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.