What if the greatest divide isn't between communities—but between the assumptions we make about each other?

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Hello and welcome to author conversations as usual I'm Chris Dabbs, but today our guest

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is educator, community leader and author Keith Daniel Saunders Senior

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Now for more than 30 years Keith has worked in education, serving as a teacher, a principal

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and youth advocate while helping shape the lives of thousands of young people.

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His new memoir Roosevelt to the Hantons, The War on both sides, is both, I guess, deeply

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personal and socially provocative.

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It explores growing up in Roosevelt's long-awaited, his experiences navigating both black and

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white communities, the education system, race, leadership, faith and the lessons that

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shaped his life.

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So after that introduction Keith, it's a pleasure to welcome you to author conversations.

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How are you?

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Well thank you, thank you for the opportunity to appear on your platform.

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I'm truly honored.

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I've no no, no that's all I'm truly honored to talk to you about your book because obviously

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having does research around it, it's quite amazing you I think, because it's not simply

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an autobiography is it?

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I mean, you've looked at it's a kind of a memoir, a social commentary, it's about educational

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leadership, history and cultural observation.

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And I think that the key part from what I've seen so far, not that I want to do spoilers

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or anything, but I think what you're saying is that America continues to experience divisions

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that affect both black and white communities, but differently.

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Yes, absolutely.

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So on that sort of theme really, let's go for it.

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I mean, what actually sort of inspired you to write Roosevelt to the Hamptons, the war

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on both sides?

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What inspired me to really lock in and write the book is based upon my 30-plus year career

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in a business.

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I was in a district out of the Suffolk County, Long Island in which it was predominantly white

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and I experienced some ways to trauma.

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And as a result of that, it really motivated me to really share my journey as a black educator

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on Long Island.

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And it's called the war on both sides because the trauma that experienced in South Hampton

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is also the trauma that also experienced in some of the districts that look like me.

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So it is a matter of wow, there's a lot of commonalities in both districts.

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And it is more of an evaluation of a public school system in education that we receive.

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It's interesting, yeah, because obviously you're saying the war on both sides.

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I mean, how did you mean that?

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I mean, you're not talking about a real war, is it combat situations?

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But there's clearly what a war in education or a war just as a war of ideology in the

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thought process.

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When you are an African-American male educator on Long Island, the expectation is that when

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you work in a predominantly black school district, that you will be treated as a specific kind

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of way.

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The expectation that the community will have some just love you.

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There's an expectation that the chosen will gravitate towards you but that's a misnomer.

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I've been called an aquatom.

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I've been called a sell out, but meanwhile, I do more community work than anybody.

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And sometimes when I'm in meetings, parents don't realize that you're maybe the only advocate

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in that room fighting for their child.

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But the perception is because I wear a certain tie because of the history of America in the

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public school system where it pertains to African-Americans, you automatically consider a sell

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out because you are working for the system that had the Dresscott decision, the Havd-Plessy

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Bridge Ferguson, that had a variety of other historic landmarks, the Dresscott decision.

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So when you work for a system that's connected to that, people can't see beyond

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their experience.

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So when you're in the black community, they look at you sometimes as somebody has an Asian

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provocateur working for a system that's designed to destroy them.

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Not realizing that you may be the only hope behind the scenes fighting for them.

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And then you work in the white school districts, the perception is that you are D.I.

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higher, that you're not qualified, that you're here on another kind of social program that

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was just a affirmative action, they're just assuming that you're affirmative action higher.

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And sometimes they don't want to take direction from an African-American male and leadership

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because they're just assuming that they're smarter than you are.

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That's the war on both sides.

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You make a conscious effort to come back home and serve your community, but you get rejected

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when it's time to make hard decisions and make corrections and behaviors.

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But then when you go to the other side, the grass is not green over there because the perception

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is you're not qualified to be here.

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Who do you know?

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How did you get in the door to being in this space?

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So you get caught in an economy of, wow, I'm getting pulled in both directions.

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But my faith in my belief in the higher power of my belief in God is allowed me to, that's

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where the underlying focus in the book is being who are you connected to and what is your

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power to be able to navigate between a war on both sides without losing yourself.

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The key is not to lose yourself, let other people define you and your journey.

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The key is to make impact and allows the children and families and teachers wherever you go.

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And as people get to know me and my professionalism, they eventually come around to see that I

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am a professional.

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I deserve the right to be here.

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I put the work in 33 years in a game.

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You can't question my credentials.

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You must be doing something right, right?

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Definitely doing something right.

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Right now I'm sitting to you now talking to you from my office here at Roosevelt High

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School where I'm the principal.

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33 years ago, I grew up in this community.

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I did my student teaching here and one of my dreams was to come back home and become the

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principal to make a difference.

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A lot of people not aware Roosevelt was the only school ever taken over by New York State

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back in 1992-93.

