WHATDOESITMEANTOBE ASTUDENTUNIONLEADER? Interview with Ania Appleton

“My name’s Ania Appleton. I’m in 11th grade, and I’m a co-president of the Black Student Union at San Diego High School."

What are some of your favorite parts of Black culture?

“OOH! I love the diversity. A lot of African-Americans make their own kind of culture because they don’t know where they originated from from Africa, so they have their own culture. But there’s also different ethnicities within black culture, like the countries in Africa. We can be Senegalese, or Nigerian, or Ghanian, and seeing everybody have their own kind of cultural traditions and still being like, you know, black and everything. I’m Jamaican myself so that’s from the Caribbean but black people are everywhere and I love that. I love our music. Love music! I could not live without black music. Like rap, jazz, especially R&B, stuff I love. Yeah, I think that [diversity and music] are my two favorite things about black culture.”

How do you, as a student union, hope to lift up your fellow black students?

“Let me make something really really clear - we’re always supporters of black joy. Which is something you don't see in the media a lot. And if you look at specifically the news, if you see a black person there, it’s usually because someone has died and they were either murdered or shot because of gang violence or something like that. I think summer of 2020 was a very very big time like that, where we saw George Floyd and there were protests and while that is so very important, it can take a toll on our souls, our mental health and our wellbeing when all we see is black trauma, all we see is people dying, or people getting treated terribly. So we are always focusing on black joy, black achievements, black success [...] we’re gonna try to do internship/career fests. We’re always looking to uplift our members because we feel like there’s just not enough of that in our lives especially on social media. So, [we are] always advocates for black joy and black uplifting.”

How do you hope for non-Black students to participate in/support the Black Student Union?

“I think our broadest goal is to educate. I feel like I say this all the time but you’d be surprised by how ignorant people can be. Maybe due to lack of care, or a lot of times it’s just lack of learning, really. So we’re trying to teach people to learn how to navigate friendships or relationships with black people, or really people of color in general. It’s so important taking a step back and trying to see or even feel the world from a black person's lens. When dealing with conflict of race or stuff like that it makes a huge impact. It can mean so much to black people to see their friends, families, spouses, or whatever, try to understand how they’re feeling in times of need. So we’re always trying to educate non-black people [...] like, for example, if you had walked up to a black woman and said, ‘can I touch your hair?’. It's kind of a no-no. But some people don’t understand that, so I feel like Black Student Union is a place where they can ask those questions like, ‘why can’t I touch a black person's hair?’, ‘why can’t I post this online?’ [...] we want to help people learn [...] that’s our goal, really.”

How do you hope for the SDHS Black Student Union to use activism and advocacy?

“So we understand that the best way to reach people now is through social media. So we’re moving forward, we’re going to try to post more educational stuff on our instagram [...] we [also] are trying to do a couple public speeches. We’re not sure how that would work, but we’re going to look into that. But activism can be something so small. Even creating the Black Student Union and running it is a form of activism.”

Is there anyone who inspired you to have an active role in your student union?

“Yes, my family does, Arsema [previous co-president of the SDHS BSU] does, my co-president does, my officers do. My love of black people exceeds, so I’m happy to put it into something like the club and advocate for the people!”