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.

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?