that people told me I could or that I was willing

  • To believe how much more could I actually do if I really got my act together and got disciplined? It's like there's a

  • Purpose it's like what?

  • What are you made out of?

  • And how do you find out and I think you really need to find that out as a you certainly have to find that out

  • As a young man, you probably have to find that

  • I was a person in general

  • but it's absolutely crucial for young men to find out that there was far more to them than they think and

  • You can't find that out without burdening yourself

  • You're right. And it is it's it's the opposite of what we were talking about earlier in terms of that fear of failure, right?

  • because it's saying I'm gonna push myself to the limit and

  • Explore where that line of failing is and because you're not running from that one. No, you're running toward you where it exists

  • Absolutely, and the funny thing is about running towards that line

  • is that as you walk towards it it recedes and

  • As you as you get more disciplined the probability that you'll fail gets smaller and smaller

  • Perfect example of the pathology of avoidance right because avoidance of that just makes you weak

  • yeah, absolutely and

  • You know the the transition from Humber College to York University

  • You know, it's just kind of a continuation of what you're describing, right

  • It's it's it's it's running to the line and it's me continuing to say okay, maybe that 12 years of evidence

  • I have of being a really poor student

  • Could be proven wrong with every assignment that I do

  • right and leaving that if I try in this class and I get an A and all of a sudden getting an A stops being

  • The an anomaly it starts to become normal, right?

  • And and and then when you don't get an A or a B or whatever your you're hoping for

  • You start to feel that sting of disappointment because you actually have higher

  • Expectations of yourself and your professors who didn't know you back when you were a knucklehead getting into trouble

  • they only know you as the guy who came into their class and tried hard and so they start to speak to you as

  • Someone who could do really well - yeah

  • Because that's one of the things that's so lovely - about about about being able to go off to somewhere new, you know

  • Because you could leave your past identity behind you

  • I found that such a relief when I moved from the little town that I grew up in even because I went to a community

  • College for the first two years of my education as well and I had an experience. That was well

  • Yours is more dramatic by quite a substantial margin, but it they're not dissimilar

  • I was so relieved when I got to college that I could start to write and think about things that I was actually thinking about

  • That it was like a complete transformation

  • But I also had the chance to leave my old personality behind at least at least some of it, you know

  • some of it some of it that I didn't want to carry ahead with me and

  • and that's another thing about moving forward in the world is that you can leave the old and insufficient you behind and

  • That that can be hard on you and hard on people around you - but man

  • It's it's such a relief. It's and it's such a

  • Well, it's life itself. I would say it's the opposite of despair

  • And that's absolutely right and I as

  • much as you can

  • Create the circumstances for that to happen in your life

  • Even if you don't have a chance to move somewhere new or go to a new school or or get a new job

  • but but just

  • Convince yourself that renewal is something you get to decide and get to control. I mean it's a it's it's so it's so

  • Part of being a victim is to is to notice all of a sudden that you have the capacity to transform yourself

  • Despite at least to a large degree despite external circumstances or or sometimes even as a consequence of leveraging them

  • Because it isn't always obvious that that having an impediment is a catastrophe

  • Sometimes it's a I mean, it's what would you call it? It's a call to action. It's a challenge

  • Absolutely, and in some ways the the the challenging periods of my life that we've covered

  • provided a roadmap for what I would do with with the remainder of my academic career, which is I would pursue opportunities where I could

  • Imagine going back in time and solving some of the problems I had experienced right and and that I studied

  • international development and nonprofit management at York

  • I went and did a law degree because I thought the law was was relevant to my life and insofar as

  • It made a difference and how I wound up and how some of my peer group did and that I was lucky to not be

  • involved in the legal system, so

  • yeah, I mean it was a call to action for me and I think it gave me the the

  • motivation but also the the toughness I would need to to push forward and do things that

  • You know, I had good reason to believe we're impossible, you know

  • because the victim narrative is something like well you're so little compared to what's

  • Arrayed against you in all of its historical catastrophe, right which is like the evil father

  • you're so little that you don't have a chance and

  • That's that's not good because you're not that little and what's arrayed against you. Isn't that big?

