AC Corner with Antwan Campbell Dr. Carolyn Ball, CI and CT, NIC Affiliate Chapter Liaison
Carolyn Hi, my name is Carolyn Ball, and I am the Affiliate Chapter (AC) Liaison here at the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. Typically, we have an article called The Affiliate Chapter Corner for the RID VIEWS. I’m very lucky to have the President of the North Carolina RID AC, and he was willing to sit down with me and be interviewed. The NCRID president’s name is Antwan Campbell, and I appreciate him being with us today. Do you mind introducing yourself, Antwan? Antwan Hello everybody, as you mentioned, my name is Antwan Campbell, and I am the President of the North Carolina AC. I’ve been working for almost ten years now on the board here in North Carolina. Before I was the president, I was the secretary for about six years, and then I became the president. This year marks my eighth year on the Board, and I’ll officially be done in June 2022. Carolyn You have been involved with North Carolina RID for a long time, and I applaud you. What has made you feel that it’s important to be involved in your AC as you have been for eight years? Antwan It just so happened that I met some wonderful interpreters at some workshops here in North Carolina RID, and then I became involved in the AC. I had learned a lot being involved in our AC, and I became addicted, and I wanted to improve the interpreters in the area. I specifically wanted to focus on BIPOC interpreters and educational interpreters because those are the areas I wanted to focus on. The reason for the focus was because I had seen my brother grow up, and we signed as a family, and he was fluent in ASL. However, I saw that his interpreters were usually female, and it didn’t match who he was. So, I thought a lot about this. I also wanted to become an interpreter so that the Black community members could see more Black interpreters. I also wanted the population of Black Deaf students to see that they could have a Black interpreter. So, those are the same reasons I have been encouraged to expand to have more BIPOC interpreters in the community. Carolyn I didn’t realize that your family signs. I didn’t know that you had a Deaf brother. How did your family learn ASL? Antwan Well, my family really is very different from most families who have Deaf siblings because we all learned to sign. My brother, I’m the oldest, and he’s my younger brother. I learned ASL about the age of 5 so that my brother and I could communicate. So, when I went to college, I learned that there weren’t other people like my family who signed, which was so strange to me. I wondered how they communicated with their families. We learned to sign when my brother was very young, so I thought that was what everyone did. I don’t remember how I learned to sign when I was five years old, but I think we started to learn because of my mother, as she had taken some ASL classes. My brother had learned ASL in preschool, so we learned signing simultaneously. That was why I went to college and got an interpreter degree. Carolyn Where did you go to college? 14
