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With a doctorate from the UW and two masters from Harvard, Seattle author and activist Max Hunter knows a thing or two about achievement.

But he says for black men walking the line between the street and striving for excellence isn't the obviously desirable journey you might think it is.

Our discussion with the author of Speeches by Hammer Black Male Literacy Narratives in the Age of Hip Hop is next on Northwest now.

Dr. Max Hunter played the game as a drug dealer, but overcame his ambivalence about literacy and academic achievement to escape that life and enter a world that has only entered through accomplished literacy and intellectual achievement.

But squaring black culture, ideas of black manhood and his inner desire to know things did not come easily.

And that's what this book is about.

The book is not easy.

It takes a deep, not just experiential, but also academic background in black history, black narratives, black culture, and black ideals of masculinity to really unpack and understand.

I am not sitting here telling you I get it all or was even able to get through it all.

But what I can do is ask Dr. Hunter to help us unpack it, and it's something he's been doing at venues and classrooms and book signings all across the country.

Dr. Hunter, thanks so much for coming to Northwest.

Now.

Your books, very interesting, very dense.

It's I wouldn't say it's an easy read, but it's an interesting read because it's an academic piece, but it's also your story.

And that's where I want to start with a little a little bit.

Here is about your story.

Where do you come from?

Give us a brief overview of how you got to where you are today.

Wow.

So that's always a tough question because I have a very convoluted path, as you know, to where I am today, But that's what makes it interesting.

Yeah.

So I was born in in San Diego, in the southeast, San Diego, in the equivalent to a black queen in Seattle.

My mom was a single mom.

She was she was a teenager when she had me.

She was a junior in high school, you know, between her senior her junior and senior year.

And so, you know, I had the benefit of growing up in America's finest city.

But we moved to L.A. My dad lived in L.A. and my mom worked in L.A. And so I spent a lot of time with me and my brother with like babysitters and, you know, with a young single mom who was trying to like, party and do what everybody was doing in the sixties and seventies.

And so it was a very interesting experience.

My school, the Air Manchester Avenue Elementary School, we just recently visited it with my children so they could see the kind of environment I grew up in.

And I looked up the school.

When I looked it up, it had the literacy and math literacy and English literacy rates, and they were both below 40%.

I think English literacy was like 29%.

And of course there's a lot of Latin folks living in the community was still shocking in the math.

Literacy was something like 33%.

There wasn't a lot of gang violence there.

When I when I was there, but it was just emerging.

And my mom, she made a decision that she needed to be either a mother or a party girl.

She decided to move us back to San Diego, near where my grandmother was.

Yeah, your grandma was very instrumental in your life.

Really stimulated your early move toward literacy, it sounded like.

Right, Right.

Because, you know, in in you know, I mentioned in the book that I had a very and I don't know where where I got it from, sort of even as a little kid romantic idea of education in schools and what they were like.

But but when I ended up at school, you know, the first day at school, within the first 30 minutes, I get punched in the back by this girl who was bigger than me.

And I had never had a fight or altercation, and I didn't know how to respond to it.

And but then, you know, in this large school, it was more warehousing us as kids and really trying to educate us.

And I don't think that's not to indict the administration or the teachers.

It was just the scale of the.

It's the scale.

It's a factory, right?

Yeah.

And so I didn't I wasn't really exposed to with a Harvard degree and two masters and all you've been through.

Are you still surprised that zip code matters when you go back and visit that school in 2023?

Are you still a little stunned by that?

yes and no.

I mean, it's it's stunning because my kids all go to independent schools.

They're getting a great education.

I have degrees in education.

So I think about it is stunning because, you know, the educational system is a mosaic of different kinds of schools.

And so like when I was growing up and I mentioned it like the black Muslims had their own schools and they were doing a wonderful job.

Black nationalists also had co-ops and stuff, and they were doing a wonderful job.

But public schools, I guess I now that I really think about it a little bit more deeply, public schools, whether they're in L.A., Detroit, Philly or Seattle, because the public school system in Seattle, that was the most shocking to me when I came here and such in 88 was such a kind of middle class and working class city where the kids were not graduating.