  • I mean

  • It's not that it's not big because it is big but it's that you're nowhere near as little as you might have been

  • enticed to think

  • Exactly and I think I think what you're describing is very like I think most people hear that and would agree with you

  • but they just selectively apply it to different people in our society like they want to tell some of us because of of our

  • Circumstances that that's less true for some than others and that's what yeah. Well, that's the sort of thing

  • It really makes you wonder where the true racism is

  • Yeah, and well

  • You know and as I as I travel around Canada and I go to other countries and I speak to young men who are in

  • In some cases very difficult circumstances. I see over and over again how they're being denied that

  • That belief that it's they're being told that that belief is somehow

  • Competing with recognition of unfairness. Yeah. I heard that despite John Henry ISM

  • It's a new form of pathology identified by psychologists as the belief among

  • Minority young men that personal effort and sacrifice and responsibility will actually produce positive outcomes

  • It's actually for exactly the reasons that you just described because it runs counter to the victim and oppressor narrative

  • It's actually being treated by some people now as a form of psychological disorder

  • Wow, yeah Wow

  • Yeah, and and and that like and and when you when you when you say those things right when you go to people who?

  • are in difficult circumstances and remind them even to some small degree that that

  • individual agency might matter right that it could affect their outcome that they do not have they're not

  • Destined to us to a life of suffering

  • people

  • There are a lot of people get it threatened by that right and they feel like

  • You're undermining the narrative that they desperately want to be true

  • Which is that that young man has to suffer until everything else changes right that until we get rid of capitalism

  • and and patriarchy and white supremacy and all these other evils right quote-unquote evils of our society that

  • you you

  • You you will you cannot have a good life?

  • until that is first dealt with

  • and asking people to sit around and wait for

  • a

  • Kind of activist class to create this utopia for them

  • I

  • Find that to be very immoral and very bothersome because I see I see you know

  • The biggest obstacles I have to getting my message out to young men are people who I would describe as you know victim celebrators

  • Right people who really really want to celebrate when we're losing

  • Because it fits their narrative but ideas that might help us win are a lot less attractive

  • Yeah, yeah. Okay. So now you went off to York and and what happened when you went to York

  • Well, I always jokingly saved my life got really boring really quickly because I really just studied and did everything I was supposed to do

  • I like I am actually surprised by how hard I was able to work in those four years

  • I would I took all I was very careful about picking classes that I thought would build on the momentum

  • I had picked up so I I want to study subject matter that would connect to things I previously learned

  • Because I still had a certain

  • Insecurity about going too far from where I had proven myself, you know

  • I don't know if I could have taken an economics class or a biology class or a

  • Psychology class because those are just subjects that didn't come that

  • I wasn't sure I could handle so I was very careful about picking things. I thought I could do

  • well things that in my free time I was thinking about right so issues around poverty and

  • discrimination and activism and you know such

  • Tackling social issues whether that was in the kind of Canadian context or elsewhere

  • Those are things that I felt comfortable with and so I picked classes that fit that mold and as I got more and more

  • Confident in myself. I started to branch out into other areas

  • so take an econ class or a class and marketing for nonprofit organizations or things like that and

  • I

  • I had a

  • You know my whole life up to that point was on

  • one Street that I that steals Avenue West which is on the north end of Toronto and

  • You know where my mom lived Humber College and York University are all off this street

  • So my world was very small in the sense that the same bus routes

  • I had taken as a teenager were the same bus as I took to Homer and the same bus as I took to York

  • I I got very much in a comfort zone there, right because I was saying to myself, okay

  • This is the world. I know this is the world. I understand I can be successful in this world

  • And so I clung to it and I didn't really do much to branch out

  • You know, I still worked in restaurants as a line cook and a dishwasher. I worked in warehouses even when I was getting aids

  • I didn't think for instance to apply to like a prestigious internship or to work at your you wouldn't have known on that

  • You know, like when you come from about like that, it's you know when I went to

  • University of Alberta, I didn't know any people who had had a graduate degree. I didn't know how to go about doing that

  • And so the idea that I could do that was really something that was quite new

  • You don't know the pathways, you know, I mean you can figure them out. But if that's not right in your mill, you know

  • You just don't know how II don't know what basic steps to take. You don't exactly yeah

  • There was this idea I came across

  • in in one of the

  • international development classes I took

  • But it's an anthropology concept called the capacity to aspire

  • from Arjun Appadurai

  • NYU and

  • It stuck with me because he uses it to explain how people achieve social mobility in India and I think it applied really well

  • to my life in Canada too, which is you know your

  • Imagination grows with with the more paths as you see in front of yourself

  • And we all might have a similar destination in mind in terms of what a good life looks like, right?

