I was a gang member before I went to Harvard and turned my life around

The news is full of awful things. Climate change is ending the world. There’s racial strife across the country. Justin Bieber is still alive and popular. News feeds everywhere are clogged with tragedy.

Luckily, ex-gangster Richard Santana is here to offer a respite. From a ghetto in Fresno, Santana rose from gang culture and graduated from Harvard.

He now works as a motivational speaker, urging young adults in bad situations to use education as a ladder out – his company is called Homeboy goes to Harvard.

We spoke to him about how he turned his life around.

What’s the story of Homeboy Goes to Harvard and how exactly did you end up at Harvard?

Well, Homeboy Goes to Harvard, that title was created based on the fact that I come from a very dysfunctional, gang-oriented background, and I managed to get to Harvard.

Of course, when you come from the type of background that I come from, “homeboy” is a word that is typically used to reference a friend, “homie,” you know, that kind of stuff. So, of course, once I got to Harvard, and by that time I had already started speaking, it just naturally become an instant title, and I’ve just used it ever since.

In your neighborhood, what did it mean to be a gangster?
The expectations, when you talk about expectations, of course, things have changed since I was coming up. My expectations were always about learning to survive, first and foremost, and secondly, becoming a young gladiator.

What that is, is somebody who is trained and prepared for prison life and being locked up. The expectations for me were to get locked up and/or to get killed. Those were the two expectations that I had coming up in the gang.

As far as the initiation goes, that’s a whole different thing. The jist of it is running the streets and doing the kind of criminal activity and behaviors that most criminals do. For me, on the other hand, it was more about surviving. If I was going to steal something, I was going to steal because it paid, if I was going to sell drugs, it was because it would offset a financial need, and so on and so forth.

You’re known as Señor Chocolate. How did you get that name?
Mister Chocolate? It was a name given to me by my homeboys. It’s an affectionate term, actually. I grew up in a city called Fresno, California. Fresno’s in the heart of California, so the main industry is agriculture.

People like myself, the jobs offered to us are out in the field. If we needed an extra twenty or thirty dollars to party down in the weekends, we would go out, and we would work in the fields. At a hundred and twenty degrees, you can get pretty dark, so I got dark, and they started calling me “Mister Chocolate,” and next thing you know, it kind of stuck with me.

You said you were already a speaker when you got to Harvard. What were you speaking about prior to being at Harvard?
When I first started speaking, it was more about ending gang violence, especially the chicanos killing chicanos, the brown on brown violence, so a lot of my work at that point was about stopping the violence.

When I got to Harvard, things changed because I started talking about education as a way out and catapult and, of course, show an example to other students, especially students who come from not so great backgrounds, demonstrate to them that they have the capabilities of becoming a Harvard graduate, as well.

When you got into Harvard, was it welcoming? Was it strange? What was the strangest thing when you got here?

My training as a youngster, coming up in the streets, was about surviving. So when I got to Harvard, my whole frame of reference was difference than those around me. People were asking questions about studying and where’s the best place and which professors to avoid, you know, all that stuff, like time management. Those questions don’t occur to me to ask.

My questions were about where do I go to buy the right clothes? Or what was a cheap place you could get a good meal? And so on and so forth. I thought that was kind of odd that people weren’t asking questions like that.

Was it welcoming? No, not at all. I wish it was, but it was not. In my class, there was only twenty-eight Latinos on the whole campus, which isn’t a lot. In terms of having someone to relate to, that was a difficult challenge. Even in that group, I was the only homeboy.

I was the only one who was a barrio kid, the only one from the streets. So, even then, there wasn’t anyone I could relate to.

At the same token, the institution itself offered a name that I could use and hopefully reference in time. And obviously, I’ve been using it as a maxim, if you will. It was a tradeoff. What helped me stay is that I had those surviving skills.

As much time as I spent studying, I spent as much time in Boston, in and around the city, walking the streets and just getting to know and getting comfortable with the people who came from different backgrounds. It was great. It was good for me.

Do you have any advice for Harvard students who feel like they don’t fit in?
Yeah. I would not rely on the campus for finding a means for socializing. I would not rely on that. I’d say go out into the greater community. The Latin School there has so many opportunities that you can get, being around volunteering. First and foremost, don’t get comfortable with the idea that Harvard is going to give you the social scene that you can get out in the community.

Secondly, you still need a mentor, or a professor or something. Find that mentor or professor and connect with them and when the difficulties come up, don’t be afraid to share. That’s what I would say.

Moving onto your motivational speaking afterwards, do you talk at colleges or is it primarily secondary schools? Who do you mostly direct your talk to?
My presentations are geared towards all ages, in terms of the educational realm. Obviously, because of the nature of who I am and what I do, secondary schools tend to be the ones that ask most because they’re trying to give that hope to the future of these young lives.

When I get in front of an audience of college students, I talk about and remind them of the difficulties that will come up. One of the difficulties is the notion of dropping out of school will perhaps come to your mind, and I remind them to just hold onto your seat. Don’t give up your seat. Stay and finish because it passes, and when you finish, you’re gonna be in a better place.

The other part of my presentation has to do with staff development, talking to teachers about addressing the needs of adverse students or the students in their adversity. That’s what I do.

It’s always been in the area of education. I’ve tried corporate, but corporate’s not the same. It doesn’t fulfil me as much even though monetarily, it pays a lot more. It’s just not something that drives me. It’s always been in the area of education, talking about staying in school.

@devonblack2019