(352) 392 ://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/aa/00/06/65/33... · b: yeah, yeah, you know. and so if you...

For information on terms of use of this interview, please see the SPOHP Creative Commons license at http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AfricanAmericanOralHistory.

Joel Buchanan Archive of African American History: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/ohfb

AAHP 220A Sharon Burney

African American History Project (AAHP) Interview conducted by Julian Ruiz on November 17, 2011

1 hour, 10 minutes | 34 pages Abstract: In this interview, Sharon Burney contrasts her Northern experiences with race relations with her Southern experiences, and then considers current issues within Black communities. In the North, Ms. Burney lived in nice neighborhoods and was one of the few Blacks in her grade school. When she moved to Washington D.C., she attended a predominantly Black high school. Ms. Burney shares the sentiment that her Northern education celebrated diversity, and only subtle racism was present. She then describes the more blatant racism, as well as colorism, she experienced upon moving to the South. Ms. Burney moved south to attend the University of Florida and laments the school’s historical and current lack of diversity. Keywords: [African American History; Alachua County, Florida; University of Florida; Diversity; Regionalism; Education]

Samuel Proctor Oral History Program College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Program Director: Dr. Paul Ortiz

241 Pugh Hall PO Box 115215 Gainesville, FL 32611 (352) 392-7168 https://oral.history.ufl.edu

http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AfricanAmericanOralHistory

AAHP 220 Interviewee: Sharon Burney Interviewer: Julian Ruiz Date: November 17, 2011 R: Today is November 17, 2011. I’m Julian Ruiz and I’m here with Ms. Sharon

Burney, and we are doing an interview on the African American History Project

for the Oral History Program at the University of Florida. And it is located in

Gainesville, Florida. Ms. Burney, where were you born?

B: Richmond, Virginia.

R: And in what year?

B: 1965.

R: Where exactly were you born? What part of the city?

B: I was born in Richmond Memorial Hospital, which I believe is now closed. At that

time there was pretty much one Black doctor for the most part delivered most

babies in Richmond at that time, and so we did go to Richmond Memorial, and

the one Black doctor in town there was an obstetrician delivered you, so—

R: What would happen if the one doctor was not available for some reason?

B: I’m not sure. I guess you would deliver at home.

R: At home? How was the racial makeup of the neighborhood that you grew up in?

B: Okay, um actually when I was two or three we moved to—my father then got a

job as a computer programmer at the time with IBM. And we moved to upstate

New York—Poughkeepsie, New York. When I was about three years old we

moved to upstate New York and I lived in Poughkeepsie, New York, which is a

predominantly white neighborhood in upstate New York. I wanna say the racial

makeup, if I can remember correctly, there would only be a few Blacks in my

classes. And predominantly my father, then, whenever we moved, we moved

AAHP 220; Burney; Page 2

according to the best public school systems around, and because he worked for

IBM, he could afford to move us, so we were usually the only Black family in that

particular neighborhood. There would be exceptions. I don’t say I think my racial

makeup of schools ever went over maybe four or five percent.

R: Four or five percent? And how about your mother?

B: My mother is Black and she was born in Richmond, Virginia. My father was

actually born in Miami, Florida, on holiday, on July 4, but he’s from Richmond,

Virginia, so both my families are from Richmond, Virginia, area. And we lived in

upstate New York, too, once we moved until my parents divorced when I was

about ten. My mom moved to the Bronx, New York, actually, right a block from

Yankee Stadium off Gerrard Avenue. And I then moved to live with my father in

Gaithersburg, Maryland, which is a suburb of Washington, D.C., and then

Beltsville, which is in P.G. County in Maryland. Both of my parents actually have

interesting histories: my mother’s, which would be grandfather, which would be

my great-grandfather, is Simon Bower, who is one of the founding professors at

Virginia State University, outside of Richmond and Petersburg. He also owned a

lot of land, he was a White man, my great-grandmother was his third wife, who

was a Black woman, and they had thirteen children. They owned the land that an

army base is now built on, they bought it from him so they came into some

money, he passed, the money went to the great-grandmother, and then to the

descendants, and they all moved to Richmond after they sold the farm, the land

to the Army. And from that we have some historical significance with cousins that

were married into the Bower family, one being Lonnie Liston Smith, which is a


great jazz musician, who was a cousin of my aunt, which would be my great-

aunt. Lonnie Liston Smith, whose father owned a gospel group, called the Soul

Stirrers I believe was the name of the group, and then as a youngster he formed

a group, one of the members was Sam Cooke, actually. So it was, you know, a

few of them, and Lonnie and his brother also, so they were cousins of the family.