And I met I've met a number of kids who grew up with more structure and more support and resources than I ever had, and they're barely literate.

Yeah, So yeah, it's zip code matters, but there's so many different factors that as I touch on in the book, that shape, Yeah, our relationship to literacy.

One I want to speak briefly to in terms of background, your experience with the legal system.

You weren't always on the pathway to a doctorate from Harvard to Masters and becoming a college professor.

I mean, you had some side trips when you're young.

Yeah, well, one of the challenges was when I first got into college because I was in, I had just dropped out of college and I had and I was working at juvenile hall when I got on the other side of the law, really.

And so but what happened was I the two schools, I was looking at, UCSD and San Diego State, So San Diego State where I ended up was in proximity to my home so I could stay in the dorm.

So I would go back and forth to school.

So I would go from one culture of the ivory tower and then back into the hood, literally when kids were selling weed outside of my house and then in our apartment and then crack.

And I still lived in the projects.

And so then when I when I ended up needing to go to work full time to to be able to get back to school and pay tuition, well, this guy I knew from street racing and I could use his name Michael, he was living downstairs with a girlfriend.

He invited me to watch the game with him, eat world tacos.

And while he was watching the game, he saw him powder cocaine and he made $600.

There's an easier way.

Yeah.

And I knew either he was trying to recruit me as a customer or colleague, and I ended up being a colleague.

Now he's a scientist now.

You know, he was working at the animal Vivarium as script, cleaning up cages, rat cages.

But now he's created all this technology and he's a, you know, brainiac.

And so we went through the eighties and we you know, I ended up from just, you know, selling, you know, small amount of cocaine to traffic trafficking coke all the way to DC.

Yeah.

And back in New York and Boston and, and so back at that and say thank God what, what turned the corner what was the thing that that said, you know, I'm not going to live this life, this isn't going to be me.

Well I was always you know so there's a couple of things.

I was raised in a way from my grandmother in her even before she she became a Pentecostal when I was in middle school.

So even before her religious, serious religious conversion, because it was always kind of re My boy, scoutmaster Leo Triplett, my fifth grade teacher, Sister Jean, who just came to visit me, and my boys, their voices were in your head.

Yeah, well, what happened was the adrenaline and everything of it all and having money in the life.

But I also could see the impact it was having on the community.

And as I was moving up the food chain to distance myself from it, I was still wasn't literate.

So I was reading The New York Times, L.A. Times has seen the changes in laws.

I was seeing how the police were beginning to put together these cases, and I knew the jig was up right in.

But when you were having an intellectual awakening through that reading, through reading, and then also I was spending a lot of time on college campuses.

So I was at Howard University, I was at Georgetown University, Georgetown Pub, kicking it, so to speak, with very bright fun, you know, nerdy but cool black guys.

And I, I began to see a different model.

You know, I'll never forget I was in I think it was it was a Georgetown kid came over to Howard and we were drinking beers on a Friday and he was talking about libations to Bacchus and all, you know, I in Latin and all this stuff.

And I was just like, you know, and one of the things I mentioned in my book that was a real epiphany for me was when I was walking through Georgetown, because I had clients in Georgetown, you know, I wasn't like one of these street dealers.

Yeah.

So I was kind of hiding as a student, pretending concierge service.

Yeah.

And I was there one night after having dinner with some of my clients and, you know, doing whatever we did.

And I was walking around Georgetown, and I'll never forget looking in the library around midnight, and students were studying, and it's almost like it was a voice or I don't know what it was.

Something said if you work as hard in school as you are doing now to build this business, yeah, you will be successful.

Yeah.

And it was this.

I think it took a while to kind of write this shit, but part of what I tell people and I don't want to neglect this is because I think it's important because usually in America there is this epiphany, this real big, you know, metamorphosis that happens.

But I say I grew up, so I guess I started college too young at 17 for me, I couldn't handle really was a breakup with a girlfriend.

That kind of took me out for a while.

And then I'm as I as I near 23, 24.