  • I want a better house a better car

  • Someone who loves me someone to love

  • but some of us have a better sense of the directions the steps it takes to get to that destination than others and I

  • And that idea stuck with me because it helped explain

  • Both the difference between myself and some of my peers in university who were more accustomed to opportunity

  • but it also explained the difference between me and

  • My friends who were not in university and we're not making some of the good choices

  • I was and we're still dealing with the consequences of how we grew up

  • well

  • I have this program that I developed with my colleagues called Future authoring program that helps people make a develop a vision for their life

  • along some of the dimensions you mentioned but then and then also to

  • Put together an implementable strategy and we've never been able to tell if the utility of the program lies more in

  • walking people through an actual the actual process of developing a vision and a genuine strategy or

  • Suggesting to people that they're actually capable of doing that

  • Hmm, right, so and I often think it's the latter

  • It's like because the the idea that you are

  • Self-transforming agent is an unbelievably powerful

  • idea

  • If you could if if it grips you right or if you allow it to grip you that might be another way of thinking about

  • it but

  • but but it it is certainly an idea that you cannot have or that you can be prematurely cynical about which I think is

  • Well, that's that that premature cynicism is really what the victim that narrative feeds and I think it's it's unbelievably

  • mentally

  • Damaging to two young people. It really hurts them

  • Okay

  • So you went to York and you did real well

  • And then how did the idea of Law School pop into your mind and and then you have encouragement for that?

  • I mean you had to go write the LSAT and all of this. It's quite a daunting process

  • it is I

  • it was actually a very practical decision for me because I

  • Looked around and saw that no one who studied what I studied at York was getting a job in the field and in many cases

  • Were working the same jobs after they graduated that they had when they were a student

  • So I thought to myself I need more education

  • Like I lost you know

  • I felt like I had given up a lot to get to that point

  • Like I I lost a lot of the friends I grew up with I worked really really hard. I

  • changed my life in a way that I

  • felt like betting on myself and I was starting to become nervous that the bet might not pay off if I'm

  • 22 at the university degree and no job, but I have a bunch of debt, right? And so

  • law school and business school were the things that I thought about in terms of

  • their playing on some of my strengths in the sense that I can read and write well, but they seemed very

  • practical and that they lead to a job like theirs they're supposed to prepare you for actual work and

  • I wound up writing the law school admissions test first of the two and

  • I I did really well kind of shockingly to be honest. I did not expect to do so well

  • It was the first standardized test I had ever done well on and I was just you know

  • and and I it to the point where I did not write the business school test because I was

  • Like didn't want to test my luck

  • I just thought okay like take what take what you can get, you know

  • and then

  • Because my whole life was on Steeles Avenue West I was expecting to go to the law school at York

  • Like that was just it fit where I was comfortable. I knew what bus I would take to get there

  • You know the the the limited

  • Set of experiences I had made like even going to University of Toronto seemed like a foreign world to me. I

  • The idea of going downtown was like this is just not a place where people like me should be hanging out

  • I just didn't feel comfortable there, you know, and so I

  • Thought I was gonna apply to York and if I had been admitted there

  • luckily, I would have definitely gone but I had this like chance meeting with a

  • history professor David blight

  • He yelled where I was speak. There's a town in southern Ontario called Buxton North Buxton, which was founded by

  • families who came to Canada from the Underground Railroad and

  • They host a conference every year at one of the churches that they set up

  • So I was presenting some research I had done on black Canadians

  • At this conference and the CL professor. Who was the keynote?

  • showed up early enough to hear my presentation and after I was done he walked over to me and he said well

  • That was really good. What are you gonna do after graduation? And I said to him. Oh, I I wrote the ELSA

  • I think I'm gonna go to law school

  • he said to me you should apply to Yale and I thought like

  • This guy was a super hero to me because he was teaching at a university that I'd only seen on television, you know

  • Yeah, and so in my mind it was like I said Tim like are you sure like?

