Sunday, June 17, 2012

Brittany Counts on Participating on in the BIL Project




AH: Okay, so why did you agree to be a part of this project?

BC: I was recommended by Dr. [Consuela] Francis and if she thinks that it is a good idea then 99% of the time it is a great idea and I thought that it was a great way to leave my mark at the College of Charleston, if there is nothing else that shows that I here, I can come back here in 20 years possibly and show my family or children, this is what I did when I was here, this is, this was my life up until this point.

Brittany Counts on Social Justice



AH: I think that I want to ask you about social justice, civil rights, working with youth you are obviously on the front lines about the kinds of issues that they talk about within the Charleston area. Although you are fairly new to Charleston, have you come into contact with issues that are facing Black youth here in Charleston? How do you feel, what is your role in that to possibly improve social justice, civil rights here in Charleston?

BC: I hear a lot, especially from the boys in the program about they cannot walk along, how they cannot walk from their house to a convenience store to get something to drink without often being stopped and questioned by police and they have asked me to take them to DMV so that they could get if not a permit at least a state authorized identification card so that maybe it can help a little bit, when they tell the cops that they are not doing anything, I am just going to get something to drink that is it. They suffer from racial profiling a lot and with the, all of the media attention on the Trayvon Martin case, it hit home for me, because when they were like he was walking with his Arizona tea and a Skittles in his black hoodie, I instantly saw so so many of my male students because they do that so so often. They love their Arizona drinks and they wear their hoodies not necessarily black ones, they have purples ones, it is just a part of their daily outfits even in the summer time you can count that they are going to have that hoodie and it just scary to think that it could have easily been one of my students, and it hit me hard enough as it was and just that thought made the impact, so, so much worse. And so when the College of Charleston decided to have demonstrations and marches for, to let people know the injustice that the Martin family had, was dealing with. I participated in all that I could, I discussed it with my kids to see how they felt about it, and what their families, their friends are saying about it. And they don’t, it has not necessarily hit them yet, that social injustice happens on a daily basis, it is just that when, you have to have people who are willing to bring it to the light and is often, is been referred to as a case very similar, the Emmitt Till case, and my students don’t know who Emmitt Till is, they don’t know what has happened to him and as we get into this discussion I realize that so much of African American history has been left out in their school books, in anything. I remember learning of Emmitt Till in elementary school, he is not even mentioned anymore, it is just like every year it gets less and less and eventually there is a fear that Black history will not be taught as a part of history classes at all. And so, my, the way that I see it is, how can these kids be expected to work hard to prevent something that they never knew happened in the first place. And so we focus on every week bringing something from African American history to them, whether it is something as sad and heart jerking as the Emmitt Till case, or as celebratory story, of how, of the Civil Rights Act and when it was finally passed or how African Americans have come together in times of need and that tends to be a constant throughout history, that whenever one of us is suffering, we are all suffering and we are all there to help. And through, through that, students have found newer motivation and so I feel by inspiring my students, my eight students, if they go out and they share that with one friend, that is sixteen people impacted by my work and my goal of making sure that they know that there is more to what they are being told. That it is not simply this cut and dry, this happened here and this happened here and that got us where we are today. Making sure that they know the big stories that were in the media and some of the stories that weren’t, that way they can have, they can be educated on the facts, and not just on the things that happened in schools, but the things, the problems that they may face in work and make sure that if something comes up and there is a chance of social injustice towards them, we make sure that we prepare them, so that there is nothing that person can say, without coming straight out and saying well, I am doing this because you are African American. They cannot say because you are unclean and unkempt because we train our kids to know that when they go to job, when they have a job interviews, whether it is McDonald’s, or Wal-Mart, or to be assistant in an office in the neighborhood, you are dressed as if you are going to church on Easter Sunday and it is that simple. We prepare them in all of the things that we lacked preparation for ourselves and in all other areas that we feel that because of where they live they do not get exposed to.

Brittany Counts on Working at Metanoia




AH: You said that you work as a counselor for eighth grade girls, what school do you work with?