I'm like, wait a minute.

Yeah, this is the next 50 years.

Really?

Yeah.

So I was thinking about things now, like I've met, you know, as mentor to other people, being able to advocate for my kid, being on a board of a private school, being on a committee of a private school, being on a board that gives away money, being able to advocate for people.

I knew that wasn't going to happen no matter how much money I made outside the regular, you know, and on the right side of.

Yeah.

So I was like I was thinking about I there was part of me that wanted a respectable life.

I knew I wanted to have a family.

I knew I wanted to be able to support my kids in the way that I have.

And so I, I knew things had to change.

And I think I think saying you grew up is really captures captures that.

I want to speak about one of the big themes in your book, this ambivalence, the ambivalence and double consciousness that that you as a black male, feel you had to live that life navigating these two worlds, being able to go to the hood and get along there, but also be a student at Harvard and, you know, to develop that that that passion you had for literacy and having to live this double life.

My first reaction when I read all of this from my perspective was, what a darn shame.

You know, what a damn shame that somebody like you has to has to put up with that.

And maybe that's one of the big problems with with the country.

But then I also said, no, this is really high school and straight nerds, athletes, the weirdos, everybody goes through this.

But in the black community, you had your own experience where you were there hip in the hood, or you were a little guy, kind of an elite intellectual that was hard to live that double life.

Well, you know, in reality, it was more complex because because, you know, and I talk about it in my book.

I mean I mean, you have it and you've you've hit on it.

I experienced you know, I went to Claremont High this the same year they wrote Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

If you watch the movie, it was you know, there was a jock, the stoners, the surfers, skateboarders, just, you know, all of that.

And but, you know, when I when I was a small kid, there was there were black, intellectual, bookish guys in the community.

And then the high school I went to Lincoln.

My neighborhood high school was Lincoln High.

Marcus I only came out of there.

They were like scholars, jocks, like Marcus Allen.

And then there was, you know, the gang members were minimal.

But what happened over time, what I saw happen with hip hop and gangster rap and as the drug culture became more and more, you know, entrenched in the black community, was this the emergence of this hyper masculine identity?

So then even if you can't read, don't let anybody now know your code, and that's code switching.

That's part of this.

How you're talking to one group, you can how you're down to the boys in this setting but can but not in another.

Yeah.

And you know on some level is an opportunity and is is actually you know a lot of people revel in being able to participate in both cultures and code switch but at the other other instances in day to day life and trying to navigate things, trying to figure out what to wear when you take your kid to the hospital so they could you could get the right service in the E.R..

Right.

Or, you know, recently like I so post code but it I went back on the market and I was applying for jobs and I was showing up in suits like you.

And a lot of the jobs are applying for.

It was related to diversity, stuff like that.

So when the the the everybody soon came on, they had dashikis and all of that and I wasn't getting hired because I was just look at a little too I think square and academic.

So what I did was and my wife know this, I went out to Mama Africa, picked up some of the African garb, put it on.

I got hired right away.

How do you get to authenticity, though?

How does a person who has to navigate this to to be able to speak in the barbershop or whatever it is and and and maybe live in a neighborhood where there's a gang influence, but also wants to pursue literacy and has this awakening and is reading books and once and once a masters and see a better way for their life.

Why?

What are the barriers to authenticity?

Is there anything in the culture that's you're are you criticized as a as a literate black man, criticized in that culture?

Is it fatherlessness?

Because I don't think any father and say, hey, I don't want you pursuing all this literacy and education, I want you over here in the hood?

Well, they wouldn't say, how do you die?

They don't say it like that.

Nobody says that.

Right?

Right.

Is the you know, like when you're like me, I never forget as I was dating girl, somebody saying, you're too nice.

Yeah, not bad enough.

You're not bad enough, you know, Tony.

Tony Jones.

Sweet.

Talk to me.

I'll never forget it when Kim Earl told me that and I was like, sweet talk with that, you know, he put his game down.

He was so for me, part of what I think the long term answer is and kind of short term answer and I and I and I think I see it in my children is, you know, you have to be reflective about who you are and what you want and be given permission and affirmed in that.

