Interview with Fagan Harris
Fagan Harris is a social entrepreneur, writer, and researcher who has dedicated his career to advancing impact career opportunities for underestimated communities.
Fagan is a writer who elevates stories of Black excellence. He has worked with several New York Times best-selling authors, including Wes Moore. He is currently co-authoring several memoirs with leading Black luminaries.
Fagan is a proud graduate of Maryland Public Schools. He is an Honors graduate of Stanford University where he was the recipient of its top undergraduate honor. He has a Master in Philosophy from the University of Oxford where he was a Rhodes scholar.
Bio modified from Baltimore Corps
Matilda Fletcher
First of all, would you like to say a little bit about yourself?
Fagan Harris
My name is Fagan Harris, from Baltimore, Maryland, I run an organization called Baltimore Corp, which empowers the talent of Baltimore City to do public service. We work really hard to get smart people who care about the city to work to make the city a better place. Matilda Fletcher What is your definition of including someone? Fagan Harris Inclusion is about a lot of things. Inclusion is about a sense of belonging, and how you feel, and whether or not you feel like you belong. And inclusion is also about power, and who has a voice and who has a seat at the table, and who has a chance to participate in how decisions are made. It's hard to have real inclusion without a real sharing of power and voice, first and foremost.
Matilda Fletcher
What is an encounter you have had with racism? What did you say or do when you had that experience? What feelings did it bring up in you during and after the situation?
Fagan Harris
Matilda Fletcher, I think for me, the most memorable experience I had with racism was when I was leaving elementary school. The teacher has a chance to assign you to a track, and where I came from there in the Greater Baltimore area, you had tracks that were like, 'Oh, this kid could be in gifted and talented,' or 'this kid could be in advanced classes,' or 'this kid is in "normal classes,"' or they're in some kind of remedial education or special education. Teachers had a lot of power to determine the kinds of courses that you got to take, and I was a student who always did well. I was kind of gifted and talented and had a high aptitude for reading and writing. Despite that, I still had a teacher who decided that she wanted to track me into remedial education. Somehow, she felt like I wasn't equipped to continue to like push or excel in school. That was an example of what I would call systemic racism. That was like a system making a set of decisions that made a big impact on my life. That same teacher several years prior had called me a racial slur, so that was more personal. And that was really hurtful, even though the systemic decision was more important, and had a greater impact. So I think racism can operate at a lot of levels. Sometimes it's really intimate, or it's between two people. And sometimes it's a system making a decision for a person, and that can be really tough.
Matilda Fletcher
What happened after that--did anything change? Did you talk to the teacher?
Fagan Harris
Good question. I stayed in remedial education there for a few years in middle school. And eventually, I told my mom what had happened, you know, because I didn't confide in her, because I felt ashamed actually. When it happened to me, I felt embarrassed. I felt that somehow I'd done something wrong. It took me a few years to kind of get my courage up to disclose that to my mother, who really became my advocate. Then she went to the school system, and she really made a point of getting it changed. It ended up being really important experience for me because unlike a lot of people, it didn't set the trajectory for the rest of my life. It didn't establish my destiny. But it was a really scary thing to go through. And I was lucky to have a really fantastic mom, who was really engaged and really involved and who really cared. And it underscored for me the importance of having people in your life who are advocates, who believe in what you want to do and who are there to help protect your interests.
Matilda Fletcher
Would you do anything differently if that had happened more recently, or something similar?
Fagan Harris
Well, I think now, as an adult, I have a lot more agency, and I have a lot more resources at my disposal than I did as a young person. So I would speak up now, and in a lot of ways, like the kind of work that I do and the kind of work that I met your mom doing is like, we try to pay attention to that as it happens in the world, and we understand that it happens to other people. Sometimes those people aren't listened to, and their voices aren't respected. And so that creates an opportunity for people to step up and speak up when they see something wrong happening, and to try to make a difference for other people. In some ways that experience--being on a really scary path where there wasn't a lot of opportunities, and it was a lot of chances, and there was a culture of low expectations I have an allergy to that now as an adult, where I pay attention to what's going on in the world. And if I see something wrong happening, I'll speak up, I'll try to do something about it.
Matilda Fletcher
Would you tell the middle schoolers about racism? And what would you have wanted to know about racism, when you were in middle school?
