This St. Paul Bush Fellow is determined to abolish the wealth gap

As a child, Prince Corbett was a gifted student who was plunged into homelessness and child protection when his mother's struggles to support him and his brother had them living out of a car.

But after fleeing to the hope of a better life in the Twin Cities, Corbett again found struggles. He was expelled from school after late-night jobs led to too many missed morning classes. He successfully turned away from gang life and returned for his diploma, only to find himself once again sleeping in his car after graduating.

After being convicted of robbery and sentenced to 74 months in prison, Corbett changed the narrative.

He earned college credits in prison and later obtained a bachelor's degree from Metropolitan State University. After his release, Corbett, 41, began work as an employment specialist for a nonprofit. Now the racial and health equity administrator for Ramsey County, he said government systems and structures must be deconstructed to create more equitable outcomes. And he hopes to use his Bush Fellowship to build new coalitions to close income and wealth gaps.

Corbett recently spoke with Eye On St. Paul. This interview has been edited for length.

Q: What does your job with Ramsey County entail?

A: I am working to change the culture at Ramsey County so that everyone and every employee understands how their job impacts racial disparities or achieves racial equity.

Q: Give me an example.

A: I work with a lot of our department directors. It's getting them to normalize conversations about race so then we can have open dialogue. And it's also getting them to understand what their role is in [achieving] racial equity so that they can take that back to their staff and employees.

Sometimes I'll meet with individual employees — like someone who works with tax-forfeited properties — around how their job impacts race equity.

Q: What does it mean to deconstruct government systems and structures?

A: To deconstruct government systems is recognizing that our government really is created and designed for white men and what they want. To deconstruct it — imagine you move to an island and have 200 to 300 people on this island, and you have your own society and it's all brand new. Now, you have people getting in trouble, like they're throwing rocks at things. How do you create something from nothing that addresses the needs of the people and not build upon systems that we currently see?

Q: How do you convince people that is needed?

A: I won't convince everyone. Within any organization, about 10 or 15% of people are just going to be resisters. My mindset is, I will meet with the resisters but I'm not putting too much energy into the resisters.

And the top 10 or 15% are just champions for change. They're your supporters. They're your accomplices. It's that 60 to 70% [in the middle] that I really want to tap into.

Q: How do you convince people of the urgency to change?

A: Minnesota has the worst racial disparities across the whole country. Minneapolis-St. Paul is the sixth or seventh worst [metro area] for Blacks to live. I in good conscience cannot live up here without helping address the disparities that exist.

Q: How?

A: My new theory is that if we work on ending and abolishing the income and wealth gap, that will get at every other disparity that you see — our school systems, our higher education systems, our workforce systems. I'm also looking at how to create wealth-generating opportunities for people who are currently incarcerated.

Q: Like what?

A: I have friends that are spending 10, 15, 20 years in prison. And between income that they get from working a prison job and money that they get from families and friends, I know people who have $5,000 sitting on their prison books. What if they could learn how to make smart investments with that money so that instead of walking out of prison with $5,000, they walk out with $10,000 or $15,000 through creating investment opportunities?

There was just a report that said 25% of people being released from prisons are being released to homelessness. What happens if not just wealth-generating opportunities, but income-generating opportunities, are provided to them? In prison, you start a job making 25 cents an hour. What if that was raised to like $2 an hour? There are individuals that when they are released only have $50. What if they could have $500, $600, maybe even $1,000 just from working a regular job?

Q: The task seems enormous. Where do you start?

A: Last week, I was at Harvard for this young Americans leadership program. And the focus was on cross-sector collaboration: public sector, private sector, nonprofits. There were 10 of us selected from the Twin Cities and what we all wanted to focus on was abolishing the wealth gap in the Twin Cities. It's building a network and connecting to other people who are doing the work. I don't have to reinvent the wheel.