BC: I work with, my program is not housed in a specific school. I have girls who attend Morningside Middle School in North Charleston; Military Magnet in North Charleston, and yeah, those are my two schools, they all stem from Chicora Elementary and our program is there because the Chicora-Cherokee area of Charleston is the poorest sector of Charleston and these kids had nowhere to go during the hours that were most dangerous for them, which would be between 2pm and 6pm, which are the functioning hours of our program. It is during these hours that kids, teenagers, seem to make the choice as to whether go home and do homework or to go stand on the walk with your friend who is selling drugs or to could be forced into robbery or things like that. And so we take them and we give them a safe haven, a lot of them do not constant people in their lives, people who they can depend on, they have people just come through and say that that they are going to be there and before they know it they are gone again. So we teach them skills that need to make it past all of the statistics that say they are going to in Chicora-Cherokee doing the same things that their parents do and that is as far as it goes. We teach them entrepreneurship, and character, we develop their character, we teach them how to deal with their emotions and our program runs from first grade through high school and I work on the high school program. And we are the only program in South Carolina, who has a program for high school students because they tend to be very different because they are growing up, they are defining themselves and that can often lead to attitudes and rebellions when you tell them to do certain things, but we work hard and we let our students know that if they need anything they can come to us.

AH: And so the funding for that program comes through the state or private funds?

BC: We are a non-profit so all of our funds are donated, we have fundraising activities, we have people who are annual donors and then we have the donors who if we need anything we can call them and it is just like they snap their fingers and it is done, but and we host, our biggest fundraising event is Jubilee, which takes place in December and its’ where we showcase what the kids have been working on and our high schoolers have two business, the boys work on the Hodari Brothers [Screen Printing Co.] screen printing and they make mugs and T-shirts for local community organizations and businesses and the girls have a business called the Isoke Sisters [Jewelry] and they make jewelry and they showed off, they showcased the jewelry, they sell the T-shirts and it just a chance for the donors to come together and they can donate money, they can meet the students, they can see what we have been working on, the progresses that we make here and where we are aiming to go in the future.

AH: That is great, how long have you been involved with that?

BC: I am a Bonner Leader and as a Bonner Leader I am committed to serving at least 300 hours of community service a year and Metanoia, which is the name of the program is my work site through my program, through Bonner. It also qualifies for my federal work-study, so I often refer to it as my job as opposed to my work site.

BC: I have been, my first year I worked with sixth grade girls and I am into my second year now, where I moved up to seventh grade and I also have eighth grade students as well.

Brittany Counts on Inman High School




AH: What were some of the major issues that happened at school, I know that some schools had fights and racial tensions, where there anything like that happening in Inman?

BC: Lets’ see, we had people who, it is a really, really small country town, its’ like I mean if you drove through this town, you would think, oh, time has stood still, like we still have the local ice cream shop, where you can like get three scoops of ice cream for $0.95 and a hot dog for like $0.50 and a lot of ways the thoughts of the people has stood still too even more so than the town because it was the way that they were raised and so they raised their children that way and there was a huge, huge problem when President [Barack] Obama was running for his first term, it got so bad that we were not allowed to wear anything supporting him, if we had it on our cars we had cover it up or take it off if we could because of fear that it would cause issues, race issues, there were people who would wear shirts portraying him as a monkey or just other animals and there were lots and lots of racial slurs that we never pointed directly at me, but they were put toward some of the African American friends that I had and whenever an individual would get in trouble or get caught yelling these everyone in the group, but me. They would be like, “why are you singling her out?” “Well she doesn’t count,” and so that was a big issue for me because how I can be sitting here and I am the one that doesn’t count? “Oh well this applies, they are ghetto and you are not” and so that was a huge huge thing people always constantly tell me that “you don’t count when we say this because everybody elese they are loud that they are ghetto and they do all of this and they wear all this long weave and the long nails and they just don’t act intelligent. They do not put up that façade, almost that they do not act like you so therefore when we call them this name, we are not including you.” And we never have like fights revolve out breakout because of it, we had people who were African American and Caucasian who were just kind of liked looked at weirdly because, if they had predominately Black friends, they would be like “yeah, you kind of fit in” and if you had predominately White friends, then “oh they are traitor, they are not really Black at all, they just don’t acknowledge the fact that they have Black in them at all” and so, I tried, I did my best, I had friends of all races and I am thankful for that, but at the same time it was just kind of like, when people would meet me they would get to know me really well, it was not like it really changed their views on other African Americans or the African American community in a whole, it was just kind of like, well there is Black people and then there is Brittany Counts. And so I was like, I don’t understand because Brittany Counts is Black

