E-mail a friendHill Harper
airdate June 13, 2008
With two Harvard graduate degrees (in law and government), Hill Harper could be a partner in a prestigious law firm. Instead, he pursued his passion for the performing arts. The Iowa native began acting at age 7 and continued while in college. He has numerous stage, film and TV credits and is on a mission to create interesting characters that play against stereotypes, which he does in the CBS hit series, CSI: NY. Harper is the founder of the MANifest Your Destiny Foundation, as well as a best-selling author.
Actor explains how his new book helps women understand male manipulation and what he calls the "new school gameplan." (2:10)
Full Interview (12:23)
Hill Harper
Tavis: Hill Harper is a talented actor who stars on the hit series, "CSI: New York." He's now out with a follow-up to his award-winning book, "Letters to a Young Brother." The new book is called "Letters to a Young Sister: Define Your Destiny." Hill Harper, nice to see you, as always.
Hill Harper: Thank you very much.
Tavis: Glad to have you on the program. Let me go sideways on you first.
Harper: Okay.
Tavis: How presumptuous, particularly in the age of Hillary, for a man to be writing a book of advice to young women?
Harper: Wow. You know what's interesting is that I never thought about writing this particular book until I was approached by a young lady in Atlanta. I was doing a book signing for "Letters to a Young Brother" and this young lady basically asked the question, "What about us?" At first, I was surprised, but then you start digging below the surface and you start finding out that a lot of young women don't have positive platonic male affection in their life.
Then you start asking the question, "Why do they end up going after male affection with the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time and end up in the wrong situation?" So the goal was there. I speak about the things that I think a male point of view can speak to and then I bring in my surrogate sisters, or so-called surrogate sisters, to talk about the female perspective.
Tavis: And by sisters, you don't mean just Black women?
Harper: No, not at all, and that's the thing. For me growing up, I was given so many motivational books where the central character wasn't African American specifically, you know. "James, the Giant Peach," you know, they put a picture on the cover of what James looked like and he didn't look like me, but I still got a lot out of the book.
It's called "Letters to a Young Sister," but there's no specific reference to - it's not just for African American young girls. You know, success, happiness, achievement, self-esteem, those aren't race-specific ideas.
Tavis: Speaking of women, though, back to the first book before I come back to this one, the book "Letters to a Young Brother." You said earlier that you were at a book signing, a sister comes up in Atlanta, asked this question, you get the idea to do this book. How much of the audience on that first - I ran into you in Philadelphia. In one city, we were both on book tours at the same time.
Harper: That's right. Your book sold a lot more than mine.
Tavis: Well, I don't know about all that.
Harper: I'm just telling you. It's true, it's true (laughter).
Tavis: We bumped into each other in Philadelphia. How much of your tour was populated by women? I ask that because I have found that one of the ways to get to young brothers, certainly African American men, is through women in their lives, through their girlfriends, through their mothers, through their grandmothers. You can sell a whole lot more books to brothers through women oftentimes than you can directly to the brothers.
Harper: Absolutely.
Tavis: Did you find that?
Harper: I found that to be true, but it's also true even on a larger point for young people because these books, "Letters to a Young Brother" and "Letters to a Young Sister," they have to be a gifted book. I mean, I'm under no naïve delusion. Young people, for the most part, aren't walking around the aisles of Barnes & Noble saying, "I can't wait for the next hard cover to drop," you know. That's not where their mind is.
They're at Foot Locker because they've been told by certain people that they need these sneakers to be relevant, not they need this book to be relevant, and that's part of what the fight is. So it has to be a gifted book. Women were showing up for "Letters to a Young Brother" purchasing that book and gifting it to the young men in their lives, gifting it to their boyfriends, gifting it to their husbands, and the same holds true here. Women and adults, males, whoever, have to buy this book and gift it to young women. You know, it has to be a gifted book.
Tavis: The structure, the layout, the format of the book is?