And the biggest permission comes from me.

Yeah.

So then now, because part of it is over this show too, we're social creatures, so we want to be we want to have friends and be like and admire, right in both communities, both communities, because I'll never forget again.

And cameras were to visit her house and her her uncle was one of the OG gangsters.

Like really started our set.

And I was I tried to say what's happening and I used this g I g And they fell out, right?

So then you know that next day I was standing in the bathroom mirror.

What's happening?

Yeah, what's happening?

You know, practicing.

you.

Mr.. Yeah, it is so.

But you know now, I mean, I think part of what helps is I have all these credentials and so I feel a lot more confident.

Do you feel like you chase them to make up for that?

I take you know, the thing is, is now, you know the thing.

So for me, I'm so solid in my identity and part of it.

I mean, you were you were okay before you got your doctorate.

You know, you were worthy.

I know.

But, you know, we live in a society that, you know, you know, people are like, who are you?

You know, Dr. Max Hunter.

And they treat you a little bit different.

But it but they also can resent that, too.

But, you know, I think for me, just enough that people ironically, like Dr. Danny Scarborough, who was the first person I know to come forward and say they were dying of HIV aids, I was in a dance troupe in college when I first went there.

And Danny was a choreographer.

And he, you know, was the chair of the African American Studies Department.

This is tall, beautiful black man.

But and he never was, like, out of the closet.

Like, we think about it today, but he was free.

Yeah.

And so when you meet people who are free, it gives you permission.

You.

You know, when I used to be, like, in his classes because he also taught literature, and I first read Langston Hughes with him, and I was like, How does a person get to be that free?

Yeah, I want to be.

Yeah.

Because I could When I read your book, I can hear you struggling with freedom, struggling with identity, struggling who you wanted to be.

I'm trying to live in multiple worlds.

What's your advice today to two young black men you speak with who have read a lot?

They they they want to be accepted.

They want to be down to the boys.

But they also want to pursue something and they see a better life.

Is it still difficult or.

You know, I've gotten better.

It's on some level, you know, like because of social media and other, you know, other social, you know, like Facebook and Instagram, all that stuff.

There are communities, blerd, black nerds, there's tons of black academics and artists who are nerdy, what we would call nerdy.

I don't really like that term, but you can find your people, you can find your people.

And, you know, I've been surprised.

The Urban League had a black men's health event a couple of years ago when I first took on this job for Seattle Children's at Odessa Brown.

So I went over there and there were a number of talks around different health issues, mental health, as you can imagine, fitness.

And then at the end there was a meal and I expected people like they usually do on a Saturday to run off and everybody hung back.

They wanted to fellowship.

Nothing but very bright black men who hiked kayaked and they were not apprehensive about sharing what their interests were in trying to connect with other people around those interests.

So I think there are spaces in the community.

You just have to find those spaces.

Well, I kind of tried to read through the copy in your book to the best of my ability, a couple things that kind of in my own things that really came up were, one, when it when it comes to a young African-American person and trying to come up, find themselves, figure out what groups they want to be with, and struggle to be in several groups, right to be as one was that we really I think there's this doesn't particularly affect any racial group, but the lack of ritual that we have in becoming men in the past, we really don't have the traditional passages to to manhood.

What one does that happen when you get a driver's license to go to the Army?

I mean, you know, I don't know, layered in over the top of this in in not just African American culture, but is is an issue with fatherlessness again, where that message of here's who you need, here's who I see you being, I accept you.

I love you whether you have a master's or not.

Right.

Let's let's pursue.

I see this in you.

Let's pursue that.

You know a good dad, right?

Are those.

Am I Am I touching on something there?

Yeah.

Well, you know, in my book, I talk about the Moynihan report that came out in 1964, 65, just when I was born.

So I say I was born in the shadow of the Moynihan report.

And in that report, he talks about the black community has become a tangle pathology.

And part of what he part of that pathology that's implied is this these images of, you know, single parent headed households, right?