BC: So I really don’t understand why I don’t get put in with this category and it is like, “if we saw you no way in the world would we grab our purses or feel threatened, but if we saw so and so we would probably turn around and go in the opposite direction and cross the street.” And so that is like there were a lot of things said, but nothing genuinely carried out.

Brittany Counts on Race Relations



AH: Was that, has that historically been true in that community, in that town, or was there a period where there was a predominately Black upper class community?

BC: To my knowledge there was never a time where there was a predominately Black middle class. My neighbors were White for the most part and from the time that I can remember. Originally, when I was born we lived in the Black side of town and my mother and my grandma, we moved quite a lot around Inman and it seemed like we were always surrounded by White neighbors, I do not know if it was intentional or if was just where we could move, at times it was not as if they were any higher, in terms of financial status, but they would still look down on us. They could live in the trailer right next us the same single wide trailer, same size, but for some reason theirs would be better. I was called a nigger for the first time by my neighbor and until then, I had never heard the word in my life and it never occurred to me that I was one, until we were sitting on my front porch playing with my Barbie dolls and I asked her, why her older sister didn’t like me and why I couldn’t come to her house and she looked me dead in the face and said, “because you are a nigger and my daddy won’t let niggers in the house” and from that day forward it was just kind of like something switched in me, I knew of the word, I knew it was a bad word, but no one had ever said it directly to me and made me feel like I was less than I was because of the color of my skin. There were people who would like meet my mother and they had a hard time believing that I was her real daughter because my mother is really, really light skinned and we had variations in skin tone but most of the family seemed to stick within the same variation and my family is just kind of all over the place and so they were like “this is your real mother? Not like a cousin who is taking care of you?” and I am like “yes, this is my real mother” and because, there were people who said “your mother is so, so pretty” and when I looked in the mirror I did not see anything that looked like my mother so I am like, “am I not pretty?” because my father is very dark skinned and she would always tell me that when they first started dating, everybody was like “why are you dating him?, he is so dark skinned and you can do so so much better” meanwhile his friends were like patting him on the back and they were like “you got a light skinned girl, that is great” and so it was like I don’t know which way to go, I am closer to my dad’s skin tone and I look like my dad and so does that mean not only am I not attractive I am not considered a person either? Have all of these people I have been around my whole life calling me a “nigger” inside of their head and this little girl was the first one not to see anything wrong with saying that to me? And I never told a soul about that day until like two years ago, it just randomly came up.

AH: You didn’t go to your mom afterwards?

BC: No I didn’t, it was just something kind of like, I thought it went away after a while, but it just kind of like stuck with me and just dug deep into me and it never really left me. And I do not think that I brought it up willingly until I was ready to address it and not be drug down by it.

Friday, June 15, 2012

Ronald Anderson on Upward Bound




AH: For those that don’t know what Upward Bound is, can you explain it?

RA: Upward Bound is a program that prepares you for college and your future.

AH: Is that a College of Charleston program?

RA: Yes

AH: And who runs that?

RA: Mr. [Larry] Lewis

AH: And is there a local contact at, here at St. John’s [High School]

RA: Yes

AH: What is her name?

RA: You can contact Ms. Smith I guess, if you cannot contact him, you can contact her I guess

AH: Okay, how did you get involved in Upward Bound?

RA: You have to be, not referred, what is the word? I am going to use referred. You have to be referred to, by a person who sees potential, who sees potential in the student in the future.

AH: Okay, so what kinds of activities do you guys do?

