Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Pick somebody that you admire for whatever they're doing, and you have to keep studying these people time and time again.

If you don't have it directly in front of you, which most of us never have that, you have to find a source of inspiration, so that way you can imagine yourself, and you can thank yourself into that predicament at some point in life.

Welcome back to The Speaking and Communicating Podcast. I am your host Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify, and we will also be reading and reviewing. Now let's get communicating.

Now let's get communicating with our guest today. Joining us from the US., his name is Dante Wright.

He is an attorney, a speaker, and author of The Judge and the Juvenile, and is here to share with us his very powerful story and how your past cannot disqualify you from being successful.

Dante's story is very powerful, and I know that throughout this conversation, it will inspire you as well. And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show. Hi, Dante.

Hey, Roberta.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Happy to be here. I'm glad that you're here. Thank you for being on our show.

Welcome. Please introduce yourself to our listeners.

Yes. So I'm Dante Wright. As you said, I am a attorney.

I do criminal defense. I'm based in Virginia, and I've been a lawyer for about five years. Thirty-two years of age, and I enjoy what I do.

I also do some public speaking as well, some motivational speaking.

I am working on my memoir right now, The Judge and the Juvenile, which explains my upbringing, my story, and how I got to where I am, and how I went from a kid who was in absolute poverty and who didn't have much of a chance whatsoever to where I am

now, having a law firm, having multiple employees, and being someone who is trying to inspire the next person to actually feel their potential. So that's where I am now.

Very successful story. And like I said, we're going to be very inspired as we talk about it. But first, let's get started.

What happened when you were four years old?

2:37

Early Life Encounter

So when I was four, Roberta, I can take you back to the exact moment actually when I met the judge.

At that time, I was living again in Virginia, Surry County, Virginia. It's a very small area, about 6,000 people in the entire county. My mother had seven children.

I was the youngest of seven, and she had me before she was 30. So at 29, she had seven children, and she did not have any high school education. She had no other outside help, as far as any male figures inside the household.

So here's this woman from New York originally, trying to raise these seven children really on her own. Of course, trying to raise one child by yourself is a very difficult task. If you time that by seven, you say, okay, this is seemingly impossible.

I mean, how do you keep your head on straight when you have seven different embodiments just running around the house and creating all kinds of chaos? On this particular day, my brother and I were outside.

I'm four, he was likely seven or eight at the time. Just a regular day playing outside in the yard, he takes my bicycle and he rides it into the street and I chase him. Almost at the exact moment, this vehicle pulls up and it stops.

This woman exits the car and she's concerned about two kids being in the street. There is no supervision at that point. So we get put back into the yard and she walks over to the house, she knocks on the door and she meets my mom.

She's very concerned. Your kids are out here in this yard, they were in the street, I could have hit them with my car. Oh my gosh.

Then she realizes that my mom is just a single mother of seven, she's trying her best. She can't keep a watchful eye over every single child. This woman, for whatever reason, decides to go out very soon after and purchase this very big van.

She comes back and she starts to pick us all up. She would take us around to swimming pool, the bowling alley, we would go skating, all these things that our mother could not afford to do for us. She began to do it.

She became a grandmother of some sort to us and she was just always around. That's how I first met her and that's the story behind her and our meeting.

She was 54, I was 4, and she was already a judge, had a lengthy legal career at that point, and she was just going home. It's a regular day for her. And for me, it was also a regular day.

I was just chasing my brother around the yard, and we had no idea that the ultimate clash was going to occur right there in that street and it would somehow lead to where we are today. You really can't predict that kind of stuff, life happens.

Yes, first of all, let me just find out. As I said, I used to live in the US. I just came back home.

One of the things I noticed was if you say your mom is struggling with seven kids, right? And sometimes I saw cases where the mom says I cannot do this anymore. I just don't have the capacity.

In South Africa, usually you just give it to an aunt, a relative, a grandma, somebody. We don't have the foster care system that you have in the US.

So my question usually was why don't they find the nearest relative if the parent is not able to take care of the child? Because then they say, oh, the kid got lost in the foster care system.

So I'm not sure how the culture is there, and hopefully you can educate me on it. American culture is, hey, the kid is available if you would like to take custody of the child. This is whether it's an aunt or uncle or grandparent.

But if that person says that, no, we don't want to do it, now, there is no more choice but to get the child to the system and that the fine placement for the child.

The culture here is if the person is up for it, if they have the capacity for it, they'll do it. Perhaps if it's a close-knit family, you don't have that problem. But we just didn't have that.

