Brittany Nichole Counts Interview

Aaisha Haykal (AH): Can you please state your name and spell it please?

Brittany Counts (BC): My name is Brittany Nichole Counts B-R-I-T-T-A-N-Y N-I-C-H-O-L-E C-O-U-N-T-S

AH: And what is your date of birth?

BC: September 24, 1991

AH: And you, your parents’ names?

BC: My mother is Beatrice Browning and my father is Morrie Lyles.

AH: Morrie?

BC: Yes

AH: Okay, and have any siblings?

BC: I have 5 younger sisters and one older step sister and two older step brothers

AH: Okay, and you grew up in what town?

BC: I grew up in Inman, SC.

AH: Inman? And you were born in Inman?

BC: Yes

AH: Okay, can you talk about the community that you grew up in, was it integrated? Was it predominately African American?

BC: My community was definitely predominately White, I can there was a difference between the time when I was born and when I graduated high school, 72% of my high school was White, about 8% of it was African American and we essentially kept to our own corners, there were parts of town that were known as where the majority of African Americans stayed and those were “not as safe parts of town” and there were not huge race issues there were minor ones as to be expected in South Carolina, but there was never like a huge, huge race like issue in our community. The biggest thing for me was just not going to school with faces that looked like mine, so I didn’t understand why my hair was not like theirs or why my lips were fuller than theirs and I had to look to my mother and grandmother to explain those questions and situations to me a lot. Because I grew up in a predominately White community, there are some people who do not think that I am Black enough, so it’s just like finding where I fit in when there are Black people who do not think that I am Black enough. Then there are the Black people like me who grew up in situations where they were not constantly surrounded by African Americans and they do not necessarily accept you either. It’s just finding where people can accept me without trying to change me, without saying that I don’t sound like or I don’t dress Black enough. I had teachers assume that because I was an African American, and that a lot of times I would only be the only African American in my class, if I was in an honors class they would ask to see my schedule, they would make sure that I was in the right class and that I didn’t have it mistaken, that I wasn’t in their CP [College Prep] class or their TP class, which would come right after. And when they realized that I was supposed to be in here they look at my GPA or my first paper, they would be so surprised, at I guess my at intelligence or at my vigor for being in school, I guess that it was not something that they were used to seeing.

AH: So your neighbors, they were White neighbors?

BC: Yes

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.

AH: Okay, thank you, it was interesting. Can you talk about your high school experience, well elementary, middle, high school experiences was there any kind of teacher that really inspired you or friends or classmates?

BC: There were three teachers throughout my elementary, middle school and high school careers that stuck out to me very very much. In sixth, in elementary school I was essentially a little shorter than I am now, I hit my growth spurt soon, really really early and so I was taller than everybody and I was pudgier than everybody and I had full lips and these buck teeth and the kids were so so mean to me, they called me Brittany the Buck Teeth Beaver and it was like, I let them do it for like two years-from like second to fourth grade and then it dawned on me that I was bigger than them and that they were probably afraid of me so if I could just, can just ran after them when they were calling me these names then I might just back it down, but it was like the more I chased and the more I hurt these people the more people just seemed to think that this is fun we make fun of her, she runs after us a fun game to play at recess and my sixth grade ELA [English and Language Arts] teacher sat me down and she was like, “you are smarter than this, don’t let them get underneath your skin” and she inspired me in so many ways and that I do not even think she recognized it was just having someone sit down and take the time to tell me that I was better than this that I needed to pull myself up that yeah they were making fun of me, but I was the smartest one in my class and as long as I did not let anything affect that, that was okay and she was like “you may not have, you may not be happy with the way you look now, but you are still a child, you still have lots of growing to do” and at the time I did not think that she was right, but as I got older I got leaner, my gap closed, and my lips became proportionate to the rest of my face so it was a lot easier to deal with and I settled in with, there was a group of friends, I had one constant best friend all my life and everybody else has kind of came and gone and made their mark and whatnot and I did not have any like teachers who made a genuine difference until I hit 11th grade, she, there were two teachers my home ec [economics] teacher who surprisingly ended up being a like a substitute grandmother to me because when my grandmother passed away it hit me really hard and it was like this strong maternal figure who always been there to keep me on a straight path, she was gone and I didn’t know if I was able to stay on that path without her being there to tell me to do this or to make sure that I did that. And in her [the teacher] I found that guidance again and the other teacher, she was also female, she just, there were so many times when I went into her office and I cried just because I felt that I was, I worked really hard in school and because of that I was in like the top 10% of my class all of the way through and my senior year hit and all of these things came in and all of this about loans and scholarships and looking at the actual cost of going to college, it just felt that I had all of the weight of my family, and my friends on my shoulders because they all expected me to go off and do these great things and I was just like if I cannot find money to do it, how am I going to do this? How am I going to look letting all of my grandmothers hard work be for nothing? and how am I going to live with myself knowing that I cannot work hard and prove and work on these dreams that I have been talking about my whole life? When I watched my mother giving up her dream and find another one so she can support my sisters and I and it was her [the teacher] who told me that family would be proud of me regardless. Because even if I didn’t go to a fancy college somewhere in New England I would be fine, they would be there to support me, which was something that I had a real tough time believing because I been the one they could count on to do the right things and to get the good grades. And there was no question as far as trusting me when I said something and so she just kind of told me that nobody is perfect, somebody, everybody no matter how good their grades, no matter how many friends, no matter what others think of them, they are going to run into a situation where they do not know what to do and that is okay. For you this is your first one so you are freaking out. And because of that, it was like, it was the breath of fresh air that I needed and the push that I did not necessarily get from my mother when I would tell her about these problems.