  • And he was like tell me you know, he's like, yeah, I think you'd be a competitive applicant and I was like, wow, so

  • Yeah Wow

  • Yeah, like hit his belief in me in that chance interaction where I've never seen him since like it

  • But we only interacted for a couple of minutes

  • But that meant so much

  • that I thought wow if this guy thinks that I have that ability I might as well apply to Harvard and Columbia and all these

  • Other schools because I mean he knows what he's talking about, right? He's this like superhero from Yale

  • And so I apply everywhere and I get in everywhere Jesus that must have been a shock

  • Yeah, it was like winning the lottery like I just yeah. Nope. I'm high. I was yeah. Hi. I

  • And like, you know and then being able to tell my mom that not only did I get into those schools, but you know

  • they're generous financial aid policies would mean that we would actually be able to

  • Afford it meaning we wouldn't have to pay anything because we have no money

  • Was it like she I think like everything

  • she ever wanted for me came true in that moment, you know and and it was a really

  • Yeah, it was just a special special day. Yeah, no kidding. That's quite that that's quite the miraculous situation. That is men

  • Yeah, and and it's one where I say to myself very lucky and fortunate to be able to have walk down that yeah

  • Well brave too, man. You did do the applications you put in, New York

  • That's you know, like there's good fortune there for sure, but it's not like it just it's not a lottery

  • Well, it is in a sense you but you bought lots of tickets and you that's true. Yeah, yeah

  • Okay. Yeah, you gotta buy a lot of tickets to it. That's right

  • That's right that's right now and and you know as I described, you know the bet I made on myself it paid off, right?

  • I mean the idea that I would ever be

  • like I I now would have an education where I could choose the job I had and I wouldn't just be

  • Given whatever was available to me

  • I mean that is really what I was looking for right like that kind of stability where I could say

  • I'm an employable person the financial challenges my modeling through I will not have to go through and

  • I might even be able to do something for her and other people right? No kidding

  • There's someone that's what attending Yale met for me. Okay, so so now then then he went to Yale. How'd you do at Yale? I

  • Did well I had a different kind of experience though, you know

  • like I I really killed myself for four years studying at York to get there and

  • Part of the appeal for Yale to me was you know, I had read those stories by you know

  • Bill Clinton where while he was getting a law degree?

  • He was actually living in New York or Arkansas or in London

  • like Yale was a place where if you didn't want academics to be your primary focus you could be doing other thing and

  • because the grading system is generous and because the culture there is

  • Encouraging of you to kind of be impactful in whatever way

  • you can be and so I

  • It was a very alien environment to me and I and I think you know

  • I look back and I think some of that bravery you just credited me with them

  • I feel like maybe I was a little less brave there because I

  • Really didn't feel comfortable there in a way that I never got used to

  • Being around wealthy people was really hard for me in terms of just feeling inadequate all the time. Yeah

  • Well, that's one of the problems with those Ivy League schools is that you know what? It's funny

  • because

  • Almost everyone who ends up at one of those schools feels inadequate

  • At least on one dimension right because no matter how rich you are

  • There's someone richer and if you're rich, you're not as smart as your roommate and if you're as smart as your roommate

  • you're not as smart as your professor and like they're very weird institutions because they aggregate people who are

  • Remarkable across a number of dimensions and so everyone who attends them tends to feel well like they have impostor syndrome

  • I really noticed that among the undergraduates at Harvard

  • Because there used to be in the smartest kids in their classes and then when they'd show up at Harvard, you know

  • They were no longer

  • Guaranteed to be the smartest person in the room. That's for sure

  • yeah, I think that that's exactly what I observed that you know, I mean thankfully for me I

  • Feel before so I wasn't too worried about getting a bad grade, you know, like that wasn't really the concern for me

  • What more so was the concern was I really felt uncomfortable with what I saw is like privileged. Right? Like I'm I I I

  • in some ways felt like in danger of being a sellout right of

  • being someone who grew up with very little and

  • Then being welcomed with open arms by this like opulent

  • Institution that was surrounded by people who were living like I used to right

  • I mean the neighborhoods around Yale. Right, right

  • you know particularly particularly striking that way and absolutely yeah, and so, you know

  • I would walk around campus and walk out of campus and I would see that you men

  • living like I used to live would be stopped by Yale security all the time or would be treated in a very

  • Hostile way anytime they came too close to some of the Yale buildings and it just you know it

  • I was really unsure what to do with them

  • do you do you embrace that do you just start sucking up to the professors and become, you know part of that scene or

  • Is there another way and I I spent three years trying to figure that out and I'm not sure I really did

  • What part of how I reconciled it?

  • All was I took a I was part of a project where you could work as a volunteer high school teacher

  • In some of the local neighborhoods and so I used to teach constitutional law to grade 11 and grade 12 kids

  • Some of the rougher high schools and that was my way of feeling like whatever Yale was giving me

  • I was immediately trying to give it back to somebody else. I didn't I didn't know how else to to

  • Well, that seems like a good that seems like a good approach. How did that work out for you?