We have two aunts that live about an hour away, but they have their own lives, they have their own children. It wasn't their responsibility to take care of us. So I don't put that on them at all.

This is a different culture in America.

It's probably different where you are, where everyone is saying, well, listen, if you can't do it, I'm your sister, I'm your brother, I'll take them for you because we don't want them to get lost out here in the world.

We never have contact with them again. But that happens so much here in America. It's a really sad thing.

Yes, I did notice a cultural difference.

Now, back to your story. After you met the judge and she used to take you and your siblings to all these fun activities, what happened as you were growing older? What were the stories you were telling yourself?

Because we talk a lot about communication, especially the stories you tell yourself based on your experiences.

7:35

Childhood Challenges

I met her at four and it was a very amazing moment when I met her.

Most of that year of my life was pretty beautiful. But in the same year, we all got removed from my mom's house. All of us get dispersed to different homes.

I go live with a cousin and my paternal grandmother. My siblings go live elsewhere. We all get dispersed.

While it was very nice to meet her and it was very beautiful, almost in the same moment, it got snatched away because now we're all gone, we're all dispersed. But she managed to keep in contact with us as best she could.

The brother who I chased into the street, he actually went to live with her when we got taken from my mom. So he was there with her and she kept in contact with the family. So I would go see her sometimes whenever I could.

So starting from that point, Roberta, you got to start questioning yourself and asking, the first question is, well, will I ever go back home? That's the first question.

Because you think as a child that the world is very simple and things will eventually work themselves out in some miracle, you will go back home to your mother, you'll be with your siblings again and everything will go back to normal.

But that's not how life worked out for me and that's just not what happened. I never went back home. I never got a chance to go back home.

So in that, you begin to question yourself, or if you say, well, why is it that my parents did not make the effort to try to actually come and retrieve me and bring me back to the home?

Because when you get taken from your parents and the US system at least, you deal with Child Protective Services, they give you a plan. If you follow the plan to the T, they will consider giving you custody of your children back.

So my thought pattern was, well, I'm going home at some point. And I actually watched four or five of my older siblings return home. And so I'm wondering, okay, well, when is it going to be my chance?

And the chance just never came. Most of them went back. They got a chance to go back and be with my mom, and I never got that chance.

So my self-worth got called in the question early on in life because I was concerned that, well, I'm the youngest child. I would think that I would be the first one that somebody would consider when sending them back to the mother's house.

So you question your self-worth, you question whether or not you're someone that is adequate.

Again, you question whether or not you have a certain level of love that exists for you because you're at a very tender age and you're still very susceptible to a lot of things here in the world, and you're trying to figure out, well, where do I fit

in? And who should I be for this moment until I get to return to where I was? I never got that chance. So self-worth is what got caught in the question very early on.

And you got to combat that by trying to build your own self-esteem, be it through athletics, academics, whatever you do, the certain talent that you have to build your own self-esteem and your own self-worth.

So you exerted yourself more into athletics, into school. What about friendships? Did you feel that they gave you a sense of belonging as you were growing up when you didn't return to your mom?

Certainly.

So to this day, my friendships are my family. My best friends are closer to me than my own siblings are. I felt a lot of validation and being someone who was well-liked socially, someone who had a bunch of friends, who got along with a lot of people.

I never had enemies, to my knowledge. I was always someone that knew how to attract people, make friends, and just have a good time. I also never allow what happened to me in life to affect how I was.

So I didn't let that turn me into a very bitter or sour or dark person. If you met me, you would never know that these things even happened. Because I'm always the exact opposite.

And it's not because I'm concealing things, it's more so I've taken it as lessons, and I've taken it as tribulations that have really developed who I am, and my character, and my fortitude. I'm very happy with what happened to me.

I'm very satisfied with who I've become. And that's how I was able to deal with that stuff, but you never would have known if you met me.

It's not something you wear on your face. That's right.

11:40

Career and Justice

So of all the careers you could have chosen, why go into criminal justice?

I think we all have a few options in life.

And we grow up thinking that we want to be a certain thing because we either have heroes that we aspire to be, be they athletes or you look at someone on a movie, or some celebrity, or perhaps it's your parents that are your heroes.

And you have this idea of who you want to become. I didn't have much of an idea, but I knew that my environment, when I got to live with the judge when I was 15, I was surrounded by attorneys.

She's an attorney, her husband was an attorney, her sons are attorneys, her brother's an attorney. I mean, there's like 13 to 15 attorneys in the family. There's so many of them.