AH: Did you do any extracurricular activities, you were excelling academically, but what were you doing outside of school?

BC: I ran track, I tried cross-country I was not that great at it at all, and I did distance running and the distance running ended up becoming like an escape for me, it was something like, oh I’ll go to track practice and then I was too slow to be a sprinter and so he was like you are going to do the mile and the eight hundred. And it was just like whenever I would get upset with my mom, I would run. I started running in the seventh grade and I ran through my eleventh grade year and whenever we had an argument and whenever she would do something that I felt was unfair I would just put on my tennis shoes and I would just run, like I had routes throughout my neighborhood, that if I run this that is a mile, if I run this and then run that, that is a mile and a half and I would just run, run, and run and other than the running I was heavily involved in my school’s chapter of FCCLA and that is the Family, Career and Community Leaders of America and I grew really close, there was like five of us. I actually served on the state board my junior year in high school and we and with them I did a lot of work with children and afterschool programs and we did a lot of work with kids during school, we would be responsible for preparing and serving the lunches if our school board would have a meeting at our school, and I got to go to Tennessee and it was just like, I met a lot of people from South Carolina, parts of South Carolina that being from Inman, which probably has a population of like 5,000 at the most, and I would meet people from Sumter, from Allendale, and people from the Charleston [area] and I was like wow there is a South Carolina below Columbia, which is the farthest I had been up until I came to the College of Charleston for my first time. And it was just like in them I would find bits and pieces of myself because we had a lot in common, but we were a diverse group, there were individuals who were so bold and so outspoken and I just remember thinking that I wish I was able to say everything that comes to my head that way and it through FCCLA and my experiences with that, that pushed me to apply for the Bonner Leader Program here at the College of Charleston that I am a member of now, but other than those two it was strictly the books and it was tough enough getting my mother to agree to those because they were really big time commitments.

AH: So she was concerned about you balancing the two different activities, or she just?

BC: I think it was a little bit of concern, like she wouldn’t, have. I did not have a job until I came to college and a big part of that was because she always said that she did “I don’t want you to feel like you had to have a job, or you had to do this because when I was your age, I had to, I had to get a job, so that we could have a phone in the house or to make sure that we had enough groceries.” So it was like there was feeling that because she was working so hard that her kids wouldn’t have to work when they were teenagers, so they could be teenagers and enjoy school, something that she didn’t get to do and then there were the grades, she was afraid that if I had too much on my plate that my grades would start slipping and I think just, that if I got more involved that would be the less time I spent at home and she would have to realize sooner that I was growing up faster than she expected, so.

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.

AH: Okay. So when it came to choosing a college what was your deciding factor in choosing the College of Charleston?