RA: We have tutoring; we have volunteer work around downtown, around the College of Charleston. We also stay on campus, one whole month to have the college experience, for free, it is free. And we also travel to places such as New York, Florida, DC, Georgia, and we also have international visits like go to France, Italy, and Japan, sometimes and also we went on a five day cruise to the Bahamas. That was fun and to Newport [Rhode Island], that was awesome and that’s it.

AJ Johnson on Participating in the Black in the Lowcountry Project




AH: So why did you decide to do, participate in the Black in the Lowcountry project?

AJ: Because I feel like every voice counts and that only through the understanding of different people and through only, by me putting my voice out there hopefully I will be able to reach somebody else with some kind of understanding, or some kind of spark for intellectual thought and only through that can we really raise our consciousness like only through that can we all grow from each other, so

Sara Daise on Participating in the Black in the Lowcountry Project



AH: This is a wrap up question, why did you choose to participate in this project, the Black in the Lowcountry project, is there any particular reason, just to share your story do you think that is something people can learn from and think about?

SD: I think that being Black and from the Lowcountry makes me very unique and I want that story to be told, I want people to know that youth, that Black youth are not apathetic and that we don’t just not care and that there are things that we want to see done and we have ambitions and dreams just like the next person and I’m also because I grew up in Beaufort and my father is from St. Helena’s Island I am extremely aware of my Gullah heritage and culture, it is something that I am very proud of and as much recognition that I can bring to that in any way I will do that. I used to work at Avery, I remember giving a tour and we got to the rice culture section talking about the Gullah culture and this woman I don’t remember where she was from, she said, so, what are the Gullah people doing now, you know, do they come out? Well, I go the College of Charleston! They have this off the wall view, but I want people to know and I am extremely proud Black woman, I am extremely proud Gullah woman, but I also a woman and a person, so that is why I wanted to be a part of this project and I wanted it to be documented and I thought that it was really cool, really awesome that you are doing it, so that is why.

AJ Johnson on Media



AH: Earlier in the conversation you mentioned that there was this image of, the Black male image that is portrayed in the media by stereotypes, have you, so obviously by being in college you defy one of the stereotypes of Black males, do you see yourself as always being an advocate for another idea of being what a Black male is?

AJ: Absolutely, I am a communications major and I am really happy with my major finally, and in doing so, I have come to understand the power of words and symbols in media and I feel like in media, I mean media is owned by a certain type of person, like media is owned by White men often Jewish who are in charge of all the media and these men may well not have been immersed in any Black culture at all, so what they see they are going to allow to be portrayed on television whether it is good or bad for our culture or not because we do not have anyone up there in power seats in media to be able to say that this is right or this wrong for the Black culture, this is good for us and I have a different understanding of what culture means than you, whereas all White men have an understanding of culture, but they don’t have our understanding of the culture and they cannot possibly that understanding of the culture, so that they are going to continue to portray these negative stereotypes not so much to hurt us, but because they do not know any better they haven’t had to grow up with it. So I will forever be advocating that we need men and especially minorities to be able to get these power positions to be able to fight against this same ignorance in culture or in media in general because that is the only way it is going to get any better because the way it is nothing is going to change, not at all, and only by I guess speaking out these truths and hoping and well, speaking out for understanding and trying to raise the consciousness of the people, it may not stick at first, it probably won’t stick at first, but if I reach one person, if I am able to tip that one person off to think critically about the world around them. That is one step closer to building the world that we need to live in as opposed to the world that we currently live in.

Sara Daise on Living in the South



AH: ....are you planning on staying in Carolina, in the South, or are you looking to go elsewhere for job opportunities?

SD: Right now I am applying for jobs in Charleston; I want to stay here for at least a year. My dream college is UC Berkley, I want to study Africana Studies there, I want to live elsewhere, but I also want to come back because I think that if I am honest and truthful with myself about what I want to do, which is, that is to inspire and motivate and mobilize the Black community and mobilize Black youth that I cannot just turn my back on the South, although sometimes living here, this is so devastating and I always think that the problem is people who are open minded people who are optimistic people who can make a change we say that we cannot stay in the South, we have to leave, but if we all leave then it will stay like this or if we all leave and never come back. So I want to come back eventually.

