From racism to mental health, social issues are personal for graduating Dreher duo

With all of the social injustice, political turmoil and eroding mental health in America today, it can be tempting to just block it out.

But Dreher High seniors Eliana Pinckney and Addison “Addy” Lee would rather tackle these topics head-on. That’s why the duo created “Get Woke” talks.

Get Woke is a virtual, periodic session where Pinckney and Lee deliver a summary of facts on a given topic such as racial justice or mental health and moderate a discussion among students and teachers at their school. The discussions, which once included Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin, touch on sensitive issues but are explicitly nonpolitical and welcoming of people with different viewpoints, Pinckney and Lee said.

Pinckney said they’ve gotten pushback from some people who said they’re tired of hearing about racism.

But Pinckney can’t ignore racial injustice. The personal impact of racism and racist violence in her life is too great for her to just forget.

“I grew up in Aiken, S.C., and at my school there weren’t a lot of other African American people,” Pinckney said. “Since like third grade, I was hearing my teachers say things like, ’Slavery was a necessary evil,’ and having people look at you when they’re talking about slavery or civil rights issues ... as if I was different, or having people call me the N-word on the playground when I was just trying to play like the other kids.”

When Pinckney was in middle school, her father, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, was one of the Emmanuel 9 who was murdered in a white supremacist terrorist attack in 2015 at Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston.

Around that time, Lee and Pinckney became friends, which introduced Lee to activism. But the murder of George Floyd in 2020 brought her activism — and the consciousness of her own privilege as a white female — to a different level.

“We were very overwhelmed with all that was going on at the beginning of the summer in May 2020, with all the social justice issues going on,” Lee said.

The format of the Get Woke talks is designed to mirror students’ online learning platform and conversations students had been having with one another, said Nicole Mesimer, a Spanish teacher at Dreher who helped establish the Get Woke talks. Once the talks were established, however, it has been “110% student-led,” Mesimer said.

“They said they were talking to their friends and they had discussions, and ... they wondered, ‘Why aren’t we talking about this? How can we provide an outlet? How can we spark real change within our school community?’” Mesimer said.

Lee and Pinckney will split up for college, but they plan to keep Get Woke talks going at each of their schools. Lee plans to attend the University of South Carolina and major in public health. Pinckney plans to attend Temple University in Philadelphia to double major in musical theater and public relations.

Like any social or political movement, Pinckney and Lee faced backlash for their talks, especially concerning their use of the word “woke” in the title, a word often associated with modern, political progressives, Lee said.

“That’s associated with ‘woke’ culture, which is associated with certain political groups, so that was kind of a ‘wow’ moment to me,” Lee said. “We’ve advertised ourselves as being an open and accepting group. We want this to be a safe space for everybody to share how they’re feeling, but somehow people are taking it and turning it a different way.”

It’s no secret that Generation Z, loosely defined as those born after 1997, has been more active in politics and activism thanmillennials or Generation X, and Pinckney said there is a good reason for that.

“I think our generation is especially active in comparison to other generations, specifically because there is so much that has happened in our lifetimes, whether it is racial violence or hate against the LGBTQ community,” Pinckney said. “Before, it was you’re reading about it in the newspaper or you’re seeing it on the nightly news. Now, it’s at our fingertips. It’s happening in our neighborhoods. We’re seeing videos on our phones. It’s to real to us because we can see everything.”