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.

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.