Oral History Interview with Selena Piercy

Title: Oral History Interview with Selena Piercy
Interviewee
Interviewer: Lyberti Bradley
Description: Selena Piercy of Sewanee, Tennessee was interviewed by Lyberti Bradley, a Sewanee student, on October 30th, 2023 in person/on Zoom. While their conversation was primarily on the Black Lives Matter Movement, other topics included her experience taking a class on Contemporary Social Movements, and how it influenced her view on the Black Lives Matter Movement. We hope that this conversation will assist scholars with a further understanding of race in the United States during the early twenty-first century. Please click on the link to see the full interview.
Transcript: Lyberti (00:01):
Hi, this is Lyberti Bradley from Sewanee, the University of South, and today is October 30th, 2023. So Monday I am with,

Selena Piercy (00:13):
I'm Selena, and I'm also from the University of the South in Tennessee.

Lyberti (00:21):
Okay. Thank you Ms. Selena for being here.

Selena Piercy (00:25):
Thank you.

Lyberti (00:26):
Alright, so where are you from?

Selena Piercy (00:30):
I am from Knoxville, Tennessee, but I live in Oak Ridge now, which is just like 30 minutes away from Knoxville.

Lyberti (00:38):
Okay. And how is where you live now different from where you were raised?

Selena Piercy (00:46):
Knoxville is kind of a way bigger city, and it's like a college town, so there's just more to do, arguably a better place to live. But Oak Ridge is a smaller town. We have one high school and then we have a national laboratory and a nuclear plant.

Lyberti (01:05):
Okay, that's cool. So would you say that you went to, okay, what size was your high school?

Selena Piercy (01:14):
My high school was actually about as big as Sewanee, so maybe like 1500 people, so a little smaller.

Lyberti (01:20):
Oh, that's a lot.

Selena Piercy (01:22):
Yeah.

Lyberti (01:25):
What years were you in high school?

Selena Piercy (01:27):
I was in high school from the years 2017 to 2021.

Lyberti (01:31):
Okay. Alright. And so when you were a kid in Knoxville, where did you find community?

Selena Piercy (01:40):
I mean, just friends from my elementary school and then, I don't know, growing up in my neighborhood there weren't really a lot of kids, so probably not there. But yeah, school, I did martial arts and so I had a lot of friends in that and then I did volleyball.

Lyberti (01:58):
Okay. That sounds great. Thanks. And then where do you find community today?

Selena Piercy (02:04):
At my college, university, I mean just everywhere. Everyone's really nice and cool.

Lyberti (02:13):
Since you're a full-time student, I won't ask you what led you to this journey. Obviously, you talked about where you went to high school, but where do you think you plan to go after this?

Selena Piercy (02:24):
Fingers crossed. I go to grad school, get a PhD in clinical psychology.

Lyberti (02:31):
Okay, so we're stem girly?

Selena Piercy (02:33):
Yes.

Lyberti (02:34):
Alright. And who inspires you and why?

Selena Piercy (02:40):
That's a great question. Who inspires me? I know it's super cliche, but my parents just because, I mean, yeah, we kind of came from literally nothing and then they both went to school and kind of buried themselves in student debt, but now they've done a really good job of making their way out of it and then have sacrificed a lot for me to make sure that they can provide for me and I can have a comfortable future.

Lyberti (03:11):
That's great, thank you. I don't think it's cliche to say your parents, your parents or your kid, your parents are your idols, so yeah. Have you done any traveling out of state or internationally?

Selena Piercy (03:24):
Yeah, so actually the majority of my traveling has been through orchestra just because there are competitions everywhere. So I've been to Virginia, actually Sewanee for a music festival, which is band camp, but for orchestra kids. And then over winter break, I left the country for the first time and I visited Romania for two and a half weeks.

Lyberti (03:52):
How was that?

Selena Piercy (03:53):
It was a good time. It was a lot of fun.

Lyberti (03:56):
Okay. Alright. And so if you had to say what culture or group of people do you identify with most?

Selena Piercy (04:12):
I mean, I'm just a white woman. Yeah. I mean, I'm a citizen of the United States. I didn't really have to fight for that, so that's probably where I identify.

Lyberti (04:28):
Okay. And then follow up, what culture do you think interests you the most?

Selena Piercy (04:33):
What interests me the most? That's a really good question. I don't really, I don't know. Okay. So growing up I had a best friend from Palestine and her house was just always so warm and smelled so good. And her mom always had something really delicious cooking and they would always be playing Arabic soap operas.

Lyberti (04:59):
I think that sounds good.