BC: College of Charleston, I fell in love with it when I brought my cousin here and it was, the SPECTRA program played a huge, huge role. The SPECTRA program which is a summer program, it like transitions you. You take two classes during the month of July and they introduce you to the campus and to very important people on the campus and they try to set you up for success your freshmen year, by starting you off one with possibly a 4.0 if you worked hard enough in those two classes, you have ample time to do your work and you know where everything is. You know if you need this person, if you need this you go to this person, if you need that you go visit Ms. Evie, if you need this you go visit Marjorie, or if you need anything and you do not know where to go to the Multicultural Center and Ernest will be there for anything, he will point you where you need to go, if there is nobody here he will find someone to help you out of whatever situation. And then there is the Bonner Leader Program, in which volunteering has always been really really important to me and when I found out about this program, it kind of just stuck with me and I was like, this is very great and none of the other schools that I was looking at had anything like either of those. One was really close to home and at that point I was so ready to go, like my bags were packed at the beginning of senior year and so I felt that Charleston was the perfect distance it was far enough that my mother couldn’t just pop, up and yell surprise, but if something happened I could easily get back and forth. And in SPECTRA and in Bonner I have created like these two additional families, I was so ready go and when I got here for my first day of SPECTRA, and my mom as she got ready to go, I was just crying and I had no idea why. I was like I had never been away from home that long before, and I didn’t know anyone down here and all of my friends either went far far away like to the other side of the country or they stayed in Spartanburg, in Spartanburg County, which is where Inman is, which is something that I did not want to do at all and so I met with Ms. Debbie and I went to simply the best seminar, which is it tells you that there are not a lot of African Americans on this campus, but the ones that are here are making differences, they are making strides and in no way are they not putting, challenging and bettering themselves, just because they are not around tons of people who have skin tones like theirs. And it was in there as I watched students who would soon be my counselors, my SPECTRA counselors or my Bonner family, that I could really see myself flourishing here and the community, the Charleston community is so different from Inman, with the vast cities and it is just like a whirl spin compared to where I was born and raised, so I just thought that this would challenge me culturally and put me in situation to which I just kind of had to open myself a little bit and not, be open to taking chances.

AH: So, from another interviewee, there was a division between SPECTRA scholars and non-SPECTRA scholars, in terms of what you call it, the opportunities available to them, do you think that division exists? Do you think that there is there this closed community of SPECTRA scholars that unite and other African American students do not happen to be a part of SPECTRA miss out on?

BC: It was definitely a great experience and all of the people that I have met who didn’t come had reasons why, it’s not like they shrugged it off. And there are times where I forget and I will be like “well in SPECTRA we did this” and they would be like, “well Brittany, we did not do SPECTRA” and so sometimes I feel that maybe there is a slight divide, but not something so huge that it divides the African American community at the College because while we do have people watching over us, even if we forget about it there are people watching over our grades looking out for our financial aid because they know our situations, simply because the criteria to get into SPECTRA they know that there may be times where we struggle a little bit with replacing this scholarship or not wanting to take a loan this big, but the same opportunities that SPECTRA students have wouldn’t be shut out from non-SPECTRA African American students, just like I can go to the Multicultural Center to talk Ernest or go to Admissions and talk to Ms. Debbie, they could do the same thing and they would help them just as much because they do not turn their backs on anyone even if they were not African American students, if they were not an African American student and I knew that Ernest could answer it I would send them to Ernest or they need help with something and I know Ms. Debbie or Mr. Gillard in the Multicultural Center has it I would send them there just because I know they have it and I used these resources that SPECTRA provided me to help myself and to those who were not exposed to the same resources.

AH: Can you just talk about you’re sophomore correct?

AH: So you have declared your major?

BC: I am a psychology major. In my time being here I went from being a political science major, to an early education major, to a I don’t know what I want to do, and that is a lot to go through in two years, but I did it and I decided on psychology because a part of me is really strong and passionate about teaching, however, if there were a time when teaching just wasn’t enough I wasn’t stuck in education and that sounds really bad, but I don’t want to be the teacher whose students pay the price for him/her not wanting to be there and as of right now I am leaning toward being a clinical psychologist, specializing in children and this has come from my current job now where I am a counselor for seventh and eighth graders and three years ago, I would have never believed you if you would have told me that I wanted to work with kids, I probably would have laughed at you. I didn’t think that I had the patience and just wasn’t something that I wanted to do and that is something that I have discovered since coming to college that I am helping these children and I am making a difference in their lives and then when I look back on it they have made a huge huge difference on mine as well and that is just something that I want to continue to do. I have a minor in African American Studies and when I came to college I had no idea what African American Studies was and I walked in the class and I met Dr. Consuela Francis and like after 15 minutes of class she had me hooked, she could have asked me to do anything in the world and I would have done it happily and just seeing how she had such passion for the minor and how she was just blown away at the things that I would say in her class and I was like, well I am just doing my work, but she like, “but you are going so above and beyond on almost every assignment” and in that I found that I am genuinely would love to one day be in a place where I am counselor or offer psychological help to young girls, especially pre-teen girls in the African American race, because there are so many things that seem to go against them it can be very hard to find your way when you have people on both sides, all fronts telling you will never be more than this or there is no way you can do that, or this is as far as you can go at that is it.

