Second Chances and First Principles

In this episode of When We Disagree, host Michael Lee sits down with advocate Radia Baxter, a community advocate and political advisor in South Carolina, explores a powerful tension: our desire for economic growth without equal access to opportunity. Drawing from her experience as a teen mother who defied expectations, Baxter shares how personal adversity shaped her commitment to second chances and community empowerment. She argues that true “significant success” means helping others see their own value and bringing them along in the process. From leading programs inside detention centers to building trust across divides, Baxter reveals how vulnerability, access, and belief can transform lives. This conversation explores what it really takes to create opportunity and why trust is the foundation of it all.

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Transcript

Michael Lee : [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. Make cars safer with seat belts and airbags and people drive more recklessly, put helmets on football players and they launch themselves headfirst at other players' heads.

This is the peltzman effect when safety measures reduce the perceived risk. People complicate this by taking even greater risks, we maintain a constant level of acceptable danger, and we adjust our behavior to preserve it, even in the face of new safety measures. So in disagreements about safety rules and protection, the peltzman effect means our solutions can often, not always, but often create the problems they're actually meant to solve.

The Peltzman effect complicates parenting debates. For instance, if you give kids helmets, they'll bike more dangerously, perhaps create [00:01:00] safe spaces, and they take emotional risks, they wouldn't otherwise implement strict rules and they find riskier ways to rebel. Every safety measure changes behavior in ways that partially offset the benefits.

Parents fighting about protection levels. Rarely consider how safety measures might actually encourage the very dangers they're trying to prevent. Workplace safety initiatives can show peltzman effects as well. Install better backup systems and people become careless about saving their work. Implement elaborate checking procedures and individuals pay less attention.

And in relationships, emotional safety measures can really backfire. The partner who constantly reassures might actually enable insecurity rather than reducing it. And the friend who's always cushioning bad news might encourage denial rather than resilience. The parent who protects from all consequences might create dependency rather than competence or independence.

Sometimes the best intentions can create a backfire effect, and understanding the peltzman effect [00:02:00] changes how we approach safety and rules. Instead of just adding protections, consider how behavior might adapt. Instead of making things completely safe or trying to maybe maintain enough risk to encourage caution and in disagreements, remember that people aren't passive recipients.

They actively adjust their behavior to maintain their preferred risk level. Sometimes the safest approach acknowledges that perfect safety is impossible. I'm Michael Lee, professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. 

Radia Baxter: Our guest today on 

Michael Lee : When We Disagree is Rodia Baxter.

Rodia is an advocate for people who aren't given a second chance. She's a mom whose work is inspired by a quest to achieve what she calls significant success. Rodia tell us an argument story. 

Radia Baxter: So good. Good morning, Dr. Lee. It's a pleasure and a priv privilege to be a part of this podcast today. So as I was thinking about your [00:03:00] topic when we disagree, what would be a core disagreement for me?

And I thought about it and then. One thing that came to my mind was when we want economic development and surplus wealth, but we don't want to provide the tools and access or opportunities for all people to succeed significantly. And I thought about that and I was like, it is I couldn't understand how we want, wealth and we want growth and we want to be at a certain level, but we only wanna provide those tools, the, that access and those opportunities to certain.

Core group 

Michael Lee : uhhuh. 

Radia Baxter: And when in order for us to grow at together as a community, as a municipalities, as a state, as a nation, as a world, everybody has to be incorporated. We can't just move the needle with just [00:04:00] focusing on one group of people. 

Michael Lee : Is this disagreement between equality of access, equality of resources, and equality of outcome between, 

Radia Baxter: so I think it's between a whole bunch of different demographics, right?

Uhhuh, so you have class, you have gender, you have race you have thoughts, you have geographical locations. You have wealth. You have social norms you have it, it could even be as far as institutions, systems. Behaviors, so I think it's a whole bunch of different index cards on a, on a.

Oblong square, rectangle table, so it's just, it's like all over the place. It's like a different spider web with multi different layers, multi different connections. Disconnections, [00:05:00] alignments not aligned. Fair access, not fair, not equitable. Just several different colors. 