Selena Piercy (05:01):
I think especially with current events going on right now, I think I Middle Eastern, but particularly Palestinian culture, it was pretty interesting.

Lyberti (05:11):
Okay, I agree. So I guess now it's time to get to the hard questions.

Selena Piercy (05:15):
Alright.

Lyberti (05:18):
So when did you first hear about Black Lives Matter in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Selena Piercy (05:24):
I know it started in 2016, so I was in middle school at the time. And yeah, I mean, I think I just heard about it on the news just coming to school and then my friends would be talking about it and they would come up to me and be like, do you think Black Lives Matter? And I was just stuff like that and then just hearing stuff from my family.

Lyberti (05:49):
So I feel like you're part of a younger demographic and you've grown up with a lot of technology and social media. How do you feel that affected your perception of what the Black Lives Matter Movement was?

Selena Piercy (06:07):
I feel like growing up with kind of unlimited internet access has given me access to a lot of different opinions that I don't think I would have gotten exposure to if I had just watched the news on tv. So I mean, I don't know, even on Twitter, I mean that's where a lot of this movement gained traction. I don't think a lot of that stuff would've been shown on CNN or Fox especially.

Lyberti (06:44):
Yeah, I would agree. I feel like growing up with social media being in your face since, I dunno, we were 12 I would say when people started really getting lots of phones and stuff. I feel like sometimes our demographic is so unserious, so even if we're talking about something as serious as Black Lives Matter, you guys got to put a little joke in there because we need a little safe space. So what is your opinion on the Black Lives Matter movement?

Selena Piercy (07:26):
My opinion of the movement, I think it's a perfectly rational reaction to just everything that black people have gone through in the us. I mean, I don't know, I guess my opinion is positive overall. I think, I mean, it's necessary. We need to gain attention. It's a very complicated topic just when looking at it as a social movement. I took a class on contemporary social movement, someone talking about Black Lives Matter. I mean, basically the consensus was that the intentions behind the movement were really good, but the movement is kind of lacking one solid leader. And people have described BLM as a leaderless movement as opposed to the Civil rights movement with MLK or Malcolm X. So I don't know if leadership would help BLM achieve their goals, but yeah.

Lyberti (08:42):
So in talking about how this is kind of a leaderless movement, and we also talked about how social media gives us a lot of power to put our opinions out. Do you feel like it being described as a leaderless movement, even though anybody could be a leader or use their platform to lead, do you think that's accurate? Or would you say that it's not leaderless but full of leaders?

Selena Piercy (09:17):
I think the second thing you said, just full of leaders. I mean, yeah.

Lyberti (09:24):
Okay.

Selena Piercy (09:24):
Yeah.

Lyberti (09:26):
And in your opinion, do you feel like do the Black Lives Matter movement has had any substantial success?

Selena Piercy (09:40):
I think that it has done a good job in helping people gain awareness of what black people have been through and why everyone's pretty pissed off about the current situation of the way people are treated. I don't know if, I'm pretty sure the goal of the movement was for people to gain awareness. So in terms of that, yes, it has been successful. I wish that America would do better.

Lyberti (10:18):
Right. Okay. And so in saying that, maybe I should have asked this question earlier, but what do you feel like the state of race relations in the United States is right now?

Selena Piercy (10:33):
That's a loaded question. I would hope that it's better than it was 50 years ago. I feel like people are gradually doing a better job of becoming more inclusive and open-minded and aware of the different experiences of people, of different identities. But I don't know.

Lyberti (11:10):
I feel like that's fair.

Selena Piercy (11:12):
But I also, I'm just a white woman, so I don't really, I am never going to have a good understanding of a non-white experience.

Lyberti (11:22):
It's right. And this is the last one I'll ask you. Okay. So what do you feel like the future of the movement will be?

Selena Piercy (11:41):
That's a really good question. So many good questions. I might need a minute to think.

Lyberti (11:47):
Okay. Take your time.

Selena Piercy (11:55):
I feel like in the present, it's lost a lot of traction since when the movement first started, I mean, in 2016, and then a larger wave in 2020. But I feel like not a ton has happened since then. I don't exactly know why. I hope that something good will come out of it again, but I don't really know what that would look like, but hopefully successful.

Lyberti (12:30):
Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment, especially since we're not as far removed from it as we are from civil rights. We're still in it, so we're watching history happen. But thank you so much for talking to me today and I really appreciate it.

Selena Piercy (12:44):
Thank you, Lyberti.

Lyberti (12:45):
Of course.

Part of Selena Piercy