Geoffrey Canada
Geoffrey Canada
Geoffrey Canadais an American educator, social activist and author. Since 1990, Canada has been president of the Harlem Children's Zone in Harlem, New York, an organization that states its goal is to increase high school and college graduation rates among students in Harlem. Canada serves as the chairman of Children's Defense Fund's board of directors. He was a member of the board of directors of The After-School Corporation, a nonprofit organization that aims to expand educational opportunities for all students...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth13 January 1952
CityBronx, NY
CountryUnited States of America
You grow up in America and you're told from day one, 'This is the land of opportunity.' That everybody has an equal chance to make it in this country. And then you look at places like Harlem, and you say, 'That is absolutely a lie.'
At a school in Massachusetts where I once worked, we managed early on through consensus. Which sounds wonderful, but it was just a very, very difficult way to sort of manage anything, because convincing everybody to do one particular thing, especially if it was hard, was almost impossible.
Video games offer violent messages, and even the sports video games include taunting and teasing.
When I was growing up, kids used to talk about snitching... It never extended as a cultural norm outside of the gangsters.
When I first found out that Superman wasn't real, I was about maybe eight. And I was talking to my mother about it. And she was like, 'No, no, no. There's no Superman.' And I started crying. I really thought he was coming to rescue us. The chaos, the violence, the danger. No hero was coming.
Convincing people to give your way a try will work if you neutralize - and sometimes you have to cauterize - the ones who really are against change. They're the kind of person who, if you tell them it's raining outside, they'll fight you tooth and nail.
People don't believe or understand that a community can lose hope. You can have a whole community where hopelessness is the norm, where folks don't have faith that things will get better because history and circumstances have proven over 30, 40, or 50 years that things don't get better.
Poverty places not just one or two obstacles but multiple obstacles in a child's pathway to what we would consider to be regular development - cognitively, intellectually and emotionally.
When I began working in not-for-profits, it was taking a vow of poverty, which eliminated huge numbers of folks.
You don't need someone destroying you when your own people are the worst messengers possible. And this is what black people in America have not come to grips with.
Young people will tell you, if you're not prepared to write the most violent, the most misogynistic, the most horrible kinds of rhymes and scenarios, you are not going to get air play.
It is important to have permanent safe spaces in Harlem.
Good dental care doesn't make you a good student, but if your tooth hurts, it's hard to be a good student.
One of the things that sells music is when the artist is looked at as someone who's come up from the streets. Not just any streets, but the toughest, meanest streets of the urban ghetto. And that's called 'street credibility,'