H. Rap Brown, a Black Panther, was related to one of my aunts, my mother’s

brother, my grandmother’s brother’s wife, was a cousin of his, and they were

family members, and I remember stopping through Jersey City when we were

little, I didn’t understand at the time what was going on, but we would travel on

our holidays to go to Richmond. We would travel at night and we’d go to this

host, you know I was in New Jersey, and I’d be waking up at night and there’d be

these people in these camouflage-looking outfits with guns and stuff. We’re like,

What’s going on? And it’s like, Don’t worry about that. Play with your cousins.

You know. And as I found out later, this is why, you know, your cousin’s H. Rap

Brown and he’s a Black Panther, you know, those type of things, so that’s

interesting. And then I also have an uncle by marriage who was married, my

mother’s sister, brother-in-law, my uncle Melvin, is how I know him, but people

know him as ‘Waa Waa Watson’ who is a guitarist who has played for everybody

from Marvin Gaye to Maxwell to Alicia Keys nowadays. His discography is

ridiculous, if you will look at all of the Motown. My fondest memory is he would

come into town is probably meeting Marvin Gaye when he was performing,

playing guitar for him on his Sexual Healing tour. We went down to the hotel to

hangout with them and played spades with Marvin Gaye. That’s cool.


R: Played spades?

B: Yeah, yeah, you know. And so if you were to look up from here he’s Uncle Melvin

Raegan, he goes by ‘Waa Waa Watson.’ But if you look at his discography, and

who he’s performed for, you’d probably fall out the chair. So famous guitarist. So

those are just some of the family history that I have. I grew up in Poughkeepsie,

New York, was interesting. I enjoyed it as a child. Marist College, one of the Ivy

League schools, was there. A few other colleges—I don’t remember much about

that because I was young. I probably moved from there when I was eight/ nine.

But I do remember it being—I do remember we lived in a high rise at one time,

across the Hudson River, we lived right off the Hudson River in this high rise, and

across you could see the Hudson River’s mountains. I do remember being very

young, probably about six or seven, and seeing a Klu Klux Klan burning a cross.

R: And this was still—?

B: This was upstate New York. Poughkeepsie, New York. Upstate.

R: In New York, so it wasn’t only in the South?

B: Right. Upstate, we’re talking upstate New York, right across the Hudson River.

And seeing that burning. Um, it was interesting, you know, one thing about also

growing up in New York, that simultaneously that you saw some racism. We did

have some neighbors, I remember, you know, kids not allowed to play. We had

an Italian neighbor who lived next door and a little girl used to sneak to play with

me because her parents did not want her playing with me. And so the little girl

would sneak when her parents weren’t home and come play with me. And then

we had some that you didn’t, you know, it was really great to live in New York at


that time because there’s a whole difference of celebrating diversity that you see

North to South, whereas every week we had, we would have these diversity days

on Friday, a celebration where everybody would bring in their traditional foods or

clothing or something or show-and-tell almost. You know, so I, you’re afforded

this opportunity to grow up where you’re having traditional Korean, or

Vietnamese, or Ghanaian, you know, meals. Italian. I grew up spoiled because,

you know, I know what fake pizza is, what real pizza is, you know, you

understand what I’m saying.

R: Right.

B: In traditional dishes, Orthodox Jewish people, you know, that type of thing. So it

was a funny, you would have these experiences, they weren’t as frequent as I

experienced in the South, but they would pop up, you know. You see some

segregation.

R: And where did you go to school exactly? What college?

