Actor and activist Kendrick Sampson encourages students to use their voices and creativity to challenge acts of discrimination during San Jose State’s Spartan Speaker series on Wednesday, which welcomes Sampson as the first guest speaker of the spring semester.
Best known for his performances on CW’s “The Vampire Diaries,” ABC’s “How to Get Away with Murder” and HBO’s “Insecure,” Sampson uses art to produce nuanced portrayals of Black lives in his work.
Sampson was born in Houston, Texas to a small family, where he was shunned by his extended family for his parents’ interracial relationship. “I got ostracized before I even made it to Earth,” he said.
Away from television screens, he said he utilizes his voice to empower marginalized communities and shed light on issues of inequity.
“Sampson highlights the intersectionality of industry, personhood and passion,” said Jahmal Williams, Director of Advocacy for Racial Justice.
Williams is a standing member of the Campus Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, which works to identify and address inequality, racial and systematic injustice in the community and on campus.
In 2018, Sampson and Tia Oso founded BLD PWR, a production company with the mission of reimagining Hollywood.
By building community and highlighting storytelling, BLD PWR aspires to challenge those in power by taking authority into its own hands, according to its website.
In the summer of 2020, Sampson co-organized a demonstration in Los Angeles which resulted in him suffering injuries from police baton strikes while being struck with several rubber bullets, according to a June 2020 Variety Magazine article.
In response, he penned a letter to the entertainment industry as a whole, asking Hollywood to recognize its inequities, divest the police of their funding and invest that money into the Black community to produce empowering Black stories, according to the
Variety Magazine article.
“There hasn’t ever been a time when we haven’t had to advocate for ourselves in some way,” Sampson said. “Even if it’s just to say ‘Why am I being treated differently from everybody else?’ ”
Sampson continued to share a time when his high school step team was disbanded for
“behaving like thugs.”
A step team is a group of people that perform a dance art that originated in Africa accompanied by percussion, spoken word and clapping, according to Step Afrika!
“You might have done activism and not even know it – I know I did,” Sampson said.
In order to be in the step team, Sampson was told to join the junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps as a young teen.
His response was starting a petition and learning how other schools in his area had
step teams permitted.
“We did it, and it was my form of resistance,” Sampson said. “But I didn’t ever think that was activism.”
“Music and art is tied to emotion, to memory,” Williams said. “When you’re able to dive into those vulnerable parts of people, it’s past seeing and hearing – it’s feeling.”
He said these two mediums are perfect when helping people discern prejudice and
struggling communities.
“When I got into acting, I didn’t realize a lot of the problems I would run into as a little Black kid,” Sampson said.
Sampson said being an activist is not always in the cards for some, but it is something Black people
tend to become.
Activism’s purpose is to combat social justice issues in a community, an affair that transpires on our campus frequently.
Advertising sophomore Kayla Booker said she would visit The Black Leadership and Opportunity Center to seek a safe place as a Black student before working at the center last August.
“Today, I was in the bookstore and my friend and I were looking for a book, and one of the employees yelled at us,” Booker said.
She said the employee assured her that a section of the bookstore was closed off to the public when it was open. When she asked for assistance to find the book, the employee responded rudely.
Fellow Black students and friends of Booker experienced a similar fate in the bookstore.
“I can’t be certain it was racism, but I felt that it was targeted,”
she said.
Williams said these micro and macro-aggressions occur when people do not fully understand the depths of relating to
one another racially.
He said when stereotypes, biases and prejudice are absorbed while being raised, there are bound to be leaks in a place as diverse as SJSU.
Williams features two steps in preparing students for racial injustices, preparing students for situations involving racial injustices and how students should respond when the situation arises.
The goal is to decrease the number of injustices that occur and increase the support students have on campus.
Williams said this could only be possible with the right resources, strategies and people in place to affirm these steps. “Avoiding those conversations and lessons does nobody a service,” he said.
Williams used Sampson as an example for students to not let their journey at college remain linear.
“Fighting against systems of oppression, building towards racial equity – all that can happen through whatever degree you end up getting,” Williams said. “I think his journey shows that.”
Sampson is an actor, who is a vocal activist and artist who uses his skill set to help his community.
“Your purpose is not a career,” Sampson said. “My purpose is not acting, it’s liberation.”
He said there’s no success without collective effort and how it’s impossible to be successful
by yourself.
Sampson said liberation is tied to success, therefore, students cannot become liberated by themselves.
Booker said she enjoys creating art which causes her to feel more connected to the pieces she comes across on campus and
in the community.
“When I see art around the city or on campus, it makes me feel inspired,” Booker said, “It’s a mood lifter.”