  • Um, well it worked out. Well in the sense that I did get a lot of you know unique and

  • Amazing opportunities as a Yale student and I did I think have the chance

  • To be useful to a lot of other people at the same time

  • so the balance I think I was able to strike it but I certainly look back and think you know they were if I was

  • a little bit more prepared if I knew people who could have

  • Introduced me and oriented me to that environment. I think I could have

  • Gotten more out of it in the sense that I would have known what actually mattered like you spend

  • just as you met you described that that that

  • collection of remarkable people who've done so many things part of how they cope with their

  • inadequacies or their feelings of inadequacy is

  • They they are so prone to groupthink

  • right because the way you deal with

  • feeling inadequate is to just try to be like everyone else but better right and so you wind up in this like like like for

  • Example Yale

  • Um prides itself on the diversity of its student body coming into an entering law school class, right? So

  • all the different schools

  • they went to and their

  • Experiences and the countries they've worked in and all that and yet more than half of Yale

  • students will have the same job when they graduate they'll be law clerks working for a fancy judge some sure and then

  • Most of those people will then go on to work at a fancy law firm. And so it is this this process where

  • If you come in from a different place

  • And you try to resist the groupthink. You're going to inevitably graduate feeling like you missed out because

  • you're gonna be reminded of all the amazing things your classmates are doing and you're not sure if

  • Walking a different path is gonna pay off for you, right you're thinking to yourself. Well, I didn't take that clerkship

  • I didn't take the job at the fancy law firm in Manhattan

  • Am I gonna kick myself for that for the rest of my life?

  • And that was what was weighing on my mind that graduated like I was so stressed out because I was like am I gonna regret?

  • How I played this hand, you know, okay. So what happened what I want to talk a little bit more about

  • About what happened after you left Yale you ended up at Tory's eventually

  • But because I articled there but I also wanted to turn the topic to something slightly darker as well. I mean you've also

  • been suffering from a very

  • What would you call it?

  • well

  • I'm burdensome illness for the last year

  • burdensome and terrifying illness for the last year and I wanted to touch on that at least a little bit because it's a

  • it's it's a hell of a

  • Second part to the story that you just told right because you you emerged from a very desperate

  • initial orientation

  • To a degree of remarkable success. I would say academically and

  • Practically and then you got walloped, you know

  • it's like you've done all this work and you've put yourself together and you've helped put the world right and you've changed your attitude and

  • Then all of a sudden when things are going well for you

  • You know you get you get cut down and I'm I want to go back to that

  • I want to go to that and because I'm curious about how how you're coping with that and how you're managing it

  • But let's talk about what happened after you left Yale first

  • Well when I left DL I just I tried to work in the corporate world and do the

  • community service and

  • kind of activist work that I was really passionate about because

  • Canada is a hard country. I mean one of the biggest differences I would say between

  • Coming back here after graduation versus staying in the u.s. Is where you can

  • Create a career for yourself. There's just a lot more options in the joints to me a professional

  • Advocate for youth or to work on some of the issues we're describing

  • At a research center or to do you know this and that in Canada?

  • It's it's if there's there's few options. A lot of them are government oriented, which is something I've always been a bit

  • cautious of I'm not a big fan of how

  • Top-down a lot of Canada works because of the the power our governments have and so I

  • had a hard time feeling like I fit in so the

  • The the way I thought would work best for me the honourable way to approach that problem in my mind was I'll earn I'll earn

  • my keep with a

  • management consulting job or a corporate law job and then

  • work with youth and work with police officers to change policies and things like that on the weekends and in the evenings and

  • I did that for a couple of years and it was

  • Exhausting. I mean it was hard to do everything and I wound up taking a job teaching at York University because I thought it was

  • A way for me to do those things. I was passionate about full time

  • I found out as I'm sure you know that

  • Universities also are not places that you get to always focus on being useful to other people

  • you know the work I wanted to do I had a hard time balancing with the expectations of

  • playing up to kind of the university politics and

  • You know see, you know doing research that I or or being tempted to do research. I didn't think would actually be helpful to anyone

  • and being part of academic pursuits that I don't think are immediately relevant to people in our society who

  • would benefit most from quality research and so

  • It was hard to balance all those things - and I was in the process of figuring all that out. I supposed when I got

  • Diagnosed with cancer I spent at that point. I was a couple of years into teaching and

  • It happened at a time where I was already hoping to kind of rethink what I would be doing with my career because I didn't

  • Feel like university life was the long-term

  • solution for me

  • and then cancer hit me and it's given me a lot of time to I guess like reflect on that and think about what I

  • Want to be doing when I get healthy again?

