AJ Johnson on Media

AH: Earlier in the conversation you mentioned that there was this image of, the Black male image that is portrayed in the media by stereotypes, have you, so obviously by being in college you defy one of the stereotypes of Black males, do you see yourself as always being an advocate for another idea of being what a Black male is?

AJ: Absolutely, I am a communications major and I am really happy with my major finally, and in doing so, I have come to understand the power of words and symbols in media and I feel like in media, I mean media is owned by a certain type of person, like media is owned by White men often Jewish who are in charge of all the media and these men may well not have been immersed in any Black culture at all, so what they see they are going to allow to be portrayed on television whether it is good or bad for our culture or not because we do not have anyone up there in power seats in media to be able to say that this is right or this wrong for the Black culture, this is good for us and I have a different understanding of what culture means than you, whereas all White men have an understanding of culture, but they don’t have our understanding of the culture and they cannot possibly that understanding of the culture, so that they are going to continue to portray these negative stereotypes not so much to hurt us, but because they do not know any better they haven’t had to grow up with it. So I will forever be advocating that we need men and especially minorities to be able to get these power positions to be able to fight against this same ignorance in culture or in media in general because that is the only way it is going to get any better because the way it is nothing is going to change, not at all, and only by I guess speaking out these truths and hoping and well, speaking out for understanding and trying to raise the consciousness of the people, it may not stick at first, it probably won’t stick at first, but if I reach one person, if I am able to tip that one person off to think critically about the world around them. That is one step closer to building the world that we need to live in as opposed to the world that we currently live in.

Sara Daise on Living in the South

AH: ....are you planning on staying in Carolina, in the South, or are you looking to go elsewhere for job opportunities?

SD: Right now I am applying for jobs in Charleston; I want to stay here for at least a year. My dream college is UC Berkley, I want to study Africana Studies there, I want to live elsewhere, but I also want to come back because I think that if I am honest and truthful with myself about what I want to do, which is, that is to inspire and motivate and mobilize the Black community and mobilize Black youth that I cannot just turn my back on the South, although sometimes living here, this is so devastating and I always think that the problem is people who are open minded people who are optimistic people who can make a change we say that we cannot stay in the South, we have to leave, but if we all leave then it will stay like this or if we all leave and never come back. So I want to come back eventually.

AH: Could you just expand on what you mean about it is devastating to live in the South?

SD: I was writing a paper in my speech class last semester about nutrition, in South Carolina, or rather just the effect of nutrition on development on cognitive development and such and I, one of my sources said that the national report card put South Carolina at the bottom, so it used to be, that we could say, that at least we are ahead of Mississippi, but we are not, we are not the bottom, when I was talking to my mother about Trayvon Martin, she said that she read another study that said that South Carolina ranks 49th, with 50 being the highest in most confrontational state, which goes hand in hand, if we are the most, if we are the dumbest of course we are confrontational. And it is harsh to say, but just talking to anybody it is so bad and I think that there are so many people who are so closed minded and I cannot honestly say that I know how to make it better. I always heard that you have to be the change you want to see and I definitely heard that working with education and working with young people, you won’t even get to see the impact that you have you just have trust that you had an impact and so I am sure that I won’t just be able to look up and see that everything is great now, but I think that there are so many problems in the South that don’t have to be and I think that is what is most devastating, just closed minded people. People who do not want to look at the complexities of human it does not just have to be black and white people are just gray. And growing up in Beaufort and seeing people who never made it out and I use the term never made it out because that is what I want to do, but some people don’t even feel like that, they want to be there forever, and that is not necessarily bad, but some people just don’t have any ambition, don’t have anything greater that they want to see. They do not know anything outside of Beaufort and I know that it is similar for people who grew up in Charleston, they do not know that the world is bigger nor do they have any desire to see the bigger world and that is probably a problem everywhere, but because this is where I grew up, I am aware of it.

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.

AJ Johnson on Black Relationships

AH: So if you are only socializing with African American students is there a big dating pool that you can choose from or do you try to date from outside of the College of Charleston or is that nor one of your priorities?