AH: Could you just expand on what you mean about it is devastating to live in the South?

SD: I was writing a paper in my speech class last semester about nutrition, in South Carolina, or rather just the effect of nutrition on development on cognitive development and such and I, one of my sources said that the national report card put South Carolina at the bottom, so it used to be, that we could say, that at least we are ahead of Mississippi, but we are not, we are not the bottom, when I was talking to my mother about Trayvon Martin, she said that she read another study that said that South Carolina ranks 49th, with 50 being the highest in most confrontational state, which goes hand in hand, if we are the most, if we are the dumbest of course we are confrontational. And it is harsh to say, but just talking to anybody it is so bad and I think that there are so many people who are so closed minded and I cannot honestly say that I know how to make it better. I always heard that you have to be the change you want to see and I definitely heard that working with education and working with young people, you won’t even get to see the impact that you have you just have trust that you had an impact and so I am sure that I won’t just be able to look up and see that everything is great now, but I think that there are so many problems in the South that don’t have to be and I think that is what is most devastating, just closed minded people. People who do not want to look at the complexities of human it does not just have to be black and white people are just gray. And growing up in Beaufort and seeing people who never made it out and I use the term never made it out because that is what I want to do, but some people don’t even feel like that, they want to be there forever, and that is not necessarily bad, but some people just don’t have any ambition, don’t have anything greater that they want to see. They do not know anything outside of Beaufort and I know that it is similar for people who grew up in Charleston, they do not know that the world is bigger nor do they have any desire to see the bigger world and that is probably a problem everywhere, but because this is where I grew up, I am aware of it.

AJ Johnson on Black Youth




AH: Another question that I want to bring up is that people think that Black youth are just interested in nothing basically, we are just want the status quo, what would you say to some who would say that or think that?

AJ: I would say that A) you have put a whole race of people into a box because there are always going to be people who are not necessarily a part of the status quo, however, I would say, were they not socialized to be that way. That the majority of Black youth are socialized to be happy on the streets, happy to be in drug life, happy to be chasing after cars and rims, yet, still living in ghettos instead being able to live to their potentials, happy not to go into school, happy to drop out of schools, because it is typical, it is what they have seen all their life, are they not socialized to believe that they do not have a place in society other than the lower crust because they do not see anybody else actually making moves and Black culture are waiting for a messiah, are we not, are they not socialized to believe that there is going to be another messiah, another Martin Luther King, [Jr.], another Malcolm X, another Jesus to be able to come through and save them from this plight that we are facilitating consistently. It is a cycle; it is so cyclical the way that we live. Are they not socialized by media to say that “Oh, that’s my nigger” that is the way it should be, all of the people up top are they trying to change the way that Black people think about themselves? Or are they happy with their understanding of Black people because hey they are the ones making them money, I mean they are the ones with the money, giving us all their money, they do not even need the money, they do not even have the money and yet they are still giving us the money, and those are the pawns that they want. Are they not socialized to be that way to be pawns to want to give their money on these excessive things instead of trying to build themselves up in the economy, educationally, intellectually and in doing so build the economy up instead of just building up the few people in the upper crust, who are also spending their money on the most useless things. It is not a trickle down anything, it is the need for intellectual growth on the whole cultures part, but we are socialized to be that way, we are socialized to think the way we think, and nobody is doing something to change that, and nobody is trying to get the culture to think, critically think about the world that they live in. And how every single thing is set up for them to fail because they are socialized to fail and they are socialized not to think.

AJ Johnson on Black Relationships




AH: So if you are only socializing with African American students is there a big dating pool that you can choose from or do you try to date from outside of the College of Charleston or is that nor one of your priorities?