B: I went to high school in Beltsville, High Point High School. And then my junior

year, we moved back to Richmond, Virginia. Okay, and I went to two different

high schools in eleventh grade and then graduated from Clover Hill High School

in Richmond, Virginia, which was a—I went from being in Washington, D.C. and

growing up most of my teenage years in a predominantly Black, which is one of

the only places in America where Blacks outnumber Whites, is Washington, D.C.

So I had a really unique experience, which gave to me a totally different

viewpoint, because I was able to grow up where I saw so many different

socioeconomic levels of people. You could get a government job and make really


great money, you know, middle-class money to survive. And not necessarily go

to college. And then we had people who were on industrialized tracks: plumbing,

brick laying in high school. You know how they separate us. Hairdressing. And

there’s so many Black women, and in Washington, D.C. area where clothing and

all that is very important. I had friends in high school that were on the vocational

track that went to hairdressing school and right out of high school they graduated

and they were making, at that time, we’re talking like 1983, like $40,000 or

$50,000 a year doing hair. And buying townhomes and stuff and we’re like, poor.

We’re going to school. We’re like we did something wrong. You know, you had

people who were plumbers, you know, went to plumbing or bricklaying, and they

were making, you know, right out of high school, eighteen dollars an hour. Stuff

like that. So in affording me this unique opportunity to be able to see all levels,

people that look like me, that are Black, on all levels, succeeding at life. Whereas

this separation of classes, the big separation between poor and the

disenfranchised and the well-off, typically in the South where you see a big gap

because they don’t have the industry there. You know, to supplement or to be

able to have more people in the middle class, so it’s not much a separation. And

so the ideal of stereotyping Black people in a way, you know, I didn’t grow up

with that perceived knowledge because I wasn’t in that situation. So that assisted

with my growing. I remember, I ran track, I ran track AAU track from the time I

was six ‘til high school, ‘til I graduated from high school. And I ran with a team

called Model Cities, which was a program, a project program outside of D.C. It

was an area, it was a projects based out of Palmer Park, Maryland. In Landover


area was a project called Model Cities, and Richard Nixon had stopped the

funding for a lot of those projects, which what grew out of those projects was this

track team that grew, we had like a hundred members. And it was local people

and parents just came in and helped and picked up financially where they didn’t.

We had these amazing coaches that came in. They were just parents that were

concerned. And I remember, it was just really funny when I think about this now.

We used to practice, we start practicing in the wintertime around January or

February, and when I first joined, before I ran for Model Cities, I ran for a track

team in Richmond called the Richmond Comets, but then when we moved down

from New York, I ran for Model Cities in D.C. area. And we used to practice in

Palmer Park until it got warmer, we could go to a track in Fairmont Heights High

School outside of D.C. and P.G. County. But there was a young man who was

training that would jog with us around, you know, when we used to do our warm-

ups, we’d do cross country on the runs, and there was a young man that was

working out at the time, who was going to the Olympics. His name was Sugar

Ray Leonard. And he was—

R: Man, that’s crazy.

B: Yeah, that’s crazy, right? And he used to jog with us in the morning. And it was

funny because I got married right out of high school, okay. Here’s how the world

is so small, and my ex-husband lived in Glenarden, Maryland, in subsidized

housing, and he was married. His first wife, and they had a a little boy, named,

we called him little Ray. It was Ray Leonard Jr. And his wife’s sister actually lived

across the hall from us. And Little Ray used to play with my ex-brother-in-law,


when he was a little kid all the time. So, yeah, but it’s a small world. So anyways,

so I went to high school, I graduated from high school at Clover Hill High School,

in Richmond, Virginia. And I got married after high school. Immediately after high

school, my ex-husband was in the military and he was a jet engine mechanic for

the F-16s that I think they’ve now gotten rid of. At Eglin Air Force Base, which is

in Fort Walton Beach, which is one of the biggest Air Force bases in the

country—in the world, period. And then we got divorced. When we got divorced I

applied to come to college here at UF. And I mainly picked UF because they had

family housing and I had two daughters. So they were one of the only schools

that had family housing. And so I applied, they accepted me and I came to school

here. And that’s how I ended up here in [19]89.

R: What exactly did you run in track? The eight hundred? The two hundred?