  • So yeah, so you so you have stage 4 non-hodgkins lymphoma

  • Yes, and that also caused spinal fractures. So it's really quite the

  • Catastrophic mix of of symptoms and that that that's been that's been you've been being treated for that since last February

  • So the first question is, how did you find? What were the symptoms that led to your diagnosis? And how did you find?

  • How did you find out what what was wrong?

  • Yeah, well, you know, I you know, one of the things people say about men is that we don't seek help

  • I'm I guess I might be an example of that because you know, I had pain in my neck for months

  • And and in my lower back or my and I just like didn't, you know take it seriously. I just thought alright

  • Well, I just turned 13. I thought maybe this is what 30 spike. You know, you got yeah

  • Yeah and back problems. And yeah, well you never you'd never leap right to the catastrophe

  • Yeah, so I wound up

  • going into the hospital to get it looked at and I also had a

  • soul and lymph nodes

  • which I also didn't take seriously because I just thought like how you know, it's not a big deal and

  • turns out those things are related because in the the lymph nodes on my left side is

  • Where a tumor had started to grow and that tumor?

  • Or and that the cancer aren't spreading from that main tumor into some of my bonus

  • and the neck pain and back pain I was feeling

  • Were caused by the cancer cracked

  • the the

  • Two parts of my spine one in the neck and one in the back

  • So I wound up at an emergency room visit which I thought was going to be fairly, you know, simple

  • I thought you know, I didn't have a doctor

  • So I went to the emergency room thinking I was gonna get antibiotics

  • Prescribed to me for the lymph nodes being swollen and I wound up being held for a week because they had to do a bunch

  • Of testing on what was going on and that's how I basically found out about camps about the cancer

  • I was at a pretty high risk of paralysis at that point because of

  • The injury and the possibility of the spinal cord being affected

  • Thankfully that didn't happen and in a weird way my bones wound up kind of fusing together

  • So they're never gonna be normal again, but they're stable enough that I won't have those problems at least

  • but then I went through like chemo and radiation for most of the last ten months and I'm just a

  • Couple months ago. I finished that up and it's you know

  • It's been

  • It's been intense. I think I revisited a lot of the the harmful places that my mind used to be when I was younger

  • the temptation to be like resentful

  • Yeah

  • You know

  • I put a lot work into my career and to have this happen in prime kind of earning years

  • To have my income cut drastically when you're the by far the biggest breadwinner and your family the first one to finish

  • University and first one to become a professional

  • and

  • I and I and there was a part of me that really wanted to go back to that place where I would just see myself

  • as a victim and be angry at everybody and be angry at God and be angry at

  • life for

  • You know

  • Yeah, the problem with that is that then you end up with the illness and being angry at God and at life

  • yeah, you know which which like it's not it's not like I'm making light of your motivation for feeling that way because you know that

  • that's that's a hell of a thing to have happen and

  • it's it's

  • it's it's a blow that would destabilize anyone and the fact that you started revisiting that same dark places is

  • Anything but surprising, you know, I think what's surprising

  • Mostly is that you didn't stay there?

  • Yeah, but watch if you really ill people, you know, it's it's it's really bad to have the illness

  • that's for sure and it can be ultimately bad but

  • to also have that in bitter you and bring back your cynicism and

  • Make you not so much desperate as as

  • rage-filled and angry

  • Doesn't help the illness and all it does is make your situation worse and I think worse for everyone around you as well

  • that's also something terrible about being sick is that you tend to feel like you're a like a an

  • Intolerable burden on the people around you as well. It's another bit of guilt. You have to bear along with being ill

  • yeah, I think that's absolutely right and I

  • That that that that dark place

  • Was was tempting for a lot of reasons but but one of which was it just made it made it, you know being sick

  • It's like you have no one to get mad at right. It's like who's the face of that, right? Yeah

  • You want to find someone to blame like you want to have something to point to and say this is the cause of my misfortune

  • And it's not like I had you know lung cancer or something where it's like, oh, you know

  • I smoked too much or I have some sort of

  • Behavior I could associate with being ill I mean when the doctor told me I was sick

  • She said to me, you know, I asked her like how is it possible that I'm this sick? I don't get it

  • I have no problems and she said you know, it's just bad luck. Yeah, that's a hard and um stupidity of life