AH: Is there any particular point in Black Studies where you were looking at, focusing on literature, history, Black Psychology, have you learned about Black psychologists and what kind work that they were doing?

BC: I haven’t looked deeply into it; I do know there are not a lot of African American psychologists. It is definitely a field in which I am definitely a minority and it is definitely something that I am more interested in learning as I continue in my Bachelors, my B.S. in Psychology. I know that our school does not offer anything about psychology and race and it may come up in a special topic psychology class, but the psychology of gender touches on it a little bit, which is something that I am really looking forward to taking.

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.

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.

AH: Great. It sounds like a great program. How many counselors are there?

BC: On the high school side there are three counselors; on the elementary side there are four counselors.

AH: Okay, has spiritualty of religion played a part of your life, inspired your volunteer work, it is important to you, is that because of church teachings or is just been a part of how you see yourself?

BC: I am not, I do not have a strong, a really strong devotion to my religion. Growing up if I went to church, would be on weekends when I visited my dad or on Easter Sunday, it was never like a continuous thing. The community service is just something that now I look back on my childhood, it is just something that I benefited strongly from and so it just instilled in me the belief that in order to continue to work you must give back to the community that has molded me into the person that you are and that is why I volunteer and that is why I love my work with my kids so much because what better way to give back to the community than to help and be there for the future of the community.

AH: So do you think that you will stay in South Carolina or do you plan to do your work elsewhere?

BC: I would like to say that initially I would like to stay in South Carolina, it is all that I have known my whole life, but I am open to experiencing what, experiencing other places possibly even outside of the South as a whole has to offer; because I have only been out of the South only as visits, visiting and it has never been anything long term and while I am definitely considering doing grad school in South Carolina, Charleston even so. I am not 100% sure that I would say that I am never leaving South Carolina.

AH: Okay, So I have been wondering about gender inequalities, not necessarily inequalities, but rather ratio and Black ratio at the College of Charleston, in term of relationships and dating opportunities at the College?

BC: Our male to female ratio at the College as a whole is like I want to say, 4 to 1 and then when you factor, look at the African American community at the College, there are not that many males at all and sometimes that can led to situations in which, this guy can be talking to that girl, girl number two, girl number three, and girl number four and then when they all find out about it, he just removes himself from the situation and there you go you have four females who have something against each other and it just sticks that way. I feel that as far as dating goes I feel that we forget that we are not the only college in this area, there are always guys from the Citadel or girls from the Citadel or CSU [Charleston Southern University], and so we tend to limit ourselves and then we get upset because so many people say, “oh, there is not enough Black males at the College of Charleston and of the guys we do have, only so-and-so are the only guaranteed straight ones, and so it is like what are we supposed to do?” There is even, I don’t know if I would call it a joke there is just to me a very ignorant saying “that if you are an African American female at the College that your second year because there is such a lack of men for you, that you will just turn lesbian.” Which is, which angers me so much and I thought that they were joking when they told me that when I was in SPECTRA and I was like how could someone in college be so ignorant, to just think that someone just happens to turn lesbian? People very much so believe that and it is just angering that someone would think that people do that and from there being such a lack of guys and the girls feeling that they have to find a guy at the College of Charleston, when as a female I tell people that I go to the College of Charleston, they give me the side eye and they were like definitely, we were not expecting you say that you go the College of Charleston, you are not the female that we expect to say to go the College of Charleston. Our girls have the reputation for being these easy party girls who don’t take anything seriously, we just hop into bed with anyone and I am like, every college has girls like that. I am not going to say that we don’t, but not that is not every single girl at the College of Charleston and every single African American male at the College of Charleston definitely is not gay, at all and all of the African American girls are not lesbians, it is just ridiculous to think that people think about our College just because our community is, our African American community is so small and it is like you only have about 200 people here and of that more than half of them are girls and then out of the guys you have about 75% of them are homosexual so that leaves nothing but the other girls that are there and that is not true at all, some people are content not being in a relationship at all during college, there are people who have boyfriends and girlfriends from back home, people who go to other colleges, people who go to Trident [Technical College], people who just live here in general, that aren’t in school at all, so it is not just like if you come to the College of Charleston and you are an African American female you have to grab the first guy you see or else you know, oh oh, there are not going to be any left.