AJ: Well, there is not a big pool to date from I guess, because again we are very isolated and we focus just on the community, but we have a very small population, and when you have a very small population concentrated in a tiny area with all kinds of freedom and pheromones being thrown from here to everywhere. I mean you create drama, there is so much drama because of that very issue and you do see a few Black people dating outside the race, but those are generally the ones who are not concentrated within the Black community, like the Black community, where everyone knows everybody else and in that same case everybody has had sex with everybody else. And unfortunately I was telling a friend the other day, I cannot date these girls on campus and this is reference to the Black girls on campus, because personally I would not date outside of the race because if I am seriously dating, that is somebody who I am looking to be with for life and I could not be with a White woman for life, because I would feel like that she would not be able understand the trials that I have been through, that my race has been through and there are just certain scars that one needs to be able to understand that a White female would not be able to understand, or any other race as a matter of fact, but as far as the culture, the tiny community, the isolated community of College of Charleston, every girl has been at least with some guy on campus, because as small as a pool of Black females as there are, there is an even smaller pool of Black males who are straight. Out of those guys if you are straight, one of the things that they say is “That if you are straight on this campus, you have messed with more than one girl on this campus” and so if every guy has messed with more than one girl on the campus then of course there is going to be overlapping like, messing with girls on campus, and every guy has been with every girl one way or another and it is a part of the culture that I don’t want to be a part of so if I say that I don’t want to be a part of these girls on campus, that doesn’t mean I want a girl out of the race, I want a girl within the race, but at the same time I do not want a girl within the race within the culture of this campus.

AH: Gotcha, okay. In your family has there been interracial couples?

AJ: Yeah, especially on my dad’s side. On my mom’s side, it is much more, I guess is more Black Nationalistic, very set in the roots, my grandma had all kinds of children, all kinds of grandchildren, and all kinds of grand grandchildren, but we are able to trace our roots back there and they are very modest and homely like, very home grown, whereas on my dad’s side, on my dad’s side it is very interesting one of my great grandfathers actually came as a freeman from Africa and from him I believe, in some point or another he married into the Cherokee, well Creek Indians, whereas on the Creek side, I believe, they married into a White family and so on my dad’s side I have some KKK [Ku Klux Klan] members, family members actually on my dad’s side, like not too far out and I have actually met some family members, that have told me that if we were not family, if we were not blood, he would not be able to look at me like a human being because I am Black and the thing is this guy was mixed, like he was White and Black, but he had like Confederate flags all over his house and stuff. So, yeah, and one of my uncles, he married a White woman, and I think he is mixed and my dad’s side is just all kinds of mixed up as far as that goes, yeah. White and Black it is not even that big of a deal I guess, well apparently, it is that big of a deal

AH: Well for some people

AJ: Right, right. but having White on that side of the family is not that big of a deal, whereas, as having White in the family on my mom’s side would be much more so.

AH: Okay, so there is pressure from your mom’s side to marry a Black woman?

AJ: Oh, absolutely! Oh, my mom has told me not to bring a White girl home, like she has told me on multiple occasions, like “I don’t mind you dating her, but you will not bring a White girl home” She has told me that on multiple occasions.

AH: So you dated White [girls] in high school?

AJ: I didn’t date in high school because I was really awkward

AH: Well, you never know

AJ: I thought about it, but again like my mom always pressured do not date a White girl, so I stayed away from White girls, so that means I was looking at either Black girls or girls of some minority, there are no, but in all of my classes all there are were White girls and the girls, Black girls far and in-between I couldn’t identify with them and even though I wanted to; and then you have Hispanics and a few Asians in between and they were fine whatever, but I just couldn’t, there wasn’t nobody that I could identify with and nobody I could just click with because I just, I was told that I had to look for a certain person and she was not there.

AJ Johnson on Black Power

AH: I want to ask, what does Black Power mean to you? because everybody has their own definition of Black Power, so what does it mean?

AJ: As of now?