  • Yeah, and I think that's a hard thing to accept

  • For sure

  • But what it also did was just kind of like there was a there was a message that I needed to hear from people

  • When I was getting out of a dark place when I was younger right when I was getting out of high school

  • I needed people to believe in me

  • I need people to think I had a brighter future than I thought. I might have I needed people who

  • Still have that like an unwavering faith that I could be

  • helpful to the world and

  • when I when I got diagnosed I needed that stent like I needed that just as bad like I needed that sense of

  • From people that you're not just dislike burden

  • Now your mom has to stress about you and it's not like she doesn't already have a whole bunch of things to worry about

  • It's that

  • Despite this illness you still have a lot to offer the world and people who had that message

  • I mean, you're one of them you sent me an email

  • thanks to a mutual friend shortly after I got

  • diagnosed and

  • It matters, right it matters when people say to you that, you know, as you said earlier

  • it's a it's a call to action that you've got a you've got as you know, a personal catastrophe now that

  • You have to deal with and in doing so you're gonna learn a lot about yourself and what you're capable of

  • just you talk to write a book on capacity to aspire, you know, and it's like

  • the idea that you should battle on against insuperable odds is

  • In some sense an idea that it's got a certain amount of hopelessness about it under some

  • circumstances because there are times when you battle and

  • you lose and it's even the case that you lose if you battle as

  • Forthrightly and courageously as you possibly can but the truth of the matter is is that there isn't a better strategy

  • That's the thing is that

  • first of all

  • the strategy works most of the time or if any strategy is going to work that's going to be the one and

  • Nothing is certain in life. And so not every strategy ever works a hundred percent of the time, but it's still

  • The best you have and you you you decided

  • Apparently to rescue yourself from the second descent into the hole of hell despair. Let's say to

  • Continue to try to aspire forward despite the fact that you'd been thrown another

  • tremendous obstacle

  • Yeah, well, what's what's what's been really good for me is

  • I've really focused on being around people who have their own challenges, you know

  • and

  • I credit a lot of the young men I've spent time with since my book come out for putting my mind in a place that

  • Was actually positive and productive, you know

  • I've spent time with boys who are going through the challenges

  • I had when I was a kid far worse in many circumstances. I spent time people who are fighting poverty or abuse

  • kids who are in the foster system kids who have

  • Not even a mom that I was a Boston

  • Alright and and being around those young men

  • Young men who've come out of jail and are trying to do something different young men. Who who who are

  • figuring how to grow up on on

  • The spot because they now have a kid they have to be worried about right

  • I mean being around those young men in every city I've been able to travel to has has really made it hard for me to

  • Feel sorry for myself and also hard for me to discount what?

  • You know, I don't know where my physical health goes from here. I'm still not you know in remission yet, but

  • it's really hard for me to

  • Put myself at the center of a victim narrative

  • Which I know is tempting and I've talked to other cancer patients who are similarly tempted to look that at life that way

  • And to say there's still a bunch of young men who I could be useful to

  • Yeah, and the idea that I might say something to a guy who just got out of jail or a guy who?

  • Doesn't think he can be a good student or a guy who?

  • you know is in a university where he feels in over his head and that maybe I could say something that could

  • change how he thinks about himself and put his best foot forward like

  • That's been that's been worth living for quite honestly and that makes the cancer feel so irrelevant by comparison

  • Yeah, well that's a hell of a thing to have accomplished as far as I'm concerned but I think it's dead right

  • You know, I mean life is a hopeless business and we all die in the end that question is, what do you do?

  • what do you do in the interim and

  • everything that you can do to

  • Put things in a more positive place is is a credit to your integrity

  • Fundamentally and it's integrally associated with the meaning that does sustain you in very dark times

  • Absolutely, and I think that you know the confidence that I had in

  • You know individual agency and personal responsibility in the power of how you choose to think

  • About the world and how you interpret the adversity you go through the confidence

  • I had in that from growing up and from the academic research I've done and the life I lived has only grown

  • Exponentially since I've been sick because I now see it in my own life on a regular basis

  • but I also get to see it in people who are

  • Facing far more severe physical challenges than I have people

  • Who should I share a hospital room with four people who I see when I walk, you know through the Cancer Center

  • And it's like and I see what they have to tell themselves

  • the you know the rules they have to live by to

  • have

  • to get through the the challenges they face on a day-to-day basis and get to somewhere positive and constructive and

  • That's you know, it's incredibly inspirational and it's and it certainly makes it meet, you know, frankly the limited patients

  • I had four people who undermine or want to downplay the importance of that that way of looking at life and

  • that way of

  • Orienting yourself to the world that patience is far thinner than it was before and it wasn't like I was very tolerant of that

  • You know before I got sick either

  • Well, you know it seems to me that that's probably a pretty good time to

  • Bring this discussion to a close. What do you think? What else? Is there anything else that you have to tell people?

