E-mail a friendR. Dwayne Betts
airdate September 17, 2009
R. Dwayne Betts is a testament to the ability to turn one's life around. Raised in Maryland, his early years showed academic promise. His behavior changed in high school and, at 16, he began a journey that would end with a nine-year prison sentence. After spending most of his teens and early 20s in prison, Betts earned his degree from the University of Maryland, started a book club for boys and is national spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice. A published poet, he's has also written a memoir, A Question of Freedom.
Activist explains how he managed to survive and thrive in prison while so many other young people don't make it. (1:23)
Full interview. (23:27)
R. Dwayne Betts
Tavis: At age 16, Dwayne Betts made a bad decision that would forever change his life. Despite being an honor student, he and a friend were arrested following a carjacking and robbery for which he was sentenced to nine years in prison.
While incarcerated, Dwayne spent most of his time reading, learning, and even writing, the results of which are told in the pages of the critically acclaimed book, "A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison." It's my honor to have him on this program, Dwayne Betts. D, good to see you.
R. Dwayne Betts: It's my pleasure to be here, man.
Tavis: You doing all right, man?
Betts: Definitely, I'm doing great.
Tavis: I'm glad to have you. Let me just go right at it. Tell me what happened that fateful day and then we'll take it from there.
Betts: I was with a friend and we drove out to a mall in Virginia and we were walking around in the mall, and -
Tavis: You live in D.C.?
Betts: I lived in D.C. at the time.
Tavis: Okay.
Betts: And we were walking around the mall and it got late. And the next thing I know, me and him were walking around in the parking lot and I had a gun, and I didn't have the gun intentionally planning on robbing someone, but I had a gun because the opportunity fell in my lap and I told somebody that I would hold it.
And then I found myself in the mall walking around in the parking lot, and the next thing I know me and my friend carjacked this guy. He was asleep in his car and we took his car and then we drove, and I tell people now that we basically drove ourselves to prison because we were arrested the next day and we both pled guilty immediately, we both confessed immediately, and I was sentenced to nine years in prison and he was sentenced to eight. After eight and a half years I was finally released.
Tavis: Let's start with the gun. You're an honor student. You have a mother who loves you and who's taking good care of you. As an honor student with love in the home, why did you have a gun in the first place?
Betts: I don't know. It was the only time that I've ever had a gun in my hand in my life. I had never fired a gun before, and I never, two weeks before that, thought about having a gun. But I think part of it was just that it was available where I lived and part of it was just I knew people who carried around guns on a regular basis and who thought they needed a gun.
So maybe part of that need infected my mind and it was sort of a moment of insanity, a lapse into someone who was different from who my mother knew me to be and who my whole family knew me to be.
And really, at that time, I thought - for whatever reason I thought that I should have a gun, and I was just really fortunate that it only lasted one night. It was unfortunate that I committed a crime and that I spent so much time in prison, but in a sense that I was able to recognize my mistake and sort of reconcile myself and become who I was before that crime, I think, it's been a blessing.
Tavis: I want to be liberal in my thought process for the moment, and by liberal I mean as expansive as I can be with my mind. So you're in a city where crime is rampant, where kids feel the need to protect themselves, where having a gun or at least carrying one is a badge of honor, even for an honor student, so let me just concede for the moment that I at least can process how or why you had a gun on your person. Let me just concede that out for a second. I've still got to make a quantum leap now to how you go to carjacking somebody.
Betts: No, me too. And I had to make a quantum leap to go from even having a gun to committing a carjacking, and I tell people more than having to make a quantum leap I had to make a sort of leap that you couldn't even imagine, because I knew people who had carjacked people before and who had died attempting carjackings.
So I had to ignore everything I knew about the insanity of the crime for a moment. And I don't say that to justify it or to explain it, but I say that to me it shows that it was truly a moment of impulse when I was absolutely outside of my character, and any explanation I give now can't happen to be anything but an excuse because it really was the unexplainable.
Tavis: How do you hear - to your ears, how do you hear the statement that's not the kid that I know, that's not the person that I know? And I ask that because every day on the news we see some crazy story that breaks and you talk to the neighbors, you talk to - the news media, the reporters are talking to neighbors and family friends, and everybody's saying the same thing - "That's not the person I knew," "That's not the person I know."
And we, the viewers, are left trying to juxtapose what the persons who know this individual are saying with what this individual did. So now when you're watching the news and you hear that same refrain, "That's not the person I know, that's not the person I know," how do you hear that?