And so the osmosis just took place. And I'm in the environment, I'm soaking up all of this language that they're speaking in the jar again. And I'm trying to make sense of it as a teenager.

And I have no idea what they're talking about. There's no idea what they're talking about. So that's what the idea came from originally, that I was in the environment.

It took form from there.

Right. Now, let's talk about one of your motives is you help people rise above the system.

One thing that the US is notorious for is that the justice system is not very just based on your race, mainly, based on your social or economic standing, whatever it is, but it's never just, even though it's called the justice system.

Looking at your work, have you found that to be the case? And what have you found are the common factors on why it's not just?

I think that equality is more of an ideal than a reality.

And when I say that, we look at the justice system and we expect it to be perfect, or at least somewhat perfect, that everything should be black and white and down the middle, and it shouldn't matter where you come from, it shouldn't matter how much

money you make, it shouldn't matter who your parents are, but the reality of it is that's just not true, because it is operated by humans, and humans are fallible, and we all have flaws. Quite frankly, we just can't get around that.

And so it's unsurprising that things naturally fall on one side versus the other side, more so than often. What I have found is that the system appears to be favorable to someone who it believes has earned favor, if that makes sense.

Let's say I go into court. I'm lucky enough to have been brought up under the tutelage of Judge Poindexter, her husband, Gerald Poindexter, who are very well known in the area where I practice law.

And so countless times, I've been before a judge that's known one of the two. And I'm pretty sure that because they know them and know that I come from them, that I get a certain level of privilege, perhaps.

So for me, it almost worked both ways because when I was younger, I didn't have any of these things. Again, I grew up in a very impoverished environment, and I lived in project housing in neighborhoods that were not very, very safe.

But then as I got older, I lived with the Poindexters. I go to law school, and now my story is what it is. These judges know what my story is and what it's attached to.

I think I almost benefit from it because they know what I came from, because they know how I got here and because it was very complicated and because they also know Judge Poindexter.

But on the flip side, let's say that I were my oldest brother who was in jail for double homicide. He never got to experience what I've experienced, because he got Judge Poindexter when he was already 18, and so they didn't spend much time together.

He was already out of the house living his life as an adult. Things went from there. So he's on the other side of the spectrum, and I'm all the way over here.

But we grew up in the same household for a number of years, and we had the same mother, slept in the same bed, and we ate from the same bowl, the same plate sometimes. But we live entirely different lives. So the system is very interesting like that.

Because again, on one hand, I get this privilege because of my story, and overcoming and things like that, but then he's on the other end. It's just not perfect, Roberta. It's hard to try to give one answer that can correct anything.

I think it's better than what it was. I'm sure people in the civil rights era had a much more difficult time than we have today. I'm sure those even before the civil rights era had it even worse.

So I don't want to complain, but I will say there is always room for improvement. And we can never think that we should stop improving, because there are still things that need to be addressed, but it takes time to address things.

Absolutely. You're very realistic about it, but also being hopeful.

16:36

Rehabilitation and Mentorship

So let's talk about redemption. You just mentioned your older brother. Does now the system have a certain level of steps towards redemption for somebody in his situation right now?

So he is the most extreme version of what you can have for someone, because again, it's double homicide.

I believe it was involved with likely some gang stuff.

For him, there's not much you can do besides try to do in-house rehabilitation, offer programs on the inside for him to try to understand what led to him making these choices that got him to where he is.

But also we have to remember that he was 18 when this happened. An 18-year-old mind, he's I think 41, 42 now, is very different than someone who's in their 40s. Much more developed, much more mature.

These sound decisions that they make in just a matter of seconds have lifelong consequences. I'm sure he had no idea that his choices at that moment would impact his life for the rest of eternity.

He had no idea, I'm sure, because it was a very split-second decision. The system for someone like him could only do but so much. What I will say is that for people who have committed crimes, but they have redeemable rates, it is better for them.

Because now there are so many programs that are trying to address things like addiction, things like mental health disorders. That's all being taken into consideration.

They're not just being handed a jail sentence and saying, okay, well, you go here, sit here for a number of years, think about what you've done, and then once you're released, we will just hope that you are fixed. That's not going to work.

That old school model is not what's being enforced anymore.

What I've seen now are a lot of programs being offered, a lot of rehabilitation being offered, and trying to figure out, okay, if this person has to go to prison, because you can't avoid it every single time, if the person has to go to prison, how do

we equip them while they're in prison to come out a better person than what they were when they went in? Because people will go inside, they'll become just objects of the system.