AH: Well

AJ: I can definitely say that back in the day, I didn’t really know, I was trying to figure it out because again, I was trying to understand my identity, I was trying to understand who I was, because I was told that I was so-and-so on one side and then so-and-so on another and all I could find was that I wanted to be like Martin Luther King [Jr.] one day, that was all I had in my mind, “hey, I want to be like Martin Luther King [Jr.] one day, that is what it means to be Black to be able to create this peace, this happiness” that is what I felt and what I wanted to aim for

AH: What does it mean now for you, today?

AJ: Just Black Power in general?

AH: Do you still believe in Black Power?

AJ: Black Power for me is about the uplift of a race, of the culture, of the consciousness of the people within a culture. That is Black Power, that is the Black power we strive for, within that consciousness we are building up of the race, everything will come whether it is economically, intellectually, that is what we are aiming for in the Black Power Movement or a Black Power Movement instead of more aggressiveness or self-destructive, any destructive power is, the power of intellectual building because knowledge is power and through that consciousness we will be able to raise ourselves and build ourselves, back to where we should be and even greater heights past that, but Black Power is inherently nationalistic and I do not believe in pure nationalism anymore, I believe that every culture has something to offer every other culture and that only by understanding other cultures can we be able to understand our own, but we do have to have a certain amount of understanding of our cultural identity before we even gain anything from other cultures and that is something that we need to build up right now because by being told who we are from other cultures, specifically Anglo-Saxon cultures, we are being diluted and not even we know where we stand out most of the time anyhow.

AH: And so your evolvement in think about this idea came from college classes or from outside reading material?

AJ: Well, I guess, that I always had a passion for it, I always had this kind passion, and so when you have a passion like that, it kind of, I am not going to say that it comes to you, but you go places to learn that kind of thing and it comes to you to you in to an extent. And in doing so, I have done a lot of outside reading, classes, I have done a few, but again a teacher can only teach you so much and you really have to have that drive and passion yourself to be willing to go and learn further. Because it is only through that critical learning that you are going to learn and it is going to stick. You are going to be able to expand on it on your own mind and in your own consciousness. And so I have had to my own outside reading and my own outside study. And that is the study I am most proud of and what I have learned the most from and a teacher can tell me one thing and if I can argue with a teacher on a point, I feel like I have gained something, that, I didn’t just gain what the teacher told me, I have been able to go back and learn on my own, teach myself and that is something really powerful.

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?

Sara Daise on Race Relations

AH: Can you remember any other racial divisions, or conflicts that you can think of in elementary, middle, or high school?

SD: Beaufort is an island, a series of islands, St. Helena Island, Lady’s Island, and everything is connected by a bridge so there are turf wars in Beaufort. Ah, Beaufort County is one side of the bridge and Lady’s Island is on the other and they do not like each other.

AH: Oh

SD: These are Black people and of course we are all related so, so all of my cousins live on the other side of the bridge, but that was a huge division. There were several fights in high school and my daddy went to Beaufort High School as well and that stuff was going on when he was in high school, you know. You don’t like the people because they live in this side of the bridge. You have people who rep Island you have people who rep Beaufort. I remember there was a gigantic fight in the gym a huge battle with like mace and the different football games we went to the police would be on watch because people would come and fight just because of where you lived.

AH: What year is this?

SD: I graduated in 2007, but this happened throughout my four years of high school and my daddy, I cannot remember the year he graduated from high school, but it has been going on since then.

AH: Is it based on historical facts or anything?

SD: I don’t think it is, I don’t think it is. I don’t know the historical background. Beaufort High used to be in Beaufort County, but now it is just off the bridge when you get into Lady’s Island. And I think now the way they draw the lines is different for who goes to that school and who goes to our rival school, which is Battle Creek, which is on another island and over another bridge and they have their own turf wars over there too. But I am not sure of the historical background, but they take it very seriously. Like I remember going to some games and being scared because you knew that someone was going to fight not for anything reason other than maybe my sister was talking to a dude who lives in Beaufort and we don’t like them.