February 25, 2010
Former drug dealer to speak about his journey away from violence March 2
Max Hunter, a former drug dealer, will explain how he came to accept violence as a legitimate tactic for achieving his ends and how he made a transition to nonviolent action in a lecture at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 2, in 120 Kane. The talk, titled Gangster Epistemology: Urban Crime and the American Dream, is part of the “Veterans of Intercommunal Violence” series, sponsored by the Clowes Center for the Study of Conflict and Dialogue and the Comparative History of Ideas Program.
The lecture explores concepts of African American masculinity, violence, neo-liberalism, and the lure of the streets as a venue for social mobility. Hunter’s personal narrative, interwoven with Black Nationalism, Rastafarianism, Christian theology and standpoint theory, will challenge contemporary stereotypes of the urban drug dealer.
Raised in public housing project in Southern California, surrounded by street gangs and economic disintegration, the young Hunter found himself torn between his love of learning and his love of “the game.” As the preppy hustler moved between formal and informal “educational environments,” he synthesized what he was learning to advance in both the streets and society. Eventually, the criminal world provided the stronger call, and he turned to full-time dealing in elite and marginal circles in Washington, D.C.
While Hunter trafficked across state borders during the late 1980s, he remained conscious of the shifting terrain in the cocaine market and in federal law enforcement strategies, and ultimately concluded that he could not stay in “the game” forever. Looking for a way to escape street life, he began to investigate faith as a vehicle to transcend the despair that had led him to a life of crime. Hunter pursued both community service and higher education, graduating from the UW in 2002.
He has taught in Boston public schools and Concord Academy, and was appointed to a pioneering committee of community bioethicists at Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He is currently a teaching fellow and editor of Perkins Perspective at Seattle Pacific University’s John Perkins Center for Reconciliation, Leadership Training, and Community Development.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