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So we would always school ever taken over by New York State.

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And I was a student teacher here when that occurred.

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So my focus has been ever since that I want to be the one to come back to make change.

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I want to be the one to come back to make a difference.

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It took almost 35 years from sitting here talking to you now.

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So all things are possible if you have faith in yourself or belief in yourself and belief

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in the power of power, have supportive people around you or also see your potential and

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no matter what other people are saying, you got to keep knocking at that door.

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So you get to door that open.

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Well, that's very true.

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I think it's a good lesson.

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And it's clearly I can't exactly resonate with what you were saying.

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First of all, I'm white.

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Secondly, I live in the UK.

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Things are different, obviously.

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But there will be thousands, millions of people who do understand what you're saying.

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And I think that this is the whole point though, isn't it?

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You try and do good in your community and you potentially get rejected by both sides.

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And you're the person in the middle who, as you say, is an advocate for one side or an

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advocate for the other.

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You know, honestly, it must be something.

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But clearly, you are now doing what you wanted to do and you're back in that office or you're

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in that office rather than 25 years later.

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So I mean, how did growing up in Roosevelt really sort of shape the man that you became

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first of all?

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I mean, how did that work?

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During the time that I grew up, I'm a 70s baby, 70s my birthday, birthday year.

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And growing up in that time period, Roosevelt was a predominantly African American community.

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I was one of the only few people on my block who didn't have a father in the house.

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A lot of the men were present in the homes.

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Families were together.

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There was a lot of businesses that were owned by African Americans in the community when

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I was growing up.

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So I saw role models.

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I saw examples.

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And it was a motivating factor to be my mother kept me involved in sports.

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And luckily, the men who were the coaches took time out me to help me become the man that

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I am today.

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Even sometimes they took away from their own children to pouring to me because I was friends

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with their children and you had these conversations as adults, then you see the outside of it.

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But I was fortunate that a lot of men in the community poured into me and my mom was focused

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when my mom went to college but she didn't graduate because she had me seen a year.

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So her emphasis, it was drilled into me that you were going to college.

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It was drilled into me that you were going to be successful.

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It was drilled into me that you were going to break generational curses.

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So when I grew up in this community, I witnessed this shift.

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When it cracked cocaine into the community, it really started to destroy the fabric of the

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community.

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The businesses started to go away, crime increased, drugs took over.

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Young men who I knew personally, who were athletes and academics and came from quality homes

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got caught up in his life.

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And so I got a chance to see another dichotomy of the war on both sides from a community that

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was thriving where a lot of well-to-do African Americans and professors lived took community

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that was on a decline.

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And I'm a teenager in high school experiencing this decline.

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And watch your friends now go to jail and watch your friends now go to the mall and get

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murdered.

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So these are young men who would never eat as kids on the street like they say about that

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life.

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They would never enter that stuff.

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But once you get involved in that illegal activity, it becomes a magnet.

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And now you have to defend the turf.

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You have to defend the area you have.

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So it turns young, innocent kids into killers because they want to preserve the amount of money

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and profit that they're generating from the illegal product.

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And now that's another war on both sides of the refluxual.

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You went from a quality home to doing illegal activities.

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Now you go to jail.

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You know better.

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But because the money kept coming in, you decide to stay, roll the dice to risk everything.

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And now you incarcerated.

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Now you got a prison record.

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So the community helped shape me because I got a chance to see two different worlds at

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the community, what the community words, what it became.

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From my mind, I knew what it could be because I got a chance to see what it could be.

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And when you get a chance to see what it could be, you pour your energy into that to develop

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yourself.

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The community that raised me here, Roosevelt, I didn't have an African male teacher at

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oral class.

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I got to college.

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Never.

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Never had a male teacher.

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So you talk to a young man who didn't ever follow that home.

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My grandfather was an alcoholic.

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My uncle was an alcoholic.

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So you talk to a young man who grew up in a community with no male role models, really,

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except for the coaches and a few cousins.

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And I still made it because of the love and support of the overwhelming community.

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Out of very loving grandmother, very loving mother, I had extended family who really looked

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out for me.

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Like I said, my friends' fathers took time to take me to games and this and that and other

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to fill in that void.

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So the community made me strong because of the adversity that I went through.

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I like to say my story is about struggle, survival and transformation because I struggle,

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I survive and I transform into the man I am today.

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I'm a mentor to a lot of young people.

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What people understand is the perseverance I was married as well before my wife died from

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breast cancer, but I was 39 years old.

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And I had to figure out how do I move on as a widower and still be a professional and do the

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things they have to do.

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But again, the survival and the transformation, the way God works in your life, if he's continued

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to believe, God will provide answers.

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Late wife before she passed told me clearly that you were one day, find a wife.

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You were one day, have a son and she wanted me to be happy.