Fagan Harris
That racism is about power, fundamentally, and it's about who has a chance to have their voice listened to or not, and that at the end of the day, we just want to live in a world that I think everybody wants, or most people want, which is for everyone should feel like their voice matters, and that they have a say. I think sometimes with racism, when you're young, it could be a lot more about people thinking about their last name, or what they look like or where they're from. I understand that, but on a deeper level, it's really about respect, and it's really about power. I think most people are fundamentally fair, I think most people want to see people treated fairly. And I think the sooner that young people can realize that, that this is about who gets to share in power, who gets to share decision making, that that's something that we all want to do together. the better off we're gonna be. Racism, in some ways, is predicated on this lie that we're all so different, that somehow we're all entitled to different things. And it's not true. We're all just people, and people all want to live their lives and have a chance to their best life. I think people have empathy that leads them in that direction, even if the narratives that were told contradict that.
Matilda Fletcher
Is there anything else you'd like to tell middle schoolers?
Fagan Harris
Be easy on yourself. Middle school is tough. Middle school is really tough. I had a hard time in middle school, I had a lot of fun, and I learned a lot. And I had a really tough time because you're going through a lot of changes, your peers are going through a lot of changes. The material you're learning in school is much harder than it was than what it was before. It's a time that's defined by a lot of change. It's easy to be hard on yourself. It's easy to play the comparison game. I like to say that comparison is the thief of joy. In middle school, that's the big thing to watch out for is it's easy to look right or left and wonder, why am I different? How come what I'm doing is not working as well as what I think something else is working for somebody else. And all of that is really tough. So I'd say just be easy on yourself. Try to cultivate a tight circle of really meaningful relationships with your peers. Friendship really matters. If you've got an amazing mom like I do, and like you do, even though they may be bad at Monopoly, hanging out with them is still really fun and important. Some of my best memories from middle school were playing cards with my mom; she loved playing cards. When you're doing it, it is no big deal. It's just cards with your mom. And then time passes, many years pass, and then one day you look back and you realize wow, cards with mom was like the best time ever. That was actually when we were just our most present and our most real and having the most real conversations. And so pay attention to those moments, and when things are really good, let them be really good. But more than anything, be easy on yourself. Because it's a hard time. Middle school is just inherently a challenging time, so be gentle with yourself, and try to make the most of it.
Matilda Fletcher
How would you describe Baltimore Corp to other middle school students?
Fagan Harris
What I would tell a middle school student about Baltimore core is we help the right person work on the right problem at the right time, and we do that for the city. Every city's got its issues, right? If you look at San Francisco, it's got its problems like homelessness or people are out of work, or maybe some of the schools don't work as well as they should work for kids. At Baltimore Corps, we try to look at those issues--issues of homelessness or education or the world of work--and help the right person get in a job and make a difference on those things. Cities need coordination just like schools need coordination or communities need coordination. And so we're here to help people connect to work that really matters to them and matters to their community and to do that in a large number.
Matilda Fletcher
What can schools learn from Baltimore Corps?
Fagan Harris
That's a good question. You're asking the hard questions. School can be a little formulaic. I think sometimes school can really follow a pattern or do what it's always done. What we've learned at Baltimore Corp is that you gotta listen. And you gotta listen to people about the real issues going on in their life, and you gotta try to solve the real problems, which means that sometimes you gotta throw the plan out the window. So I think that's the biggest thing. Schools have a much harder job than we have in Baltimore Corp; it's not easy educating people. But if they were to learn something from what we do, I think it'd be around being flexible, and really listening to people and trying to do what they actually need as opposed to what you think they need.
Matilda Fletcher
What did you learn as a Rhodes Scholar, and what was different about the UK in terms of race?
Fagan Harris
If you look at San Francisco, it's got its problems like homelessness or people are out of work, or maybe some of the schools don't work as well as they should work for kids. At Baltimore Corps, we try to look at those issues--issues of homelessness or education or the world of work--and help the right person get in a job and make a difference on those things. Cities need coordination just like schools need coordination or communities need coordination. And so we're here to help people connect to work that really matters to them and matters to their community and to do that in a large number.
Matilda Fletcher
What can schools learn from Baltimore Corps?