B: In track I ran the one hundred, the two hundred, and the four hundred. And then

of course the relays. I ran—and you know it was a phenomenal experience

because I was able to—We traveled everywhere. That’s how good our team was.

I mean we went to Atlanta a lot. We traveled to Ohio, California for Nationals.

Montreal one time, and then if you qualified, you did, you went to Junior

Olympics, and then you went to what they called Youth Games. Which would

then be a whole other extension to that. But actually my oldest daughter’s

godmother is my longest and dearest friend. And we met on a track team when

we were nine. And still very close. Still best of friends, like family. And so I did

that. I also did, I played, of course, music is my family, you know. We can’t help

it. So I started guitar when I was six. My dad had a jazz musician friend we were


living up in Poughkeepsie, and I’d meet him outside the radio station and he

taught me guitar. And then about a year or two after picking up the guitar really

fast, I picked up the alto saxophone. And I played out the sax ever since. Played

marching band, jazz band, symphonic band, you name it. Pretty much every

school I went to.

R: How did your experiences in the northern part of the country, D.C. and New York,

compare to living in Florida?

B: When I came to school here it was culture shock. I don’t think I experienced it as

much now as, because I’ve been here for so long. But in a nutshell it’s blatant

racism as opposed to subtle. I kinda like my racism a little subtle. [Laughter] If I

had a preference for it. Also I see a lot of colorism issues that I don’t see, you

know, a lot of inter-races effects. You know, when I had time to digest it and

understand it fully at this event, part of it is the discrepancy, you have to be

honest. We were the last and we’re still not desegregated in some areas, right?

But you know where desegregation ceased last was in the South, so the effects

are still there. They’re not as new, you know. A little more integration in the

North. A lot of colorism—they’re not used to seeing light-skinned Black people.

You know, you wanna make a joke: if you go up North, you see a whole bunch of

people that look just like me. [Laughter] They’re Black, too. You know. I’ve never

had so many people question whether I was Black, from Black people, ‘til I came

here and it be such a just, every day. Everyday! It’s like, let it go, people. Get

beyond that. That’s part of it, and I see a lot of the oppression and the effects of

oppression from, from—and the class system, because of the divide. And I think


that has to do with industry. You know, there’s not a lot of jobs here to offer them.

And so you see a big divide. You see it here in Gainesville. From East

Gainesville to West Gainesville. You see it on campus, you look at the jobs that

are available, how many staff positions outside of physical plant do you see

Black staff members in? Let alone faculty. So I see that, I see, with White people,

they’re not exposed, I think, I think we talked about this earlier when we talked

about growing up in a diverse population. So for me it was just, Oh, this is my

Jewish friend, you know, and their parents are Orthodox Jew. You know, Jewish

people, they’re not just, you know, my name is Silverstein, you know, or, you

know, it was just normal for me to grow up and have a Jewish friend here, an

Italian friend here, and a Korean friend here, and know the difference between a

Korean friend and a Vietnamese friend, you know, and to really understand that

it’s a celebration, that’s to me celebrating diversity and not looking at it as

something different. It’s, Oh we eat this when we go over to her house, and I’ve

been to almost every type of church there is, and my parents encouraged it. I

think the difference in the South is they look at it, and if it’s not what they do it’s

weird. It’s weird, you know, it’s strange, it’s, Why would you do that? or it’s

wrong. And I think that mentality, and then also having that experience to grow

up in an area where I’ve grown up, around every level of Black, every

socioeconomic level, you had the descendants of the Hemings, of the Jeffersons,

that are blue blood of Black people society, all the way down to your working

class, and then you have your thugs. So growing up in that I guess I have to say,

when I think about it now, really, really blessed to have been exposed to all of the


different cultures, and growing up I remember first listening to rap when it first

came out. I had cousins in New York City, and what would happened is, on the

DJs on the radio, they would battle each other. You have rival radio stations and

they’d get on the radio and they would compete, boast, or what station was the

best, or who was the better DJ. And that’s kinda how they started. So my cousins

would come down, and I had just moved to D.C., I was probably like ten, and

they’d come down from New York and they’d be like, Listen to this DJ. It was so

weird to me when I first hear it, I was like, Why is he talking so fast? What is he

saying? And they’d play these tapes, and at that time I was listening to—I don’t

know if you’ve ever heard of Go-Go music. Have you ever heard of it? It comes

straight out of D.C. It’s called Go-Go. You’re only gonna hear it in the D.C. area,