Michael Lee : Can you tell us a story from your life that would help us understand why you care about this dispute so much?

Radia Baxter: I agree that you brought that point up. Everybody considers a successful family is the mom and dad who went to college. Who got married bought a house, had children then their children go on to be educated and, get a job, blah, blah, blah, in their career. I grew up with a mom and a dad who got married, who went to college, owned a house.

Military family background, but I ended up getting pregnant when I was a teenager. And most of my parents, peers and colleagues and friends and of course along my parents were disappointed. And so I [00:06:00] have firsthand advocacy or firsthand of how to speak truth to power when it comes to that experience.

I had so many people doubt me that I wouldn't be successful because of the lens that, that I was in now, right? So I had to figure out, okay, I got all these. People who said at first they supported me. Now they're naysayers. But how do I navigate through this process to ensure that my my son at the time and now my sons and my daughter will be significantly successful?

And so just to get start off with a little bit of background, my mom got married when she was 30, at 30, I had already had three kids. And was getting ready to go through a divorce at the time because I had gotten married when I was 21. There's one difference, right?

I went to college early, started college when I was 16. I'm very intellectually smart, all of those things, but I [00:07:00] just ended up making a wrong. Decision that became very impactful for my life. And so I had to figure out I came to the College of Charleston. I had opportunities to go to College of Charleston Walford, LSU, but I ended up in Charleston and that's when I started attending College of Charleston.

And then I became pregnant. And so I'm like, okay, what do I do? How do I raise my son? Given in the space that I am in a single teenage mom give him the best world that I can. And then not only that, we're black, right? So now we're talking about raising a black boy in the holy city in the south, right?

How do you, how do I do that? And do it well? With Christian backgrounds, all of that, your parents, all of that. And so one thing that I did is I thought about community, right? I am the my, my grandfather was the first black farmer in south [00:08:00] in Somerton, South Carolina, underneath he did a lot of work with the board versus the Brown versus the board of education.

I, he has told me stories of how he used to put my mom and them on the back of his truck, cover it with a tarp just to get them to school. So civil engagement and advocacy has already been in me. Community is already within me. So how do I take those principles and that framework and continue that to raise my kids right here in Charleston, South Carolina?

And with that being said and under the, that leadership, I started driving cab. And I was like, I gotta know this community. And so not for e economic base. 'cause back then, or and I say that word loosely 'cause my daughter is back then could be 19 hundreds, but. You at that point, the wages was like $10, $8, right?

But it wasn't for the wages. It was to truly be significantly [00:09:00] successful in the upbringing of my kids to know the community. And I learned Charleston, any, the geographical part of it, the social part of it, the community, the building. And I wanna say that's one of the frameworks that has led me to where I'm at today.

And when it, you're talking about transformational leadership. My kids are extremely successful. My oldest son, who I talk a lot about, and I I talk about my kids, all of the three of them. So I don't want them to, when they hear this podcast to be like, one on the other. But my oldest son graduated from Howard University with a mechanical engineer degree.

And he just recently got a degree from LSU in international business as a master's and he's. Get ready to turn 27. My middle son graduated from South Carolina State with a mass communications and sports management degree, and he currently works for South Carolina State in their four H program.

And then my younger. My baby as I call her, she goes to North Carolina a and [00:10:00] t in her sophomore year doing phenomenal in a nursing degree. So I would consider that first thing of ensuring that I provide the framework and principles of a foundation and then build upon it to ensure that my kids are doing well for themselves.

I've done at least. A quarter part of it. And I so that's advocacy on that level. And in my community, I have built connections and relationships for, not me, not my kids, but for folks. So that way that they can trust themselves as individuals to be better than what they are. So going back to your question.

Those kind of things that I have done along the way and learn and taught myself. I have also taught others to be in those spaces to access those opportunities or to even provide those opportunities for others that are like me, that deserve [00:11:00] a second chance to be better than what we thought we were or could be.

But we know just intrinsically that we are. 

