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.