USBE: You described yourself in your writings as feeling like the 'class dummy' in the fifth grade. How did that experience impact on your life?
Carson: My mother, who had only a third-grade education, had great confidence in me, and she kept saying, "You can do better than that." It didn't work, but she kept saying it; that was good. I had the eye exam in the fifth grade and found out I couldn't see clearly. I thought most people could see like I did, so I didn't feel anything different about it. But when I could actually see the board, I went from an F student to a D student, and I was elated.

But my mother was still very disappointed. She said, "That's not good enough. You can do much better than that." And that's when she started the program to get me reading a lot. She had confidence, and she prayed, and she asked God to give her the wisdom, and she had confidence to turn off the TV and require us to read two books a piece from the Detroit Public Library and submit to her written book reports.

I think that was really the key, because a lot of things happened. First of all, when you start reading, you're looking at words all the time, so you learn how to spell. All of a sudden, you're not spelling everything incorrectly. You also learn grammar and syntax, because you're looking at sentence structure. And, most importantly, you're learning to use your imagination. You learn to think, because you have to take those sentences and make them into concepts. You don't have to do that when you're watching TV.

So I also began to read about people, and that was really how I came to the conclusion that people are the ones who create their own futures by the choices that they make. Booker T. Washington, born into slavery, illegal for him to read, but he decided he was going to learn how to read. And he read everything he could get his hands on; he became extraordinarily well-educated and became an advisor to the president. He did that himself. No circumstance caused that; it was his determination. Once I kind of understood that, I began to realize that with all the people in my environment complaining about this and that and the other, and "The system's against me," and I said, "Maybe it is, but you can do something about that." And I said, "I'm getting out of here."

USBE: How do you convince young people who see their challenges differently?
Carson: I'd say everybody has obstacles in his life; there's no question about that. And you can either come up to that obstacle and say, "My gosh! There is a containing fence," and sit down and pout, or you can walk up to that obstacle and say, "It looks like a hurdle. I'm going to jump over it." If you treat it like a hurdle, each one strengthens you, and you get better and faster at going over them. If you treat it as a fence, then you become defeated, and you become a victim. And it's a matter of your mind-set.

USBE: The Carson Scholars Fund, which you and your wife founded in 1994, was created to help children stay competitive in science, math, and technology, as well as balance academic achievement with the high esteem society gives to sports and entertainment. How do you get that balance?
Carson: I think the key is to start early. With our scholarship program, children can receive a thousand-dollar scholarship in the fourth grade for superior academic performance and demonstration of humanitarian qualities. And really the kinds of kids we select are such superstars and are doing so well. But by taking them and placing them on a pedestal, particularly at an early age, they begin to attract the admiration of their classmates rather than disdain.

And instead of being the nerd and a geek, now they're someone to be admired, because at this early age, they've already got a scholarship. They're responsible for that big, fancy trophy that's out in the glass showcase; they get a medal; they get local press attention. And we began to make that something to which young children aspire rather than reject. That really is the whole premise of it.

USBE: How would you get the black community more excited about science?
Carson: I think, first of all, it's  important to hold up models. Everybody, even animals, do things by modeling what you put in front of them. We simply have to stop all of this glorification of stuff that doesn't mean anything – BET, MTV, bopping around in the baggy pants, "this is the greatest thing that ever happened" stuff, which means absolutely zero….

Most of the kids who walk down the street, and see a red light, don't know that Garrett Morgan, a black man, invented traffic signals. They look at an incandescent light or an electric lamp, they don't know that Lewis Latimer, a black man, invented that, or that he came up with the filament that made the light bulb work for more than three days. Or they see an atomic submarine: They don't know that Henrietta Bradberry invented the underwater cannon and made it possible to launch torpedoes and submarines. Or they see a mascara ad, and Madam CJ Walker, first woman to become a millionaire from her own effort in this country because of her development of cosmetic products in this country.

And the list goes on and on and on. Do they know about it? Of course not. They only know about Michael Jordan. We have somehow got to bring this to a level of consciousness, so that people begin to see themselves in a different light. If you look at the Jewish community, the heroes are always the scientists, the intellectual literary agents, all of these kind of people. And that's what they hold up from the beginning, and the kids aspire to that. We hold up the basketball players and the rap singers, so our kids aspire to that. Of course, that's a bad aspiration, because so few will ever get there.

USBE: Will your sons be following in your footsteps?
Carson: Medicine is a tough sell these days. Because, first of all, it's very expensive: The average debt of someone coming out of medical school now is $130,000, and that's just for medical school, not for college or any other thing. You have very long residences in which you get paid very little money. You come out, you face managed care, where you may never even be able to pay your debts back, not to mention all the medical malpractice premiums which are just sky high, and all the regulations where you can wind up being put in jail for trying to help people. It's getting to be too tough to do.

USBE: If you had known then what you know now, would you have gone into medicine?
Carson: I would have, yes, because I recognize in doing a self-analysis, that's where my talent was. Everybody has different talents. You really need to spend time thinking about what you're really, really good at. That's the direction you need to take.

USBE: You work typically 14-hour days. How do you balance work and family life?
Carson: Particularly when the kids were young, I would schedule my family a year in advance. That's the only way to do it when you're an extraordinarily busy person. You can't do it any other way, or so many other things will creep into that time, and your family won't have enough time. And that's something I highly recommend for everybody: You've got to make it a priority. And somehow you manage to get the other stuff done to.

USBE: What is the hardest decision you've made in your professional life?
Carson: There are so many incredibly difficult decisions, but probably the hardest decision for me was whether I would pursue the many social activities or whether I would devote myself to my academic career. Because I was told by many, many people, "You'll never take on a place at Johns Hopkins [and] become a tenured professor if you fuse out yourself into all these other things. Impossible! You can't do it." So I made the choice: It's more important, really, for me to go out and to try and do things to uplift and encourage other people than to worry about my own career. That was a very, very tough decision. So, as it turns out, I was able to do both. But when I made that decision, I fully considered that I might not be able to make it to the rank of tenure and full professor.