AJ: Well, there is not a big pool to date from I guess, because again we are very isolated and we focus just on the community, but we have a very small population, and when you have a very small population concentrated in a tiny area with all kinds of freedom and pheromones being thrown from here to everywhere. I mean you create drama, there is so much drama because of that very issue and you do see a few Black people dating outside the race, but those are generally the ones who are not concentrated within the Black community, like the Black community, where everyone knows everybody else and in that same case everybody has had sex with everybody else. And unfortunately I was telling a friend the other day, I cannot date these girls on campus and this is reference to the Black girls on campus, because personally I would not date outside of the race because if I am seriously dating, that is somebody who I am looking to be with for life and I could not be with a White woman for life, because I would feel like that she would not be able understand the trials that I have been through, that my race has been through and there are just certain scars that one needs to be able to understand that a White female would not be able to understand, or any other race as a matter of fact, but as far as the culture, the tiny community, the isolated community of College of Charleston, every girl has been at least with some guy on campus, because as small as a pool of Black females as there are, there is an even smaller pool of Black males who are straight. Out of those guys if you are straight, one of the things that they say is “That if you are straight on this campus, you have messed with more than one girl on this campus” and so if every guy has messed with more than one girl on the campus then of course there is going to be overlapping like, messing with girls on campus, and every guy has been with every girl one way or another and it is a part of the culture that I don’t want to be a part of so if I say that I don’t want to be a part of these girls on campus, that doesn’t mean I want a girl out of the race, I want a girl within the race, but at the same time I do not want a girl within the race within the culture of this campus.

AH: Gotcha, okay. In your family has there been interracial couples?

AJ: Yeah, especially on my dad’s side. On my mom’s side, it is much more, I guess is more Black Nationalistic, very set in the roots, my grandma had all kinds of children, all kinds of grandchildren, and all kinds of grand grandchildren, but we are able to trace our roots back there and they are very modest and homely like, very home grown, whereas on my dad’s side, on my dad’s side it is very interesting one of my great grandfathers actually came as a freeman from Africa and from him I believe, in some point or another he married into the Cherokee, well Creek Indians, whereas on the Creek side, I believe, they married into a White family and so on my dad’s side I have some KKK [Ku Klux Klan] members, family members actually on my dad’s side, like not too far out and I have actually met some family members, that have told me that if we were not family, if we were not blood, he would not be able to look at me like a human being because I am Black and the thing is this guy was mixed, like he was White and Black, but he had like Confederate flags all over his house and stuff. So, yeah, and one of my uncles, he married a White woman, and I think he is mixed and my dad’s side is just all kinds of mixed up as far as that goes, yeah. White and Black it is not even that big of a deal I guess, well apparently, it is that big of a deal

AH: Well for some people

AJ: Right, right. but having White on that side of the family is not that big of a deal, whereas, as having White in the family on my mom’s side would be much more so.

AH: Okay, so there is pressure from your mom’s side to marry a Black woman?

AJ: Oh, absolutely! Oh, my mom has told me not to bring a White girl home, like she has told me on multiple occasions, like “I don’t mind you dating her, but you will not bring a White girl home” She has told me that on multiple occasions.

AH: So you dated White [girls] in high school?

AJ: I didn’t date in high school because I was really awkward

AH: Well, you never know

AJ: I thought about it, but again like my mom always pressured do not date a White girl, so I stayed away from White girls, so that means I was looking at either Black girls or girls of some minority, there are no, but in all of my classes all there are were White girls and the girls, Black girls far and in-between I couldn’t identify with them and even though I wanted to; and then you have Hispanics and a few Asians in between and they were fine whatever, but I just couldn’t, there wasn’t nobody that I could identify with and nobody I could just click with because I just, I was told that I had to look for a certain person and she was not there.

AJ Johnson on Black Power




AH: I want to ask, what does Black Power mean to you? because everybody has their own definition of Black Power, so what does it mean?

AJ: As of now?

AH: Well

AJ: I can definitely say that back in the day, I didn’t really know, I was trying to figure it out because again, I was trying to understand my identity, I was trying to understand who I was, because I was told that I was so-and-so on one side and then so-and-so on another and all I could find was that I wanted to be like Martin Luther King [Jr.] one day, that was all I had in my mind, “hey, I want to be like Martin Luther King [Jr.] one day, that is what it means to be Black to be able to create this peace, this happiness” that is what I felt and what I wanted to aim for

AH: What does it mean now for you, today?