D.C., Maryland, Virginia area. And we were listening to Go-Go .We had bands

like EU, which is probably one of the more mainstream bands you’ve heard. They

had a movie, Spike Lee had a movie out, and they did a song called “Doin’ the

Butt,” and they had a dance to it. That was a group from D.C., but they take a lot

of drums and different drums and different syncopations and they play the drums

to it and they kinda do a rap from it. And what we would do is, that was back

when we used to carry the boom boxes, and we’d go to the park—this is before

they got, you couldn’t pirate anything, right? And you would take a group, it might

be a group like EU at Fort Totten Park, and you’d put the name and the date of

the tape, and you’d just tape it, and you’d tape it and then you would dub it, and

we would give it to other people, and you pass it around. That’s how their music

got out at that time cause they weren’t getting record deals. And so what you


wanted to do is, you wanted to get a shout out from the band on the tape, cause

then your crew did something, right? So you’d make up these names for your

crew and you get the t-shirts and you’d try to get a shout out at the park on the

tapes that were passed around, and that’s how we—and we come up with like, I

think my crew was like the ‘Too Much Crew’ and we had have somebody that

was like the ‘Too Short’ and ‘Too Tall’ and too this. It was hilarious, but that’s how

we first started out, and then I started hearing about rap, and then rap started

coming down the line from there.

R: And how did you experience the polarizing, the socioeconomic polarization of the

African Americans in Florida as compared to the North?

B: How did I experience it, personally?

R: Yes. Like, there’s African Americans at the top and African Americans at the

bottom, and there’s really not that much in-between?

B: Well my experience here at—well I had two. Before I came to school here, it’s

funny I remember having an experience where I worked at a grocery store called

Delchamps. And I experienced this really racist situation, I had this racist

manager there, and he was dating one of the White women that worked there.

And I used to work the night shift and I worked in the produce section and we’d

have to prep all this stuff, for the salad bar and everything. She would never do

her work all day. And then she’d leave it all for me, and we had to have all this

backup, and I’d be sitting there trying to catch up and trying to finish in time.

Basically I was like, Look, I’m coming here to this, everything is depleted. We’re

supposed to have four back-ups of everything. I can’t catch up by the time I get


one thing on, it’s depleted and I’m spending the whole time and then I’m running

late getting out of here for close. And you’re fussing at me for not finishing on

time when she’s clearly not marking the bowls, so I know she hasn’t done

anything. And I remember him saying to me something like, Well, I don’t care.

Just get your ass back there and go do what you need to do. And so I remember

making a scene right there in the middle of the aisle where he started and I said,

Ok, sir. I’s understands now. I’m going shuffle on back to the back now. Go pick

you some cotton! He was so mad, his face turned so red. But I wasn’t used to

that, you know. I wasn’t used to it being that blatant and stuff, and I didn’t know

how to handle it. And when I came here I remember getting a job doing some

grant work for what was called the Community Outreach Partnership Center out

of the Shimberg Center in building construction and we had some target areas,

Fifth Avenue being one of them right over here. Fifth Avenue, Pleasant Street,

Porters community, Duval. I’m trying to think where else. We had like five target

areas, and I remember at that time they had the neighborhood area board had

okay-ed a bunch of money for Fifth Avenue, which now is completely gentrified,

and there were projects there they just tore down not too long ago. And I

remember sitting there trying to go out and motivate the residents in that area to

get on the neighborhood, to form a neighborhood community watch. To form a

neighborhood coalition and to sit on the board and give recommendations about

what they wanted done with that money. And it was like pulling teeth, because,

for one, you were an outsider. So they don’t trust you if you’re not from here and

you haven’t been here and put in a lot of time, they’re not gonna listen to


anything you say. Cause you’re an outsider, you’re not from these parts, you

don’t understand, they have the people that they trust and that’s it. And then you