Betts: Well, I think I hear it with a sort of sadness. I hear it recognizing that young people get themselves in situations that they often can't pull themselves out of, having no idea how they get there. And the thing is, the thing that's most sad of all, is that the adults around them really have no idea how they got there.
And I think there are sort of telltale signs that the child is not able to navigate the violence that they might live around. When I hear that what I think to say and what I think to caution people is to say, "That might not be the child you know, but how can you prevent that from happening to his cousin, to his little brother?" Because the thing is, if we continue to do the things we've done, then we're going to continue to get the same results.
So when I hear it, I just hear it with a sense of sadness and I recognize that that may be true, but it's irrelevant because the crime was committed and punishment is going to be meted out. So the thing is how do we make sure that it doesn't happen again?
And my whole thing is, the way that I feel we could change the community, is by being more involved in the lives of young people and allowing them to see that the world is more than the violence around them. Because they know the violence - I knew the violence around me and there was a point in my life where that violence was more real than the college degree I hoped to get.
And now that violence is so far removed from my world - I know it exists, I work in a community that's really violent, but that's removed from my world. My dreams and my ambitions are really (unintelligible) that violence even though I'm still steeped in the violence.
Tavis: I want to come back to your work these days, helping these very young people to avoid the violence and steer clear of it. But there's a long way to go before we get to that, so let's keep moving here.
I'm trying to process you having the gun. You've explained the moment of insanity with the carjacking. Tell me more about the carjacking and about the victim in the carjacking.
Betts: The victim was asleep in his car, and it was probably a middle-aged White guy. And really, it was somebody that I never knew; I had never seen him before. I don't know what made me choose to pick him as a victim except that he was sleeping in his car.
Tavis: Did the car attract you, or he just -
Betts: No, it was dark, though, and it was late at night, and there wasn't that many cars in the parking lot.
Tavis: Okay.
Betts: And the thing about the victim, though, that I'll always remember is that - and I say this in the book - after I carjacked him and after we pled guilty and after we went into the courtroom, when the judge talked and when the prosecutor talked, the victim was in the audience. And my mom couldn't talk at that time and I realized that the truth is once the victim speaks after I pled guilty, there's nothing else I could say.
It's hard to sort of reconcile the fact that I made somebody a victim with who it is I wanted the court to believe I was. And I think that's why even now when I think of the victim and I think of how do I approach the fact that I made someone a victim, I really don't know what to say because I can't change the 30 minutes. The 30 minutes that changed my life forever also might have very well changed his life forever, and there's really nothing that I could do for him to make that right.
Tavis: Have you had occasion over the years to communicate with the victim? Did he want to be communicated with or avoid you? What's the story there?
Betts: It's not that he avoided me. I think when I first was arrested I had a lot of anger and I thought it was somebody else's fault that I was locked up. And in order for me to let go of the anger I also had to let go of the personal identity I had of the victim. I had to let go of this relationship with the victim because I didn't know him.
And so after two years went by I couldn't even remember his name, and that probably was more hurtful, I think, than the fact that I made him a victim because now it's just this nameless face in the back of my head that started the whole prison sentence.
But because of that I never had cause to talk to him, and if he reached out to me of course I would talk to him and I would apologize to him. But I think that I don't necessarily have the right to search him out, because again, I did something that's unexplainable and I did something that's really egregious, and I don't think I necessarily had a right to say look, because I graduated from college and because I'm a father and because in the community you should forgive me. I don't think that that's necessarily the case.
I think that - I hope that he should forgive me, but I think that the community, I'd like the community to forgive me and I'd like to make amends to the people in the community who I haven't caused that much pain.
Tavis: The victim - his car was taken, but was he physically - did you all physically hurt him?
Betts: No, no, he wasn't physically hurt at all.
Tavis: Not at all.
Betts: And actually, that's one of the reasons why in a sense I could still sleep at night. I could still say that, yes, we took his car, but I know that we didn't physically hurt him. Emotionally, psychologically, yes, but we didn't physically hurt him and I think it's easier for me to sleep at night knowing that I didn't kill someone, knowing that I -
Tavis: But you do concede, though, that just like those 30 minutes changed your life, you concede it probably changed his as well.
Betts: Yeah, I think it very likely. I know victims, and I think in some ways I've been a victim. I've been a victim to my own insanity, but more importantly I know family members who have been crushed by violence.