Percent of black families are in them.

And and the father supposedly being absent in the literature on the father's presence or absence is is I think it is unambiguous saying black fathers are really engaged.

But there's there's a there's an issue there.

But what's from my perspective, because of the culture wars and because of other factors, it's very difficult to have that conversation in the community.

But as someone who grew up without a father and had to, like I said, I grew up and what I tell other people was once I grew up and stop partying and using drugs and dealing drugs, I had to raise myself.

I said that came from, you know, the internal locus of control with you.

You were lucky.

I think you found that.

But I look at my kids who all are, you know, I think hired people would say, I'm not bragging.

Very high achievers.

Go ahead.

But, you know, my my son, you know, he said, have you got how many kids?

So, you know, I have two at Harvard, one graduating this year.

She'll be working at Goldman Sachs, Smith, Hunter and then August Hunter, who's going to be there two more years without a city sister for her, and then Keith, who or Odyssey Hunter, who's going to be going next year if he doesn't do some growth experience in between.

But his his college essay was all about this because for his other siblings, their sense of identity of purpose were crystal clear.

Yeah, and I'll never forget the night.

You know, we have nightly prayer usually as a family, but for some reason he and it was he and I, because maybe they were off playing soccer or something.

And he asked me to pray with him to find his purpose.

And so it was around this process of us reading the some of the books in here, me stacking them up for him and then helping him, first of all, affirming him.

I've never my kids are biracial.

I'm never, say, black or Japanese or this or that.

I let them figure it out.

And as they figure it out, I'm there to say, keep going.

You're okay.

Because the world since you know, and it's just part of the human experience of the world will always see in negating messages.

And so it's really important.

You know, one of the things I'm kind of a religious person is in Genesis in the beginning of the creation, at the end of every day, the creator sit in, This is good.

He blessed it.

Right?

And I think we know giving your father's blessing, apart from religion, is a big piece of.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I know I've heard of other men who came from different backgrounds who experienced that or never got it.

Yeah, well, that's that's more common even when the father is present, Right.

Yeah.

Yes.

So a significant, you know, I take my, my fatherhood stuff, I could be pretty evangelical about it because that, you know, when you look at where I came from, a San Diego, like literally we live my mom's first apartment was on Euclid in a vision or place called or an Imperial behind a taco shop.

And it's called The Four Corners of Death.

Yeah.

You know, we grew up in Davis Thomas Methodist Apartments, and you ask people 49th and Logan of San Diego, they know who they know.

Yeah.

And, you know, for me to be able to make it do what I've done in my life is pretty remarkable.

But part of that comes out.

If there were good things in the culture, we were competitive.

Yes, athletic and people were challenge implicitly to, like, do something with their lives.

But sometimes, you know.

Yeah, yeah, but but what we see, what our children and just one generation with me being present at me and my wife being on said I you know, I could have never imagined.

There's just no way.

And you know the story in my book, part of the story when the chapters open with me holding my son as he's born crying because not knowing how I was going to fare.

Yep.

So great stuff.

Great conversation.

I encourage people to continue to listen for you on other interviews and other podcasts and because I think you have a lot of it's it's difficult.

There's a lot there, there's a lot there, but there's some a lot of interesting threads.

And I appreciate you coming in.

Thank you for having me.

want to thank Dr. Hunter for coming to Northwest now.

There's a lot to unpack because of all the layers that go into his experience and the experience of others like him.

The bottom line, I do feel like I can say that I think it's a sign of progress that all of this can be discussed and that maybe the ultimate dream is that people can be empowered to let go of some of the old baggage about whether you could be both smart and cool or manly and artistic.

Maybe there's more of a pathway now free of criticism or social judgment that just lets young people be what they want to be, however they want to be it.

Maybe that's the ultimate expression of freedom and equality.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking to watch this program again or to share it with others.

Northwest now can be found on the web at KBTC dot org and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Northwest now.

A Streamable podcast of this program is available under the northwest now tab at KBTC dot org and on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

That's going to do it for this edition of Northwest Now until Next Time.

I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.