  • I mean, I'm kind of curious about how you had the opportunity to talk to all these young men or how you've taken that opportunity

  • Well, a lot of it has been, you know people who read the book and want me to come speak to

  • students or youth that they work with

  • but it's also been because a couple of charities Big Brothers Big Sisters and

  • The pinball Clemons Foundation both of whom work with young men across Canada and also in the United States and other countries

  • They've organized opportunities for me to come speak to

  • Young men who they think would would benefit most from hearing from a young men who are struggling to find their way

  • We're having a hard time in school who don't have primary support or Mentors

  • So that's where a lot of the opportunity comes from is

  • you know people who I guess

  • Feel like my story does renders innate or would resonate I think a lot of it is people who also recognize the institutions

  • They're part of might not always understand young men or know how to respond to their needs

  • Because and this is a problem that you've tackled head-on in many cases

  • I think they recognize a need to encourage young men to do well

  • But don't know how to do it because the conversation around encouragement of men has in

  • My view been been undermined and poisoned in many ways. I mean, even we have a prime minister here in Canada Justin Trudeau

  • who you know goes to international summits and

  • recklessly speaks about men using

  • You know the buzzwords that he thinks are going to get him an applause

  • Yeah, that's what he was talking about the dangerousness of working men

  • Exactly. I know and it's absolutely appalling

  • Yeah, well when you in and when you live in a country where that passes as leadership of your nation, no kidding

  • You know people I think don't know what to do about the struggling young men. They see who who actually aren't you know?

  • They don't symbolize male privilege in the ways that our prime minister might might think they do right? And so

  • People are looking for other ways to engage and speak about young men and I yeah

  • Well at trying some words isn't her would go a long ways

  • I mean I've been stunned but over the last year at you know discovering how

  • rarely, so many people are encouraged and how starving they are for a few genuine words of encouragement and

  • Well, it's it's like you said, even when you met that Professor who told you that you could maybe apply to Yale

  • It's just that chance encounter a few words

  • And you said you know

  • you've also realized how important the things that you say might be to people and

  • That that's led you some strength to go on even, you know, during your current times of travail

  • Let's say it is so important to put forward a message of encouragement to young men and say look

  • you know get your act together for Christ's sake there's a lot more to you than you think and the world is crying out for

  • you it needs you and

  • That that irresponsibility. There's nothing about that

  • That's nobler or justifiable. Even though you have your reasons to feel embittered and victimized. It's not the point of

  • Course the world's harsh and brutal, but you you're someone who might be able to prevail nonetheless

  • And that's really something

  • Yeah, I would say it's not just something but in some cases everything yeah, that's right assembly for instance

  • that's exactly yeah a difference between giving the world the best you have to offer and and

  • Giving it the world nothing. Yeah. Well, then you might be old but at least you have a clean conscience

  • So it's not some head man

  • Yeah, then that that's maybe the most valuable thing about yeah. Yeah, that's for sure. Look Jimmy. Oh, it was a pleasure talking to you

  • Same to you. Dr. Peters. Yeah. Thank you for your time look and I'm best luck, and I'm hoping things go well for you

  • But it's remarkable story that you told it's it's really something on

  • multiple dimensions and so like more power to you as far as I'm concerned and I hope that lots of people

  • watch this and

  • realize that

  • Like you did that there's a hell of a lot more to them than meets the eye I hope so, too

  • Good I hope we meet again

  • Me, too. Thank you. Dr. Peterson. You bet man good talking with you

  • You too, all the best. Yeah same to you. Hey, let's take a look at your book one more time

  • Okay, okay. All right

  • Available in Canada now in the US and other countries next year great why your latest?

  • identity and

  • Rage race in the crisis of identity why young man rage race and the crisis of identity? Yeah. All right

  • Well, I hope I hope you get a massive boost in sales as a consequence

  • All right fan

  • Taking or give your mom a hug before me I will do that

  • she'll be very glad to know that we had a chance to talk about her -

  • All right. Ciao

  • Take care

You

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