Tavis: Tell me about how - and this is a very simple question that covers a very long period, nine years, to be exact. But tell me about your time in prison. Tell me how you survived, navigated those nine years behind bars, as a kid.
Betts: Really, I just accepted the fact that I committed a crime and I was at the bottom of the totem pole, and that it was nothing to prevent me from being whoever it was that I wanted to be after having failed my mother so miserably. And so I decided that I wanted to be a poet, I decided that I wanted to be a teacher, and I decided that I wanted to be a sort of honor to my mother and I just read a lot of books and I spent every minute of every day thinking about how I could make my life different once I was released.
And the violence was around me, but I just chose - I made a conscious decision not to let the violence control my life. And I worked hard and honestly, I was blessed and I was fortunate to meet a lot of brothers who helped guide me sort of to manhood that many people in prison don't get a chance to meet.
But I met them and I took advantage of every opportunity I had and I created opportunities sometimes when none existed.
Tavis: But how does a kid survive being thrown in with adults? Because you were tried as an adult, and we can have an entire show - shows, plural - about that notion of whether or not in America kids ought to be tried as adults. That's another show for another time. But you were tried as an adult; you were thrown in with these adults. How did you survive that?
Betts: I think - and the truth is I survived it because I was a reader before, and I think reading and really understanding what literature did made me mature beyond my years. But also I had skills when I came into the system, and so since I wanted to be a writer I had skills of reading a lot of books and understanding what was going on in books, and I was just fortunate. I was fortunate to avoid a lot of the mistakes that bury other people.
It was tough. I saw a lot of juveniles who didn't make it, and some of them didn't make it because they were naïve and some of them didn't make it because they weren't strong enough, and honestly, some of them didn't make it because they were just put in the wrong cell at the wrong time.
And so when you say how did I make it, I think that it was a whole lot of maybe insignificant details that stacked up to create an opportunity for me to excel. Not even for me to survive. The truth is that I had opportunities to excel in prison when others didn't have the opportunity to survive. But you say how did I do it at 16? I could point to nothing else but luck, and honestly sort of the grace of God.
Because I had proved myself unable to manage my own life by committing the crime, so it wasn't necessarily by my own merits and strengths, it was really the men that were around me and the grace of God that helped me get through.
Tavis: You, as we sit here today - we'll talk more about what you have been able to accomplish in just a second - but you sit here today a college graduate, father, husband, working and serving and loving, quite frankly, your community. You seem to be rather well-adjusted. And yet we are told every day that our prison system does a horrible job, to the extent that it does the job at all, of rehabilitating men and women.
Betts: Oh, the prison system doesn't do a job of rehabilitating anybody.
Tavis: Okay, that's why I want some clarity on this.
Betts: No, definitely, and I make a point to tell people that it wasn't the Virginia Department of Corrections that created the man that's before you. Honestly, I could point to John Edgar Wideman, I could point to James Baldwin, I could point to Walter Moseley, I could point to Dr. Cornel West, and I could point to an endless list.
I could point to Steinbeck, I could point to every book that Oprah ever recommended. I could point to Edward (unintelligible) I could point to the poets, Robert Hayden, Etheridge Night. I could just chant a list of names - Ethelbert Miller. I could chant a list of names and people whose work really molded me into the person I am today.
And not only the writer I am, but reading that literature helped me define myself while I was in a place that wanted to define me solely by those 30 minutes.
And so I don't think it was the system in any way whatsoever. It was really because I believed that literature could do something for my life that maybe other people don't always believe literature could do. But for me, that belief helped me believe that I could be more and it helped me to become more.
Tavis: Were you in the same place the entire time, or did you move around?
Betts: No, I moved around. I actually had a tour of Virginia through the prison system. (Laughter)
Tavis: How many systems were you in?
Betts: Five. I was in five different prisons.
Tavis: Over the nine years?
Betts: Over the nine years, from a medium-security prison to the first super-maximum security prison in the state of Virginia, and that was Red Onion State Prison. And it was 23-hour lockdown, and it was supposed to be for the most violent and vicious offenders and I found myself at the age of 17, 18.
Tavis: Hold up - so it's one thing to be in prison. It's another thing to be on solitary confinement as a kid.
Betts: Right.
Tavis: How do you survive solitary confinement as a kid? Those same books?
Betts: Yeah, it was the books, and also it was - see, this is the thing. I had to worry about my own survival, but I had to worry about making my mom not worry about me being safe.