Harper: It is a series of letters. I took the idea from one of my favorite books that I was gifted when I was young called "Letters to a Young Poet" by Rilke. Rilke was the very famous German poet, you know, early 1900s. He wrote these letters. They actually were real letters to this young poet who wrote him a letter saying, "I think I want to be a poet. I'm not sure if I should. Could you let me know if I should?" I sort of modeled it after that.
It's a series of letters from me to a fictional young sister who's going through some life crises. What starts to happen is you start to see how our lives parallel. I give her advice, but at the same time, she's kind of mentoring and advising me in a way and it becomes this wonderful symbiotic relationship.
And then in between, I have emails that are real questions I've gotten from young women. You know, I went out and did research and talked to young women, real questions I got from young women that I actually sent out and forwarded to a number of people that I have a great deal of respect for, yourself included.
Michelle Obama, Nikki Giovanni, Angela Bassett, Gabrielle Union writes the foreword, Ms. Cathy Hughes. You know, titans of industry. It's just a wonderful group of women, some legends like Ruby Dee and some younger women too. I couldn't be more proud of the content.
Tavis: I'm glad you mentioned research and reaching out to a large group of folk to help you dispense this advice because I wanted to ask as I will now what it is about your background, or for that matter, my background, that makes us think that we are connected or can be connected to this generation in such a way where we can give them advice?
I ask that with all due respect, but I'm talking to Hill Harper who is a movie star, a TV star. I'm talking to Hill Harper who has not one, but two degrees from Harvard, a law degree and an MBA, etc., etc. What is it about your - aside from your love of humanity and your passion - did you ever feel like you didn't have the stuff to connect, to answer the questions posed in this text? Does that make sense?
Harper: That makes perfect sense. Sometimes it was questions about being a young woman. I couldn't answer, so that's why I went out to other women to answer those questions. But a lot of the questions surrounded, at least the ones that I got back to me, they were either universal or they were about, well, good example.
"Hill, I'm dating a boy that I kind of like. He keeps telling me that he wants me to have sex with him. I don't think I'm ready to, but I think that he won't like me if I don't. What should I do?" I mean, I as a man - there's a letter in there called "Sex, Lies and Texting: The Lies Boys Tell."
Look, when a boy puts conditions on your love, as a man, I'm telling you he's lying. In fact, he's not worth your time if he's gonna place conditions on you. So first of all, I go through lies to watch out for, all these different things. I kind of break the male code, so to speak (laughter).
Tavis: Are you wearing a bullet-proof jacket (laughter)? The brothers are gonna take -
Harper: - (Laughter) We're gonna have to come up with new lies. We're gonna have to come up with some new lies.
Tavis: The players' handbook.
Harper: I had to, I had to. Because right now, and this is no joke, a fifteen-year-old young woman today is different than a fifteen-year-old young woman five years ago. You're talking about Facebooking, you're talking about MySpace, IMing, texting. Some of the text that these young fifteen-year-olds showed me, you wouldn't believe it because a lot of young men are using manipulation through technology because they're willing to do things and say things and manipulate in a way that they wouldn't be able to do face-to-face.
They say things that they wouldn't even have the courage to say face-to-face, but a lot of these young girls get sucked into it because they feel like they need to reach out and they need that affection. They want that affection and attention.
Tavis: Your point about the texting is a good point because there are new ways to get your game on, new ways to get your swirl on.
Harper: New school game plan, that's what I call it.
Tavis: New school game plan. I like that. So there are new ways to do that which raises the question in my mind, at least, whether or not the problems have changed much from when you and I were younger.
Harper: Well, the problems have changed because the consequences for bad behavior are immensely higher.
Tavis: You mean what by that?
Harper: Well, I mean the fact that today the single greatest killer of African American females aged sixteen to thirty-four is HIV and AIDS, you know. So it's the first time a preventable disease is the greatest killer of a distinct youth population group and it's sad. Then you start to ask yourself why.
New data came out last week. This is a startling piece of information. Fifty percent of sexually active African American female teens within their first three years of being sexually active will contract an STD of some type.