Michael Lee : What are some of the biggest challenges you face in advocating for people who aren't given a second chance? 

Radia Baxter: So I think it's twofold. One is getting them to believe, to see their true power, to see their value, to see, not what is in front of them.

Like I talk a little bit about people where you gotta learn how to not just focus on the branches and the trees. You gotta focus on the forest, right? So how to be, concrete versus abstract. You gotta look at the bigger picture. Sometimes it seems like it's a rough spot or this person, or you can't see the outcome later.

But sometimes you gotta trust yourself and believe in yourself and see that, yeah, I'm going through this rough spot, or yeah, I'm not able to access. This point right now, but maybe it's because I need to be further learning more skills in my [00:12:00] behavior 

In education and not as far as in academia, but just in knowing knowledge is power and knowing how to go through a move through those systems.

As you get to a point of, to the next level, 

Michael Lee : how do you separate, you talk about significant success. How do you, and the opening dispute we were talking about was about equality of economic opportunity, equality of resources, and economic development. How do you define success? Full stop. And then to what extent do you fi define success as economic achievement?

Radia Baxter: So how do I define success? One? I think for me it is. To help somebody. I keep saying this to my, to me for success is to get folks to trust themselves to be better than what they are. And it could be me. How do I get myself [00:13:00] to trust myself better than what I am? 'cause you gotta start within yourself first.

And it could be, access to, I like let's just use the College of Charleston, for example. When I first came here in 97 I didn't truly fully understand my value and the opportunities that I had within there to make certain decisions, right? When. 20 years later, I understood that and I understood the value that I had in that I needed to not only trust myself, but I needed to trust the College of Charleston.

I needed to trust the professors. I needed to trust my kids, that they knew what journey we were on. So that way that I can effectively get to that point of graduation and be able to go to the next step. So that would be an example of that. Now, how to be significant with that is to bring others along, right?

To get others to see. I can, that I can be transformed within myself. So if I can do it, you can do it also and not under and [00:14:00] understand that leadership is not just just being at the top. You've also gotta be leadership on boots on the ground, right? You also gotta show how you are not just you're that builder, you're that connector, you're that engager, all through all levels.

So to me you gotta be very impactful on, just on the cognitive side more how do you get folks to change their way of thinking, right? Their mindset of truly being in tune with themselves and then with their core beliefs. To know that I am a game changer, on so many different levels, not just on the top level, that sounds great, but to be truly a game changer at the bottom level where you can just open.

A peep of a window. And that's an opportunity and that's an access to the opportunity. And then for the folks who have the opportunities and have the access to open it for others, for them to open the window a little bit more so that other [00:15:00] folks can jump in that window and see that, oh, I open that access or that opportunity, that's alignment.

That's strategic alignment in a strategic building. 

Michael Lee : You use a word that I talk about a lot, and so I want to ask you more about it, which is trust. You open this episode by talking about those who don't have much, and then how can we figure out a way as a culture to promote, as you said, economic development to give folks greater access to the slice of the pie or to the full pie.

Then you just talked about trust and that at some point you're trying to get people to A, trust themselves and B, to trust others, and it's the trust others piece that I wonder if we could talk about for a moment, how do you get others to, how do we get greater trust in our community? And then how do you get those who haven't been dealt the greatest hand in life to trust systems and other people, other communities?

Et cetera, 

Radia Baxter: so 

Michael Lee : you that don't seem aligned with them. 

Radia Baxter: You bring up a great point. It, a part of my career, I was the director of [00:16:00] programs at the Charleston County Sheriff's Office for the detention center, Uhhuh, and, at the detention center, the jail. So it's pre-sentencing.

But one of the things was, is how do you. Get justice involved folks to see the other side of where they're at now. And that is through truly providing programming opportunities so they can look cognitively beyond that. And so one of the ways, just imagine me, I'm five two, I'm short, some people say I look like I'm 12 to go into a facility of folks who I've been.