AJ: Just Black Power in general?

AH: Do you still believe in Black Power?

AJ: Black Power for me is about the uplift of a race, of the culture, of the consciousness of the people within a culture. That is Black Power, that is the Black power we strive for, within that consciousness we are building up of the race, everything will come whether it is economically, intellectually, that is what we are aiming for in the Black Power Movement or a Black Power Movement instead of more aggressiveness or self-destructive, any destructive power is, the power of intellectual building because knowledge is power and through that consciousness we will be able to raise ourselves and build ourselves, back to where we should be and even greater heights past that, but Black Power is inherently nationalistic and I do not believe in pure nationalism anymore, I believe that every culture has something to offer every other culture and that only by understanding other cultures can we be able to understand our own, but we do have to have a certain amount of understanding of our cultural identity before we even gain anything from other cultures and that is something that we need to build up right now because by being told who we are from other cultures, specifically Anglo-Saxon cultures, we are being diluted and not even we know where we stand out most of the time anyhow.

AH: And so your evolvement in think about this idea came from college classes or from outside reading material?

AJ: Well, I guess, that I always had a passion for it, I always had this kind passion, and so when you have a passion like that, it kind of, I am not going to say that it comes to you, but you go places to learn that kind of thing and it comes to you to you in to an extent. And in doing so, I have done a lot of outside reading, classes, I have done a few, but again a teacher can only teach you so much and you really have to have that drive and passion yourself to be willing to go and learn further. Because it is only through that critical learning that you are going to learn and it is going to stick. You are going to be able to expand on it on your own mind and in your own consciousness. And so I have had to my own outside reading and my own outside study. And that is the study I am most proud of and what I have learned the most from and a teacher can tell me one thing and if I can argue with a teacher on a point, I feel like I have gained something, that, I didn’t just gain what the teacher told me, I have been able to go back and learn on my own, teach myself and that is something really powerful.

Friday, June 1, 2012

Sara Daise on Social Justice



AH: I was reading in the paper about Trayvon Martin and I saw that you helped to spearhead a rally here in Charleston at the College. Can you just talk about what inspired you about that rally are there other kinds of rallies you have done in the past?

SD: When I first heard about it. It made me think of Jena 6 and the College actually took about sixteen or seventeen students to that rally and I was able to go to that. I think that was my first view of a rally or demonstration of a group of people coming together. I mean you read about it in history books, but that was my first time being a part. I was so sad when I read about it, I read about it first on Twitter, and I immediately thought of my little brother and I was just heartbroken and I talked to a graduate of the College who works in the ROAR Office [stands for Reach - Overcome - Achieve Results] and I was saying that we got to do something, we got to do something, we cannot not do something! But I wanted somebody to do something so that I could go

SD: And she was like, these are the people that you need to talk to, so she went with me and we went to go to the people in OID

AH: OID?

SD: Office of Institutional Diversity on campus, and we put it together and there were students who helped and Diversity Ambassadors through OID, who assisted us with planning and organizing and different people from different student groups came together. And I was really happy to see it done, it did not necessarily get the publicity that I wanted, but a good bit of people showed up, people from the community showed up as well. And two days prior I attended the rallies in Marion Square. The first day we went out a few people were talking. I think that a student from Charleston Southern organized that and other College of Charleston student who was affiliated with Occupy Charleston put those two together. The second day we met in Marion Square and marched, I don’t want to say the wrong place that we marched, I think that it is called Memorial Park?

AH: On Columbus or on?

