The Spirit of Giving
Back
8 Questions for Chris Cathcart
Activist, Communicator, Author
Christopher Cathcart is a published author; public relations, marketing and brand development expert; and a noted social entrepreneur. In 1995, Cathcart founded OneDiaspora Group, a Los Angeles and Washington, DC-based communications consulting firm whose clients have included Jaguar Cars, Hidden Beach Recordings, UniWorld Group, Inc., Heart & Soul magazine, among others. His first book, The Lost Art of Giving Back, a how-to guide to volunteerism, was published in 2007. Before starting OneDiaspora Group, he was an executive at some of the world’s leading entertainment and media companies, including CNN, Motown Records, and Warner Bros. Television. Beyond the world of communications, Cathcart is also highly respected in the advocacy and service communities. He works tirelessly in promoting HIV/AIDS awareness and education, as well as mentorships for at-risk youth. He is the co-editor of the new book, HBCU Experience - The Book: A Collection of Essays Celebrating the Black College Experience.
Your passion for
giving back is woven throughout all that you do, and have done, through your adult life. What
drives you?
I’ve always been committed to dedicating my time and resources
and talents to improving the environment I’m in – my community, the nation, the
world – however you want to define it. I just think we have a responsibility to
make sure we leave this place a little better than we got it. And this goes
back to my Howard University days; working with student groups in an effort to
try and improve whatever conditions we found ourselves in and in trying to enlighten
people so that they felt some responsibility to do the same. No matter what I
did professionally or what I do
professionally, it’s always been geared toward some form of service and giving
back.
There’s so much need out there that it’s easy to identify
things that can use your input or support. The trick is, as individuals,
finding the things that we might be passionate about and feeling compelled
enough to go beyond our comfort zone and actually get involved. There is no
debate about whether you should do something.
The debate is really what you do. And
that is an individual decision. I tell people all the time, you don’t have to
do what I do. But you have to find some way that you can make a difference.
Because we are all beneficiaries of the people who came before us; those who
experienced some level of sacrifice so that we’re able to do the things that
we’re able to do today. This journey is not over; we’re just at this precise point
of it, so it is still our responsibility to ensure that those that come after us
have an easier way to go. They’ll still have their challenges but hopefully they
will overcome some hurdles so that they can go on and fight new battles.
I do believe we have made progress, but there’s a lot more
work to be done. I think one of the major hurdles we have to overcome now—and
this is my personal belief—is that we
live in a very selfish time where it’s very easy to be self-centered about how you
approach life. I think that while the advent of social networking and new media
in one sense has brought many more people together than could’ve been brought
together otherwise, it also allows you to focus very heavily on yourself and
your own self-interests. And so we have to overcome the tendency with using
all of this new technology to indulge our own individual ideas and wants and
needs as opposed to using the ability to connect with so many people as a way
to uplift and educate and inspire large numbers of people. We have the tools to
be much more effective with doing good and reaching out. If you look at Facebook
and Twitter, a lot of these posts are extremely self-serving. And we all have a
desire to feel important and stand out, but as Dr. King said, everybody can be
great because everyone can serve. So we have to fight that urge to overindulge
and try to use some of our energy and skill and passion to try and inspire
others.
Tell me about your new book, HBCU Experience - The Book.
My partner in this project, Dr. Tia Tyree, [co-editor] and myself both
believed that HBCUs [historically black colleges and universities] are still
vital. They still have a very important role in our education system and need
to be protected and exalted and we need to remind folks of these things. There
are already many vehicles out there to discuss black colleges – websites,
movies, TV shows. But we thought one of the things that is often lost in the
discussion is the actual experience
and the experiences of the graduates themselves. And not just the famous people
who have attended. The reality is, for the most part, they weren’t famous when
they were there. There were certain things perhaps that happened within the
context of their time at the HCBU that helped propelled them to the things that
they ultimately did.
So what we wanted to do is collect a series of stories from
various HBCU graduates from various eras and have them discuss an incident or an
experience while they were at school that helped fundamentally shaped who they
are today. With these stories, we could share them with other HBCU grads and
people who went to predominantly white institutions so that they could get a
glimpse of what those who have attended an HBCU have experienced. These
can also be shared with high school students who may be entertaining which
school to go to and what type of school to apply to, giving them just another
piece of information to consider as they make that decision. And most
importantly, this effort is to really help underscore that our HBCUs and black
colleges are still relevant and play a tremendous role and will continue to play one in educating our
people.
I think that diversity is a challenge but it is a challenge
that we should welcome. Black colleges, HBCUs, have to evolve too. The doors
should be open, and they are, to people of all backgrounds. There are some
people who frown upon those black colleges that are trying to get more
non-black students involved. I don’t really feel that way. I just think this
offers another opportunity for those who may not want to go to some of the
schools they may consider as frontline. It’s important that all young people—particularly people of
color, African Americans—at least include HBCUs as they go about the
application process for schools. Diversity does make it a little more
challenging than, say 40 years ago, when the odds were that you were going to go to a black college if
you came from a certain part of the country. That’s not the case anymore. But
that diversity shouldn’t be something that takes away from the draw of our
black colleges. I never promote just going to black colleges for the sake of
going. It still has to do for you what you want it to do. Don’t let the fact
that it is a smaller school, maybe not as well funded as some larger
institutions, not as diverse as you were lead to believe schools should be,
deter you from applying. Because they can fill gaps that maybe some of the other
schools and education opportunities don’t.
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| Howard University, Washington DC |
I have a very unique college experience because I came to
school on an athletic scholarship. So I played two years as a football player,
kept getting hurt, got active on campus and that led to getting involved in
student leadership which eventually led to becoming president of student
government. Probably the year I spent as president of the student government
had a profound impact on me because that was really the first time in my life,
from the leadership standpoint, that I was able to really serve. I enjoyed the
opportunity to first, serve in that capacity, and secondly, to help raise
issues like ending apartheid and getting black studies made mandatory on Howard’s
campus, to the point where other people thought they were important as well.
And I was able to take the lessons I learned from the many mistakes that I made
during that time and apply them when I left school.
People may not know how earnestly I tie up the sense of
service and giving as part of my defining character; how hard I am on myself
relative to feeling I’m not doing enough. It’s not something I discuss
outwardly but I always feel that I should be doing more. I live almost in
fear—this may be a bad word—almost in fear that once my time passes on earth I
have not done the things I was supposed to do. That may be me pursuing an
ever-moving target but I think about that. When all my time is done, I want
folks to be able to say, ‘he really tried his best’ and I often fear that I
fall short of that.
I’ve often thought about this. Malcolm X. I can tie directly
to studying Malcolm in my Afro-American studies class, freshman year at Howard.
I did a paper on him: The Evolution of a Black Leader. I got an A- on it but
the research for that paper really opened my eyes up and altered my thinking. I
attribute a lot of the growth that I had after that to that door being swung
all the way open through my reading of his speeches and some of the writings
about him and I can draw a line from that experience to a lot of the things I
did not only at Howard but afterward.
I think that there are so many people that have such strong
feelings about Malcolm X that it clouds the reality of who he was and his
journey—personal development, spiritual, political, educational and otherwise.
And I would just love to sit down and talk to him and hear from him—the evolution he went through; the
arch, where he went from Detroit Red to that unfortunate day in February of ’65
when his life was taken. How was he able to have the courage to make those type
of changes when so many of us in life are very reluctant to make any kind of
serious changes in our lives. And he did it against tremendous odds. I would
just like to know what his journey was like, from him.
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