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But I grew up with God five years later, I found a wife and I only did have a son and had twins.

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One boy, as he promised, I like to say the promise in the overflow.

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The promise my daughter is the overflow had twins.

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So that worked out that.

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I mean, does your daughter mind being called the overflow?

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But it's quite amazing. They celebrate achievements.

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They start off with, it was very tough, but I did this and did that and everything else.

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You're kind of open with conflict and trauma and uncomfortable truths.

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I think we can tell this already.

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You come across this very honest and very sort of, why was honesty more important for you?

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What do you do in the way that you wrote the book?

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When you get through the journey, it will make you feel good if you get to the end of the journey.

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You see the transformation, the transformation is incremental.

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And a lot of people are experiencing what I experienced, but they do it in silence.

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My voice, my sharing, my transparency, my humbleness.

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I wanted to reach people who experience the same thing and struggling in silence.

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I want them to know that you too can overcome.

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You too, if you believe in yourself, have confidence in yourself.

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Just keep pushing and ask my underlying message is just to keep pushing.

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Because the reality is negatively is blunt and harsh in your face.

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My opinion is the positivity has to be just as blunt and harsh in your face.

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Because we live in a Twitter society, Instagram, a meta society.

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Everything is instant, instant, instant and short bursts.

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If you know those most adults in children nowadays don't develop human relationships through

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human communication, I'm talking to you right now through a computer, right?

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A lot of people communicate to be in the same room and they text them back and forth.

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That human element is being missed.

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So part of my struggle and my struggle, I want people who actually read paper, turn pages

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or get an e-book or audiobook to really dive into the fact of, yes, he struggled.

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Yes, he made some bad financial decisions.

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But look at what God did for him.

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Look at how he overcame all of that.

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No, exactly.

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And obviously you nearly touched on the favorite subject of mine, which is clearly the social

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media aspect of the world that we live in today, which is interesting to say the least.

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Working in education and being in educating, you've spent decades, clearly, 30 years,

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plus working inside schools, as you've said.

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What point, though, made you realize that education wasn't simply about teaching subjects

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in case, in other words, you could have math, you could have geography, whatever it is.

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But really about changing lives and mentorship.

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All of the things that I guess you received from other people's parents.

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For me, it was one professor, I'm Professor Kit of Jenkins at National Community College.

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He really, really changed my life where I went to college.

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My thought was, I want to make a lot of money.

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So the first emphasis, I want to be an accountant because you associate money with accounting.

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Then it was like, I'm going to have former athletes.

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I said, I want to be connected to sports.

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I want to be a physical therapist.

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And when I connected with this gentleman on campus, he corrected my diction.

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He corrected my speech.

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He gave me advice on life and proper way of doing things.

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He always used to say, this is the order you should do things.

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Establish your career.

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Then find a wife and then purchase your house and then have children, do it in that respect

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of order.

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He was more than just a professor.

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And then I was taken in African history course.

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And that's when I began to learn more about my history and culture beyond slavery.

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The public school system only teaches you what they want you to know.

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History is really his story.

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It's the story of the victor.

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Whoever wants, whoever gets the spoils, writes their version of the story.

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So when you're doing his story, you're left out.

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I was left out of his story until I got to college and started learning about my story.

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And my story is American history.

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My story is world history.

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And then it boosted yourself a state.

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Myself a state started to grow.

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My confidence started to grow.

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I went from real quiet to all skinny kids to a boysterist, a young man who was confident.

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And some people had difficulties dealing with the confidence.

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And I like the quote for Deon Sanders, don't let my confidence prick your insecurities.

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So for me, it was that time when I started learning, I said, I wanted to have the impact

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on children that this gentleman had on me.

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So I switched from a major to African history and culture and education because I wanted

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to go back into the community which I came from to serve the community on the level that

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he served me because he changed my life forever.

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With just conversations about life, it's about history, it's about women.

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It's about everything.

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Just realize that you have to be more than just exes and old math, reading science and

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social studies.

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You have to become a one-stop shopping and be the social worker because you deal with

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social emotional learning.

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You deal with conflict mediation.

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You deal with all these different things.

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And I think I'm perfect for that because my book documents that I've been through it all.

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And because I've been through it all, I can relate to you on all the different levels.

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If you just lost your mom, okay, I lost my mom.

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If you were divorced, what do you call it?

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I've been there, I've done that, but I've had cancer.

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You've got to love it and have cancer.

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I know what you take to deal with that.

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I've been forced to accused of different things as a teenager.

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I've been there.

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I've seen it all.

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So now in my profession, when I'm speaking to parents, there's a maze by the spectrum that

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I can have a conversation with them on because I've been through all of it and I survived

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all of it.

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So it makes me stronger.

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I've my determination, my focus, my life, I started an organization called Saunders,

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Oli President Network, and Spying America's Youth Incorporated.