SD: [Shaking head and pointing southwest] Over there, we marched down Meeting Street, and then turned on Broad [St.] and there is a park off of Broad with the think that looks like the Lincoln memorial inside and that was very powerful and it was people from the community, majority Black, parents, and young people a lot of College of Charleston students showed up. It was so inspiring. They brought all of these little kids up front and one of the College of Charleston student, who was in the military, but I am not sure what service, but she put on her uniform and just to assist with the march and so when we were crossing the street, she would just stand in the street and cars recognized her as a servicewoman and obviously she was not acting on behalf of the government, but they recognized her and they respected the line and people were chanting, I am Trayvon! And she started talking about how this is the type of stuff that she fights for in fighting for equality and justice and I was all teary eyed and crying. But, when we did it on campus, it had to be really structured, because we were representing the College and we did not want to say anything that would rub anyone the wrong way. We had a lot of students attend and students spoke about how they felt and some faculty members Dr. [Consuela] Francis, and Dr. [Bernard] Powers, and Dot Scott came the President of the Charleston Chapter of the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] and different administrators spoke. I was just really happy to see it all come together and see how people felt and where they want to go from there. And so, it was really nice to see it all come together, I know that my biggest concern is what is next because it is so frustrating and so sad, and I am on Twitter a lot and so I am just reading the different things like, Black people just get mad about something for six weeks and then they don’t care anymore and nobody says anything about the Black on Black crime that is going on, well a Black person shot and killed six White people in the street and nobody is talking about that and then of course Kony 2012 just a few weeks before I heard about that and so it was sad, I just wanted people to. I just want to solve all of the problems and I wish that there was just a little switch where all of the problems would be solved. So it is hard, I want to decide where to direct your focus because obviously there are a greater problem, but I think that it is necessary to focus on something and work really hard to make that better.

AH: So you haven’t, obviously there are so many issues to cover, but you haven’t chosen one to confront?

SD: It is hard, but I think that one issue that really caught my attention, just the talk about Black on Black violence and how so much, so many Black youth are killed and that you don’t even think about it. I was talking to my mom, you don’t think about it, just the things you hear and it is second nature. I remember people who were shot and killed while I was in high school, I remember the summer between my freshmen and sophomore year of college, when I came back to Beaufort, there were seven shootings in Beaufort, people getting shot at parties. You didn’t want to go the club in Beaufort because you might get shot. My high school graduation party, it was not mine, but it was where all of went at after graduation, was at a hotel--an Island/Beaufort fight just broke out; people who had graduated long before us had-two or three years before us, the police was there, people were getting maced, somebody got cut and that stuff is so ridiculous, but it is second nature and it is not that surprising to hear about Black on Black violence and I wonder what would make that less common? So that it wasn’t, you know you expect that and of course when you hear about Black on Black violence it is not making the news necessarily, because of course Black people are killing each other, but why?

Sara Daise on Race Relations




AH: Can you remember any other racial divisions, or conflicts that you can think of in elementary, middle, or high school?

SD: Beaufort is an island, a series of islands, St. Helena Island, Lady’s Island, and everything is connected by a bridge so there are turf wars in Beaufort. Ah, Beaufort County is one side of the bridge and Lady’s Island is on the other and they do not like each other.

AH: Oh

SD: These are Black people and of course we are all related so, so all of my cousins live on the other side of the bridge, but that was a huge division. There were several fights in high school and my daddy went to Beaufort High School as well and that stuff was going on when he was in high school, you know. You don’t like the people because they live in this side of the bridge. You have people who rep Island you have people who rep Beaufort. I remember there was a gigantic fight in the gym a huge battle with like mace and the different football games we went to the police would be on watch because people would come and fight just because of where you lived.

AH: What year is this?

SD: I graduated in 2007, but this happened throughout my four years of high school and my daddy, I cannot remember the year he graduated from high school, but it has been going on since then.

AH: Is it based on historical facts or anything?

SD: I don’t think it is, I don’t think it is. I don’t know the historical background. Beaufort High used to be in Beaufort County, but now it is just off the bridge when you get into Lady’s Island. And I think now the way they draw the lines is different for who goes to that school and who goes to our rival school, which is Battle Creek, which is on another island and over another bridge and they have their own turf wars over there too. But I am not sure of the historical background, but they take it very seriously. Like I remember going to some games and being scared because you knew that someone was going to fight not for anything reason other than maybe my sister was talking to a dude who lives in Beaufort and we don’t like them.