They'll become very, very used to living that way, and it becomes this do or die when they're there, and they're worse off when they get out than what they were when they went in. So you don't want that.

I think we're doing a better job trying to address that now.

That's really good to hear. Yeah. You don't want them to come out worse because they were in survival mode in jail trying to avoid attacks from everybody else.

Now, when you talk about, so you were mentored by Judge Poindexter. Did I say that right? Poindexter?

That's correct.

Yes, ma'am.

Yes. I believe you also have your own mentorship program.

It's not like an official organization. It's just more so things that I do organically. Just talking to other men, talking to younger men and young adults, and trying to give them some level of guidance.

It means a different thing for different people. Because someone may need guidance on, well, listen, I'm applying to college and I have no idea which one to go to. What's your opinion, attorney Wright?

And someone else may say, hey, listen, I'm going through a very tough time and I have no idea what to do or what to turn. I feel like my life is falling apart. Can you please help me?

This is the dichotomy here. It's the spectrum and the guidance is different for everybody. And so I just try my best to give the appropriate advice based upon my experience.

And I don't know every single thing. I know what I've experienced. I know how I got through what I've gotten through, but it's a very subjective reality for me.

It's not objective for everybody. So I just try my best to give impartial advice, keep it very neutral and tailor it to whatever the requirement is. So that's what I do.

I'm glad that you're saying that it's not formalized because anybody listening would think, oh, but I don't have a nonprofit or something.

Just any kid that you come across, you can influence. Anybody. Yes.

Absolutely.

Anybody.

Because I'm thinking a lot of the neighborhoods you described when you grew up, a lot of those kids, if they feel I don't have anybody to give me guidance on what my future could look like or to ask questions.

If I'm curious about where I could go, which path my life could take. If they know that there's somebody they can reach out to and ask those questions.

Definitely.

21:15

Past Not Defining

One of the things you say to the kids that you mentioned is that their past does not disqualify them from success.

If all they've seen around them in their neighborhood is not the best results or not where they want their lives to go, how do you change that mindset?

If I were someone that only chose to accept what I could see around me at an early age, I would never be where I am right now. Because I had way more years of struggle and trauma than I ever had living with the Poindexters.

I lived there for three years, my last three years of high school. But every year before then was very complicated and I was being displaced time and time again. I lived in so many different environments.

I saw domestic violence, I saw drug abuse, I saw all of these things that you don't want kids to be exposed to.

If you only accept what you see before you or in front of you, then you're going to have a very difficult time going out here and attacking life the way you should. You need to find a source of imagination.

It should be like a well and you go back to the well with your pail and you just keep on scooping water every time your pail goes empty. Just to rejuvenate yourself. And again, that could be from any source.

You could look online. You can look at your heroes. Maybe your hero is someone that's an Avenger if you're a child.

Maybe you like one of the superheroes. Maybe you like Iron Man or Thor or Captain America, or you love basketball. Maybe you love tennis.

Maybe you are a young black woman who looks at someone like Naomi Osaka and say, well, wow, she's incredible. Cocoa Golf is incredible. Serena, Venus, they're incredible.

Maybe you enjoy golf. Maybe, again, you pick somebody, pick somebody that you admire for whatever they're doing, and you have to keep studying these people time and time again.

If you don't have it directly in front of you, which most of us never have that, you have to find a source of inspiration, so that way you can imagine yourself and you can think yourself into their predicament at some point in life.

23:30

Connect with Dante

Find your source of inspiration, and you certainly have been an inspiration with your story today, Dante.

Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Yes, ma'am. Before you go, would you like our listeners to reach out to you?

Please, absolutely.

They can find me on social media. I'm at Dante Wright, ESQ, on Instagram, on Facebook. I believe it's the same tag, and the ESQ is short for Esquire.

They use that as like a moniker for attorneys. That's why it's that. So it's Dante Wright, ESQ.

Please reach out to me, contact me. Would love to talk, chat about anything. Any advice I can offer, open to offering it.

They can give me advice too. I'm open to accepting it, but I look forward to it.

Great stuff.

Dante Wright, Esquire, the attorney, speaker and author of the upcoming book, The Judge and the Juvenile, who has really inspired us with his powerful story and the mentorship program that he helps with young men who are looking to have a successful

future. Thank you very much. We are really honored to have had you with us on our show today.

Thank you, Roberta. I really appreciate it. Great talking to you.

Absolute pleasure.

I've enjoyed it as well. Thank you, Dante. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify, and stay tuned for more episodes to come.