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It's the plural of my first wife's first name of Sonia.

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And the emphasis was on keeping her name alive, but also the due to work that I couldn't

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do in the school system because in the school system, you got rules and regulations.

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In your own entity, you can fill in the gaps of what they're not getting in school.

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So it became a powerful tool for 18 years straight, working in a small community in North

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Babylon to really mentor young men and young ladies, college tours, basketball tournaments,

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chess, what is chess?

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How does that game impact you in life?

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So we were able to really bring and get speakers from all works of life from professional athletes

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to local businesses and banks and so forth about credit and finances.

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So we were filling in the gaps that I didn't have as a kid, because my mom was horrible with

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money.

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So I said, let me bring in some people to really educate you on money.

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What is compound interest?

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How does that impact you?

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When you buy this credit card, okay, what impact is going to have you at 27% interest rate?

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So it became just an amazing opportunity to really pour into young people.

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And I've had students over 30 years ago still keeping contact with me.

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Wonderful.

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I mean, that's really good, though, isn't it?

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I mean, I can totally see what you're saying.

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And I think even on this side of the Atlantic, we are crying out for those sorts of lessons

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that you're giving extra curricula outside of school.

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We're crying out for that because we believe that the younger people need to know all of

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this.

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So in the university, they've got no idea sometimes how to do basic finances, you say that.

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I lecture at the University of Brighton here.

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It's one of those things where sometimes, yeah, I see it.

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This student's my own children.

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We're the same, you know, but I try really hard.

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So, yeah, wow, 18 years of doing that, that's incredible.

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That's absolutely amazing.

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We start because of the pandemic.

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Oh, right.

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I got you.

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Right.

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Really, we're all kicked off then, didn't it?

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Right.

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So, I mean, amazing.

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Okay.

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Now, obviously, what I'd like to do is just to grill you on your history, kind of, tell us

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about the book because, you know, some readers will pick up the book because they're educators

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and they want to know more.

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Others because they're interested in race.

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Others simply because, whoa, it's a memoir.

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They read memoirs, right?

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But what do you hope finishes, you know, the final page when someone does?

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And they say, "Oh, do you know what?

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I'm really glad that I read that."

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What kind of thing do you hope, what message do you hope that they're going to take away?

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The message that they take from it is that, "Doc is so caught up in your own individual

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race where you can't see anybody else."

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Everybody that black is black is not great.

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Everybody that's white is not bad.

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Through my journey, I've had some great benefactors who were Caucasian short story.

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When I was in elementary school, transition to middle school, my mother worked as a nurse.

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She had a wealthy client who would pay her her salary and give her this money for my tuition.

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When I got older, my wife was sick with cancer at a boss who said, "Don't worry about work.

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One of the days that you need to take her to chemotherapy, take her and go, I take care of

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it."

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So, throughout my journey, I've had some, I call the white guardian angels along the way.

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It made me open my mind to the realities that everybody that looks differently is not bad.

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Everybody that looks like me is not good.

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So, you come to the realization that, and also, my book is designed to bridge cultural

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divides and spark conversations about race, I did in the imperfect.

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It's designed to be about self-awareness.

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Self-awareness is extremely important.

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It's very resilient.

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The book is available in Amazon.

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It's available in Barnes and Noble's called RRoosevelt to the Hamptons.

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Size.

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You can get it off my own website, which is Keith, K-E-I-T-H, D-As-A-D-A-V-S-A-U-N-D-E-R-S.

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.org, or you can go to Roosevelt, like the President Roosevelt, to Hamptons.org.

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So, we also do public speaking, and we're going to travel to the UK.

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So we do public speaking.

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We are very diverse in our audiences.

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We do trainings on a variety of different things.

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We cater directly to our audience.

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So the key thing is, Roosevelt to the Hamptons.

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You want to contact me, you can contact me on Instagram at Keith_Sonders_Senior, or you

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can contact me at info@ Keith_D_Saunders.com.

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Fantastic.

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I couldn't have said any of that better myself, Keith.

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That's pretty cool.

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Well, thank you for that, because this has been a fascinating conversation, and it's

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just such a shame that we haven't got longer to talk about it, because there's so much

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that we could unpack from this.

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But anyway, just to remind you listeners and viewers, this book is called Roosevelt

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to the Hamptons - the War on both sides.

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Yeah.

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And if today's discussion has sparked your interest, you'll find links in the description

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wherever you're watching this.

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Keith, thank you so much for joining me on author conversations.

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I hope that you continue to help young people that it sounds better, because it seems that

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you will be.

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Thank you.

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Thanks.

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Love you to meet you.

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Take care.

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Take care, sir.

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Bye.

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Bye.

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Bye.

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If you enjoyed this conversation, you can watch more author conversations here.

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Bye.

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Bye.

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Bye.

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Bye.

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Bye.

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