have to realize that they’ve been so disenfranchised and they’re so downtrodden

on so many levels, when you’re dealing with maybe abuse in the house,

domestic or child, or you’re taking about addictions or depression, manic

depression, mental illness, poverty, we’re not just dealing with one thing, we’re

dealing with a multitude of things. It’s hard to motivate in that situation when they

just have so many dire needs. So we tried to explain to them that they’re gonna

coming here and they’re gonna knock these projects down in the next five to ten

years, they’re gonna come in here and they’re gonna build all these things and

you’re not gonna be able to afford it. And people that do have homes here,

they’re gonna take it and increase the taxes on it so you won’t be able to keep it

up, and then they’re gonna be—this historic Black neighborhood is gonna be no

more. So please, and let’s look, lo-and-behold it’s been ten years and those

projects are gone and they’re gentrifying right on across that street. And so that’s

some of the disparity that I’ve seen. I see it as a staff member when I look, and

we had a study done by a sociology professor about five years ago, they did a

study of the physical plant workers that she had her class do. And the physical

plant workers here, I think the students nicknamed them “blue shirts.” They’re the

ones that wear the blue shirts, they clean, they do the lawns, and it was

disheartening when they count back the results. And what was really sad is that

the students pretty much saw them almost as invisible. But eighty percent, I think

at least at that time eighty of the physical plant workers were Black. Out of the


physical plant workers most of them had worked there on average of like twelve

years for the university. Were not making more than a dollar more an hour than

they did when they started. And out of all of the physical plant workers, and I

can’t remember how many there were, but there were quite a few, thousands,

many thousands. I think only two or three made more than thirty thousand a year.

R: I see—

B: So when you look at that, and when I came to school here, now it’s a little better,

but when all you have to do is look at a bus schedule. Look at the map of an RTS

bus map and look at the schedules for anything that goes past East Gainesville,

where most of your physical plant employees work, which is the majority of the

employees at UF, Black employees. And look at the frequency and which buses

they use. They’re gonna use the oldest most run down buses, smallest buses on

that side of town, and the biggest, newest buses on the West side of town. And

the frequency is gonna be every 1 hour, those type of things. So when you look

at disparity you look at that, you look at Black staff who retire with the same title,

okay, the same title that they started with thirty-three years ago. You know, you

look at the financial, you look at how much they’ve made in comparison to their

White peers, and you’ll see the discrepancies there. That’s where I see it.

R: Do you think the African Americans in the Gainesville community see you more

as an outsider because you went to UF?

B: No, I don’t think so, I’m gonna say why. Not anymore, no, not anymore, because

well now I’ve been here for what, twenty-something years now, twenty-two years.

Almost twenty-five years maybe. I’ve been here, and I’ve been very, very active.


As a student I was part of an organization called the Sweets Organization which

was a service organization here and we didn’t keep an active membership of

more than maybe twenty members and we always did, over about a thousand

hours of service each. You know, we did a lot in the community. I’ve done almost

every type of service you can imagine here. There’s that, and I have a lot of

connections. I belong to Mount Pleasant United Methodist Church which is the

oldest Black church in Gainesville. We just had our 144th year anniversary last

week. Bought and built by slaves. A lot of—if you look at the history of a lot of the

founding families of Gainesville, through the history of the Haile Plantation and

the families that worked there you will see a lot of their founding families at that

church still. Not so much as outsider, no, I don’ t think so anymore, but there was

a time, yes, very much. And part of that is students had to think about this when

they wanted to do service in the Black community. You’ll see them in February,

August, they’re all gung-ho and they’re right there. And they come round

November, December, finals come around, and then January they might pledge

a fraternity or a sorority and then you don’t see many more. You have to think

about disenfranchised youth, at-risk youth, and what they don’t have is

consistency. So when you think about that you need to think about developing a

relationship now when. When I was doing service as an undergrad and I was

president of our organization we stayed with the same group for the entire time.

R: How has the demographics of the university changed?

B: Not much. To be honest, not much. I think the percentage is about the same, it’s

a little higher exponentially over time. Failure.


R: Even though there’s a large population shift, the demographics stayed the same?