AH: Right right, definitely. Sounds like a plan, so you do you see yourself potentially, you are more open to the person than to a particular race or staying with the Black female being loyal to the Black male idea?

BC: I feel like you cannot help who you fall in love with or who are attracted to and so if it happens to be a guy or girl from a different ethnicity than you it is not like you are being disloyal you are just doing what makes you happy, it is not saying that you have an issue with Black girls or with Black men, although there are some people who say, “oh, I don’t date Black girls because they are too much drama, they are too loud, and they don’t know how to act” and then there are girls who don’t date Black men because “all they are going to do is play me and leave me,” but I feel like we shouldn’t try to exclude ourselves as a race; as a community from experiencing true love just because it may come in a White body instead of a Black body or it may come in an Hispanic body as opposed to a Black one, I don’t, when it comes to those things color does not play a big role to me. Even growing up the way I did and seeing the adversity that my mixed cousins faced and that my aunt and uncle faced because they were an interracial couple, never did they once construe to me that they wish they never chosen to take this path, so as far that goes I feel that if you want to reach out there and date another race that is definitely up to you, is that going to be the easiest thing that you have ever done in your life, but you have to decide if it is worth it.

AH: Can you tell me about, I know that you are involved with SPECTRA are there any other club activities you are a part of at the College?

BC: I mentioned Bonner, and I am a ROAR scholar, which is a part of, it is a part of the TRIO program, and essentially what we do in ROAR is that they help us map out our plan as to like what we want to do in our lives and they make sure that we stay on the path to get to where we need to be, they help us with planning our schedules, they offer workshops for us to attend, cultural enrichment opportunities, and they provide us with internship placements or jobs or places where we can shadow. They just offer a vast variety of ways in which for people who know where they are going can make sure that they do everything possible to make sure that they get there and for the people that are still at those crossroads help them figure out where they are going and what they want to do, can explore different opportunities and can say I like this, but don’t like this or this is what I want to do and once you decide that they set up the things that are necessary, they monitor your grades, they make sure that you are taking the right classes, they talk to your professors to make sure that if you want to graduate in four years, or even if you want to graduate in four years, or if there comes a time when you say, oh okay I am going to be here an extra semester or extra year, they make sure that you understand what that means and that you do everything necessary to not turn that extra semester or that extra year into an extra two years or so.

AH: That is great. What do you like about Charleston?

BC: I love the energy that Charleston has, just the fastness, just has a faster pace than my hometown and I feel that even with its history, as far as race is concerned, people are more open down here and it is just like you meet people every day that if they were from my hometown, or if they were from where I was from, or if we were in my hometown they would probably never walk down the street wearing what they are wearing, saying what they are saying, or doing what they are doing, but they can do it here because they feel that Charleston is okay, is an okay place to express who you are not having to fear that they are going to be shut out by the entire community. Charleston has people who are very much devout in their ways and do not believe in, that certain things should be happening that are happening in Charleston, but that is any town, I don’t believe that you could go anywhere and get rid of all prejudices and all discriminations, but I love the opportunities of Charleston as far as volunteering and the many ways in which you can redefine yourself and find yourself and I am a prime example of that. I thought I was going to be lawyer and that is it, that is what I am going to do and I came to Charleston and I realized that didn’t want to do that. I don’t want to be a lawyer, no, I don’t want to do it and I fell in love with volunteering which is what, which is not something I am sure I would have done if I went to school somewhere else.

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.

AH: Great, anything else that you would like to share?

BC: No

AH: Well, thank you so much for participating