So you start saying, "Okay, why are these young women putting themselves in potentially harmful positions?" And it's not just African American girls. You know, that's the data I'm just drawing out. But it's across the board. To write a book as a man, kind of like an older brother perspective, give the male point of view, is something that I think a lot have responded to. I love it because it's kind of cool.
There was a blog, though, I must say where this woman came at me and my friend forwarded it to me where she said, "Does Hill Harper think he's a psychologist now? He's writing a book for young women, blah, blah, blah?"
Then on that same thread, another woman checked her and said, "You know what? On this thread, we talk so bad about men not being around, not doing this, not doing that and being absentee. Now this brother tries to write something positive and you're gonna blame him too? You're saying that men can't win." That's what's interesting, but the goal is to create a dialogue.
Tavis: To your point now, did you have to search for the courage at all or was it never a thought? Did you have to search for the courage to write a book like this knowing that - I mean, I raise this because when I finally got around to writing my book, "What I Know For Sure," the book company had been after me and after me for years to write a memoir. I'm like, "A memoir? I'm barely forty. I mean, I got so much life I want to live. What business do I have trying to write a story about my life?"
I finally came around to doing it very quickly because I thought that each of our lives is a story and, if there are lessons that we can share to help people live better lives, then why not share the story? Who says I can't write three memoirs between now and the time I'm dead? But up until forty, this is what I know for sure.
My next book may be called "What I Thought I Knew For Sure," but this was called "What I Knew For Sure." But I had to fight within myself to find the courage to write a book that I thought some might challenge because what do I know at forty years of age? Did you have that same struggle?
Harper: You know, I did, but it was more from the standpoint of how honest am I gonna be willing to be because that's really the question.
Tavis: Absolutely.
Harper: If I'm willing to be completely honest and vulnerable and say, "You know what? I'm not perfect. I know where I've made mistakes. This is where I've actually done my own manipulation of women, so I know what to tell you to watch out for."
Tavis: If you can't do that, then you might as well not write the book.
Harper: Might as well not write the book, exactly. Because if I'm asking these young women to hold up a mirror to themselves, then I have to hold up a mirror to myself. I think that's where the real exchange comes from. Okay, and here's the challenge. I wanted to write it now, this book and the "Letters to a Young Brother" book was key, to write it now before I'm considered their father's generation.
You know, nothing against Dr. Cosby, for instance, but I could say the same thing Dr. Cosby says to them and, you know, the same thing in context, and they will receive it in a different way because I'm kind of coming off to them as kind of like an older brother rather than as a father, parental, judgmental figure. Does that make sense?
Tavis: It makes perfect sense. Before I let you go because I'm out of time, I see you got your Hope button on.
Harper: Yes.
Tavis: Your Obama button on.
Harper: I do.
Tavis: You've been out there with this guy since the very beginning in part because you guys met back at Harvard and law school.
Harper: I've known him for twenty years now.
Tavis: So now he is the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Harper: He is.
Tavis: You're happy about that, obviously, but what's your sense of how ugly, nasty, this is gonna be, right quick, between now and November?
Harper: Well, it's gonna be very nasty. I'm on the National Finance Committee and I realize we have to really - it's wonderful to celebrate the nomination and it's great, but now it's time to really just get down to work registering the voters and getting folks out to vote, you know, because what we found, I think, historically is that we've been effective in registering, like Rock the Vote. They were great at registering new people, but they had no follow-through.
You know, they showed up for the concert with the registration, but they actually didn't vote come November 4. So we got to make sure people vote because the one thing the Republican Party can do well is they can run an effective dirty campaign. So we expect it to be pretty, you know, toe-to-toe. Also, we need to actually be way ahead to actually squeak by a victory, in my opinion. But that's a whole other show (laughter).
Tavis: (Laughter). You come back and we'll talk about that. Good to have friends like Hill Harper when you're running for president. Hill's new book is called "Letters to a Young Sister: Define Your Destiny." Hill, nice to see you.
Harper: Nice to see you. Thank you.
Tavis: That's our show for tonight.
Back to June 13, 2008