Tavis: Tell me about your mom.
Betts: My mom? My mom was loving and she got up at 4:00 every morning to go to work. She was the first voice I heard every day, the last voice I heard before I went to sleep, and throughout the whole time - the crime crushed her, because this was something that my family just didn't do. I was the first person to go to prison, so nobody expected this. And not only that, I was a good student the whole time.
So the crime crushed my mom completely and I think after the crime she put herself wholeheartedly in my survival. And so she staked her life on how I would be okay and she worried constantly about me and she wrote me letters. And at the time I was locked up she couldn't drive, so she got other family members to drive her out to see me, so my family was real supportive.
But the thing was, when I was sent to solitary confinement my mom was okay because she said, "You're in a cell by yourself?" And I said, "Yeah." She was like, "Okay, cool." (Laughter)
Tavis: Yeah, I can understand that, though. From a safety perspective, she knew her baby was going to be all right.
Betts: And for me, I was 17 when I was first put in solitary confinement and that six months in the hole is - I read a book every day. And so I dealt with it because I just had the opportunity to read. I had the opportunity to read and not worry about the drama that was around me.
Tavis: To your mother, I think now of any number of Black men who I have come to know and to interview over the years who have expressed to me in their own way the crushing defeat that they felt internally resulting from having let their mama down.
I think of Michael Vick now, who I'm certainly glad to see that he's back and getting a chance to do his thing again. And I'll take your mail, bring it on. But I'm glad that Michael Vick's getting his chance again.
That said, I recall when he first - at a press conference, when he got arrested, the first thing he said, was - he looked at that camera and said, "I want to apologize to my mother." Almost the first thing he said was he knew that his mother was crushed by his behavior, and I've thought often of his mother and how his mother has had to endure this.
Tell me about what your feelings of guilt or shame, your words, about what you did to your mama.
Betts: Now this is the thing - my mom has always been my number one supporter. No matter what has gone on in my life from first grade to second grade to third grade my mom is always the one who expected me to excel. And before I got locked up I didn't really understand what that meant. I think I didn't understand fully what that meant until I had a child.
But to come home and to think back on it, I know that I crushed my mom, right? But more than that I sort of understand that I made my mom have to get up every day and think about how she went wrong. And the truth is she didn't go wrong. I'm the one that jumped out of the window. But a mother can't escape the sense of responsibility that she has for a child, and it's unfortunate too because society often says, well, how are we going to talk about the single Black mothers in this?
When we talk about the incarceration rates, how are we going to talk about the single Black mothers? But the truth is that our children, they make decisions and they are never just raised by their parent. And I think the only person who really recognizes how hard it is on a woman I think is the child, because I saw how the whole world wanted to blame my mother. They wanted to find out what she did that was wrong when it was me who picked up the gun.
Tavis: And not just your mother. You tell it powerfully in the book - it wasn't just your mother they were blaming, they were blaming your father in absentia. And you pushed back on that in (unintelligible).
Betts: And even in them blaming my father, when he stood up to talk about me they said the reason why he did it was because he didn't have a father. But even in them blaming my father they would indict my mother. Blaming the absent father is basically a slick way of saying because the mother isn't enough.
And so yeah, I pushed back on that because I knew I was guilty, I really basically knew I was going to prison, but I cannot stand in the courtroom and at the last moment the only time I felt that I had an opportunity to speak to the judge I couldn't stand there and not say the truth. And the truth was I didn't commit my crime because I didn't have a father. I committed my crime because I was wrong (unintelligible).
Tavis: You said that to the judge, though.
Betts: I said that to the judge.
Tavis: After a bunch of witnesses said he's in trouble because his father wasn't there. They thought they were helping you by saying, "He didn't have a father." You stand in front of the judge and you said, "That ain't got nothing to do with it."
Betts: This is really my proudest moment I think as a son, because I had to recognize that my crime was mine. My crime was not my father's, my crime was not my mother's. And I had to stand up and say that because my mother had bronchitis at the time. Like in the book, I say that's what the doctor says, that my mother had bronchitis, but I know that I crushed my mom and I left her so brokenhearted that she couldn't speak on my behalf.
And she couldn't speak and everybody else was speaking, and they were saying it was because I didn't have a father, and they meant well. They meant well, but the truth was it wasn't because I didn't have a father and it was never, ever because my mom wasn't good enough.