Fagan Harris
That's a good question. You're asking the hard questions. School can be a little formulaic. I think sometimes school can really follow a pattern or do what it's always done. What we've learned at Baltimore Corp is that you gotta listen. And you gotta listen to people about the real issues going on in their life, and you gotta try to solve the real problems, which means that sometimes you gotta throw the plan out the window. So I think that's the biggest thing. Schools have a much harder job than we have in Baltimore Corp; it's not easy educating people. But if they were to learn something from what we do, I think it'd be around being flexible, and really listening to people and trying to do what they actually need as opposed to what you think they need.
Matilda Fletcher
What did you learn as a Rhodes Scholar, and what was different about the UK in terms of race?
Fagan Harris
The Rhodes Scholarship was challenging for me. I had never studied outside of the country in that way before. I had spent some time in Ireland and had done some learning there, but Oxford was a different place at a different level. You know, in America, Matilda Fletcher, in your classes, you have a quiz or a test. And you have those fairly regularly, or you have homework that gets graded. The UK doesn't have that. They don't do it that way, believe it or not. They don't give you a regular quiz. They don't give you homework that they grade. There's no feedback, there's no feedback. Instead, they just give you a list of 150 books. They're like: Read these, and in two years, you're going to take one test. And how you do on that test is your grade. So imagine you get 150 books, you don't know what you're reading for those books, you don't know what's important, you just got 150 books, you got two years, and they have one test at the end. What that does is it forces you to really think deeply about what you're reading, because you don't know what's going to be assessed later. All you can do is read and think about what you've read. That's the biggest difference in education is that America is more feedback intensive, and you can kind of map your performance to how you're being assessed. Whereas in England, you just read the books, you got to think about it, and then figure out how you feel about it, and then hope for the best. In terms of race, class is a much bigger deal in England. So I first showed up to Oxford, Matilda Fletcher, and I hear a knock on the door. And so I'm not a morning person, like I do it now because I'm theoretically an adult. But when I was in my early 20s, I didn't like early mornings; I was pretty grumpy about it. Someone knocked on my door at like seven in the morning. And I can get up out of bed, and I'm very grumpy because it's way too early. And there's a person there. And she was like, 'Hi, I'm here to clean your room.' And I was like, 'Excuse me, like what it's like a Monday,' and she's like, 'No, I'm here to clean your room, I come in and clean your room every morning at 7:30.' So of course we have to talk about this because I'm like, 'I can't have you waking me up at 7:30.' She's like, 'I kind of have to clean your morning or your room every morning. Like I have to do that.' That was a really wild experience for me because I had never been exposed to that kind of thing before. And so class is a much bigger deal over there than race. What I would say is not that they don't have racism. They do. Race is less binary, and it's more of a continuum there. You'll see that in a lot of colonial countries, where race is a lot more complicated. There might be six or seven different racial categories with international dynamics, and it's a much more complicated view. But the class thing was really--I experienced that the way we experience race in America, where like you felt a very big difference in terms of how a certain group of people are treated.
Matilda Fletcher
What was your most meaningful experience in the UK?
Fagan Harris
I was lucky to build some incredible friendships, and what was most meaningful was getting a chance to spend time with those people. And so Ben Jealous comes to mind in how I met your mom. We have a mutual friend in a guy named Ben Jealous, and Ben had been through the same scholarship program, so I got a chance to meet Ben through that. And so meeting people in really, really deep relationships was really powerful. And what's great about going overseas, Matilda Fletcher, is that it forces you to look at your country back home and to think more critically about it and to see it as an outsider. That's a great environment to build relationships with people who also are invested in your home country, because you're looking at that place that you call home as an outsider together, and you're having a lot of conversation about that.
Matilda Fletcher
Any closing thoughts?
Fagan Harris
I think it's so cool you're thinking about diversity and inclusion. When I was your age, I was nowhere near what you're thinking about, wrestling with every day. So I just marvel at the kind of questions you're asking and what you all are thinking about. It gives me a lot of hope for our country to know that you're thinking about this now. Because I think the world would be a better place if more people thought about these questions, and particularly if they thought about them when they were younger. So I can only imagine where we're going to be because you're asking these questions, and I'm really grateful. So thank you for being who you are, and for taking the time to really think about this stuff and work on it, because it's really important, and it's going to help our world be a better place.
Originally published 11/26/2021