Charged with so many different offenses, right? And have had so many different life experiences to get them to understand, Hey, I am here with you, for you to get you better. And at what I did is I called them a. Like a maybe, I think it was about 20 of them in a room and I was like hey, I think that [00:17:00] in order to get you to a different spot cognitively, and also education wise, I need you to participate in this program.

I said, and they're looking at me like I'm crazy. First of all, I am a woman and it's all male gender. Okay. And I'm, I look like I'm 12 again. And they're like, we don't know you. How do we trust you? And I said I want you to take a ride with me. I. And I let them in on a little bit of my experience, right?

Because usually when you let folks know what you've experienced and that you have some kind of alignment, or that, then they can see themselves a little bit differently. And so we talked about, I had them have a seat at the table. That's number one. When trust. When you want folks to be a part of a movement or a journey or a program or however, an opportunity you have to have their voices heard and have them have a seat at the table.

That was number one. Number two, I again showed them a [00:18:00] little part of me that let them know that I do have somewhat of a learned experience or behavior, not, nah, not being an orange jump shoot or something like that, but just in my life experiences and number. Three. I shook their hand. Okay. When we talked about how this would look I looked them in the eye and I shook them, shook their hand, and gave them my word that this experience would be unique and different, and that I had their backs, but I needed them to have their own backs and I needed them to put in.

Integrity, loyalty and all of that goes into it with it. And to trust me, to trust them. And that when that happened, I was able to get them to, okay, let's go. Let's move. Let's get ready for this movement and journey. And likewise, on the other side, for the people who were providing the opportunities.

I had to get them at the seat of a table, had to hear [00:19:00] their voices heard, because they have other experiences that they bring in the table. You know how if we're providing this program, are they going to accept us? It's a lot of moving parts, but when you collectively get everybody at the seat of the table, get all voices to where they'd be heard and get the understanding that, that we all can do this together, then we are significantly successful.

Michael Lee : What was involved in the program? The juvenile detention program was, 

Radia Baxter: It was more than just juveniles. Oh, okay. It was adults. I and the programming included receiving their high school education, GED skill Building Career development. It was also being a part of, several of them took.

College classes from the College of Charleston, still taking it from the Citadel. Can you imagine taking a critical thinking class by one of top. Top students. I'm a talk professor at the College of Charleston and at the [00:20:00] Citadel, and some of them have never even re received a certificate of attendance, so can you imagine with that open?

And they were allowed to explore, educate. They were allowed to. Being the presence of a professor that just got through teaching a class in Germany. Or just got through teaching a a cred critical intelligence class. I mean that it was phenomenal. So those were the kind of opportunities.

Work keys economic development. They even learned how to use a forklift so that way when they left a facility, they would have an opportunity to show I have a certificate, I have a skillset that I can go ahead and get a job so that I won't return to the behaviors that I were doing before and I can provide for my family and be.

A, a great community and impactful member in the Charleston community and that I can participate in public and community wellness. 

Michael Lee : It sounds to me like a lot of the trust inspiring movements that you made with these folks was [00:21:00] as a result of self-disclosure on your part Y 

Radia Baxter: Yeah, it was, and I am, if a lot of people know me, I'm extremely private.

I just like the work to be done. But when I know that I have to do some self discovery on myself. I had to, and I also had to show folks that look what happened to me. And now I look where I'm at, look where, people that are aligned with me. Look where, I've worked on campaigns to political campaigns where there have been state senators, representatives, council members, presidents, just been in many different rooms.

Community leaders. I have a lot of my mentees are phenomenal business leaders, phenomenal community leaders are just phenomenal people. It's just been amazing to be on that journey. And just, it's opened my eyes a lot for [00:22:00] myself. And again, I've been very truly transparent and vulnerable in spaces that I probably didn't want to be.

But it's well worth the journey again because again, as you stated when we started I am on a quest to be significantly successful and however that looks long as it's impactful and it's right, it's the right thing to do. 

Michael Lee : Radio Baxter, thank you so much for being on when We Disagree. 

Radia Baxter: Thank you.

Michael Lee : When We Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse k and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We disagree@gmail.com.