Creating a Diverse Environment

Preston Blakely –

Preston Blakely, 23, is a candidate for a master’s in Public Affairs from Western Carolina University, where he also works in the school’s Public Policy Institute.

He views his future—public service, municipal administration, elected office—through one central principle.

“I want to make sure that everything is equitable, everything is inclusive, and that we can create a diverse environment, wherever I may be.

“It probably won’t happen in my lifetime,” he acknowledges—but that won’t keep him from working toward that vision.

Blakely graduated from Asheville High School in 2013, where he got “sparked” on politics. “After a class in civics and economics I was really excited. And my senior year I turned 18, right before the November elections, and I got to vote—for President Obama.”

At UNC Greensboro Blakely had a double major in Political Science and African American Diaspora Studies. Learning about the percentage of African Americans in prison compared to their percentage in the population, he realized “That was something I’d never really thought about… I’m black, and I wanted to learn about these policies that affect black people.”

He also studied the African diaspora, the global dispersal of Africans through the slave trade and forced emigration.

After sophomore year he interned with State Senator Terry Van Duyn of Asheville, where he worked with Van Duyn’s legislative assistant Irma Avent-Hurst, well-known as a black woman with deep and broad experience in the legislature a long time. The following year, he interned for Congresswoman Alma Adams.

“They were closing her Greensboro office due to redistricting, so she was always in Charlotte, but I went in to her Greensboro office two or three times a week to help out.” There he worked with Josette Ferguson, who told him about the MPA program at Western.

Personal experience shapes his dream

Western’s MPA classes are held at Biltmore Park, but for his PPI job Blakely goes to Cullowhee.

“UNCG is the most diverse campus in North Carolina; Western is nowhere near that. Even in my classes I feel like an outsider. I’m one of two black students in the program—next year it might be one of three—I think about that every time I walk into the classroom.

“I don’t recall a single racial incident at Greensboro. But at Western, on Martin Luther King Day, someone yelled the “n” word at people on the march. And my teacher’s telling me there’s been a black student of hers walking around campus and somebody’s walking around behind her saying the “n” word!”

WCU set up a joint task force on racism, a good thing, in Blakely’s view, yet an unfortunate need. “Maybe every school should have that—but it’s bizarre that they have to have it.”

Watchwords: diverse, equitable, inclusive

Blakely reiterates, “I want every place to be a diverse, equitable, inclusive environment, and it doesn’t always feel like that.” He notes that his own privilege makes the path easier for him. His parents, Jonathan and Preston Blakely, are successful business-owners, and his grandmother, Oralene Graves Simmons, is a civil rights icon. She said the same thing 50 years ago: “I don’t believe it will happen in my lifetime, but it’s worth fighting for.”

Blakely brings up the opioid “crisis” and gentrification.

“It seems like we’ve come a long way, but our people are greatly overrepresented in the criminal justice system, more likely to be shot by police, more likely to be arrested… Look at the war on drugs: cocaine was something that white people were more likely to use, and the sentencing for crack is like 100 times more than the sentencing for cocaine. Today we see white people on opioids, and it’s not a ‘war on drugs,’ it’s an ‘epidemic.’ As a white person, you’re a victim, but I’m a criminal.”

He looks at gentrification in liberal Asheville, where “black people, poor people are being pushed out. It’s not something to be proud of, to be one of the top-ten or top-five most gentrified cities in America.”

Blakely is passionate about educating the public as well as officials. “We’re so polarized, even if something is true, people will deny it. We have to address mass incarceration; people have to accept climate change is real. We have to make sure that our schools are teaching this stuff.”

As for educating elected officials on equity, gentrification, segregation, discrimination, he envisions becoming not “a city or county manager, but more of an equity and inclusion manager. And he “would love to be an elected public official one day, federal, state, or local. I’d love to influence policy. I can’t say exactly what I want to do, because there are so many ways to do it. I want to own my own business … be a politician … be an administrative officer … teach African American history.

“It’s hard: I want to do everything in the world.”