Tavis: Nine years behind bars. You eventually get out, and I'm fast-forwarding here just to cover a few things that grabbed my attention about the text. You get out and you end up with a job - really your first job, so to speak, and your first job is in a bookstore.
Betts: Right.
Tavis: Tell me about this.
Betts: Brother Yao owned this bookstore called Karibou Books, but the story is fascinating because I had no intention of going to this gospel concert. It was at (unintelligible) State University. And so I go to the gospel concert and it's okay, but I step out of the concert because it was loud in there and I had just been working 12 hours making paint.
And so I'm sitting outside and I'm talking to Brother Yao, who was the owner of the bookstore but I didn't know, because he looks young, he has dreads down his back, and we're talking about literature. And he's asking me what college I go to, and I'm, "I don't go to college." "Well, where did you graduate?" "I didn't graduate." And I've only been home a month and so I'm really feeling like I need to tell people listen, I just got out of prison, stop pressing me about my past because my past is filled with closing cell doors.
And so I tell him I just got out of prison and I'm really expecting him to shut the conversation down, but he says, "Are you a writer?" And I'm thinking to myself that is just not the follow-up question I expected.
Tavis: (Laughs) To "I just got out of prison," yeah.
Betts: I just got out of prison, and he says, "Are you a writer?" And so I tell him yes, and then one thing leads to the next, I send him some of my work, and the manager of one of the stores calls and says, "Do you want to apply for the assistant manager job?"
So not only do I get this opportunity but I have someone asking me I if I want to work knowing that I have three felonies. And so I get the job there and I work there and eventually the manager wants to move on and do something else, so I got promoted as manager and I started a book club there for young boys called Young Men Read.
And that was fascinating because the truth is my whole life has been built on the opportunity that this one man gave me. I met my wife in a bookstore. I started the book club that led to me being on the front page of "The Washington Post" in a bookstore. I met countless other authors in the bookstore. And I really began to understand how important books are in the lives of others.
I knew how important it was in my own life, but I didn't really recognize how important a book is to someone else. Some random person comes in the bookstore and you say, "This is a great book, read this," and they read it and then they come back to you and say, "You were right. What else do you suggest?"
I didn't recognize how important books could be in the lives of others, really, until I worked in a bookstore. And so I'm really forever grateful to this man because again a lot of doors have been closed in my face, but he opened up the first door and that sort of paved the way for everything else.
Tavis: I'm fast-forwarding here. You get that job at the bookstore, you make the most of it, you end up going to college, and not just going but graduating with honors and giving the commencement when you graduate.
Betts: Right, and that was - I shared the stage with the director of the CIA.
Tavis: (Laughs) How funny is that?
Betts: Right, irony of all ironies. I'm sitting here and I'm at Maryland University and I get the opportunity to address 16,000 people on the importance of education. And it was nearly 12 years to the date of me being sentenced by the judge.
So it was nearly 12 years to the date of me addressing the judge and it was a tremendous honor, because the judge that day told me, "I'm under no illusion that sending you to prison will help you." And as I stood there and I addressed my classmates and my professors and my family I was able to tell them that even though no one expected me to make it to the point I was, to make it as a graduate and as the speaker, me being there was a testament to the power of education and the importance of education.
And I hold on to that moment because if you buy the CD and you listen to it, it says, "Introducing the class of 2009, led by Reginald Dwayne Betts," and that's a beautiful thing.
Tavis: You graduated from the University of Maryland with honors, you gave the commencement, you're now in grad school. That lady you met in the bookstore you're now married to, you have a baby. Life is good?
Betts: Life is great, and I'm also - I'm fortunate enough with the Campaign for Youth Justice to be able to go across the country and go into detention centers and speak to these young kids who have made trouble out of their lives and talk to them about the importance of making better decisions.
I'm able to talk to the community, impress upon the community that listen, this is a movement that you need to join to educate yourself about really what happens to our kids when we don't pay attention and how we could change their relationship with the justice system.
Really, I would have never thought that I would have the opportunity to do so much with my life, and it's a blessing.
Tavis: It is a blessing. It's a powerful story and I have basically just scratched the surface of it. I believe, and it has been said before, Dwayne, that every race of people ought to be judged by the best they've been able to produce and not by the worst. You are among the best that our people have produced, and I'm honored to have you on this program.
Betts: Thank you.
Tavis: His new book is called - it's a powerful text - "A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison," by R. Dwayne Betts. Congratulations, glad to have you on the program.
Betts: It's an absolute pleasure. It's an absolute pleasure.
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