Devin Robinson: Going Against the Grain

By Jody Rathgeb

             It is fitting that Devin Robinson’s foundation is called the Going Against the Grain Peace Coalition. He himself goes against the grain in almost every respect:

• He is island-born but has developed a fully cosmopolitan perspective. Today, his concerns are quintessentially American.
• There’s no easy island vibe for him: His life path has been a difficult one and finding his way has taken hard work.
• His goal is not to fight crime, but to promote peace.
• He writes books not to make money, but to stimulate thought.

           Devin was born and spent his early years on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he managed to get into plenty of trouble. “I was smart, but I was socially dysfunctional,” he says. “I always found the wrong crowd.” In 1992, when he had just graduated from high school but faced several felony convictions, a judge gave him an ultimatum: jail or join the military. He moved to the United States and joined the Army.

            “It was a start, but I was still entrenched in some bad habits,” he relates, and he quickly found a new bad crowd. “I didn’t get it together until about nine years later.”

            He says his rough life began wearing him down. “I got tired.” Then, in 1997, his best friend was murdered during a drug deal gone bad. “That was more a defining moment for me than anything else. I asked, ‘Do I have the power to change this?’”

            The question lingered in the back of his mind until he decided to really study it. “I took six months off from life to do some introspection,” he says. “I did an inventory. And I came out with a different perspective. I started reading, going to school, going to church.”

            Once he got in gear, Devin became a powerhouse. In the years since his turnaround he has become an author, motivational speaker and activist. He now lives in Atlanta, Ga., and teaches economics at Oglethorpe University and business at Southern Crescent Technical College, conducts online classes for Bellvue University; and has written six books, many with an eye toward changing black perspectives. (The latest is titled “Rebuilding the Black Infrastructure.”) He also founded the Going Against the Grain Peace Coalition, an activist group that takes on “crime, violence and toxicities in the community.”

            The goals of Devin’s coalition are slightly different from those of other activist groups. “Instead of punishing crime, we are about teaching how NOT to become a criminal,” he says. “We’re looking to teach people who lack these social intelligences.” The idea dovetails with the messages in his books: “If we would support the rebuilding of black infrastructure, we would see discrimination dissipate,” he says. “It would send a clear message that the black population is not a burden.”

            Devin says that being an islander has informed the ambitious part of his personality. “It’s a trait of the VI that we try to push through and

not sit down and wait for life,” he says. Still, he has no political ambitions. “I’m doing this because I think I have a good message and can help people,” he comments.