B: It has, if you look at exponentially over time it has not shifted nowhere near

where it should be over time. When I came here in [19]89 what would happen, it

was interesting. I think you retain a lot more than you did when I was here. We

used to joke about it, but we would have maybe—I think we were like three

percent. What’s the percentage now?

R: Oh it’s actually, I think like twelve percent African American and like fifteen

percent Hispanic.

B: Yeah, so we’re talking [19]89 to 2011. So you went what, from—I think we would

end with three, but I think we’d start with like five or seven, and we’d end with

three percent by the end of spring, cause you’d get kicked out. People would get

kicked out. And so that was a big thing. And then they’d get enough in to get us

back to seven, and by the end of that spring, we’d be down to three. [Laughter]

That was the joke for us when we were here. But really we’d go from seven

percent to like? We’re at twenty-what?

R: I think it’s close to like twelve percent, ten percent, I think like that.

B: Twelve. So then we’re talking about, yeah I think, President Machen just spoke at

our meeting today. He said about ten percent. But from seven to ten percent in

twenty-something years? Does that sound like a success to you? Nah. Sorry, no.

I mean, for me, diversity is in the numbers. You know a school, a commitment to

a school, an institution, an organization of business, you know it’s diverse if you

look at the numbers, if you look at the demographics, if you look at the salaries,


okay, if you look at the retention, it shows in the numbers and everything else is

just words on papers and nice pictures.

R: How about a change in the demographics as it pertains to instructors or

professors?

B: I think it’s the same. I think it’s been the same as the students. What happens

with the instructors is that you have some really exciting new faculty members

come, but it’ll only be a handful, and you’ll stretch ‘em out across the entire

university, across colleges. So you might get five, right? And you’ll take those five

superstars and you will service them to death. Cause then you’ll have five Black

people to do everything. To be your poster board for everything. And you’ll burn

them out, I’m just having an honest conversation. You’ll burn them out, and in

five or seven years they’re gone. And they’ll go on to other institutions and be

superstars. At these other institutions where there’s support, but if you really

wanna have a commitment and we’re really in lean times such as we’re having

right now, of course the last people who are gonna get the money are gonna be

the minority programs. They barely wanted to fund them in good times, good

economic times. So if you really wanna have a commitment, then you would do a

mass hiring across colleges, you know, and you might bring in, like, twelve in one

year, right? And then if you couldn’t do it the next year or even the third year, you

bring in another eight. And then the third year from that you bring in another ten.

And then in like ten years you’ve doubled your Black staff. In twenty years, you

see what I’m saying? You’ve doubled it again. Now your institution, where you

have, you know, fifty emerging Black scholars who across colleges, it can’t just


be in one college. And that’s what happened, it’s what happened with the Black

faculty. There’ll be a stink, like we had the shooting a couple of years ago,

[inaudible 38:09] and there’ll be marches, and then there’ll be a small

appeasement. And then it’ll blow back up in five years and before then it was

zero funding in African American studies, and there was a march, and it was bad

publicity, and there’s a small appeasement, and then we go back. I think it’s

really sad because if we truly want to be, and when you look at African American

studies, we still do not have a major in African American studies, we only have a

minor. And we’re supposed to be one of the leading, at least in this state, we’re

behind everybody in the state. We should be embarrassed by that, but we’re not.

So how can we say we’re on the forefront when we’re not on the forefront in

action?

R: Yeah, cause I know UF is ranked one of the top Latin American studies in the

country, but they don’t offer an African American major.

B: And we’ve been trying to fight for that for at least, ever since I‘ve been in African

American studies here for eight years—since 2003/2004. So eight years. Still

waiting to get it approved. It’s frustrating as a Black person when you go through

these things every day. There’s not a day, I don’t know what your experience is,

but I don’t think there’s been one day that I have not gone through an incident of

racism. Not one day that you can wake up and go—I mean, we have to have an

honest conversation. I always say this and people are so afraid of being called

racist, just that word. It’s that we can’t talk. It’s almost like the sexual abuse case

that we’re seeing with Penn State. It’s this ugly elephant in the room that nobody


wants to talk about, but he’s just tearing up all the china in the room and nobody

is saying anything because it makes us uncomfortable. It makes us

uncomfortable about the truths that are happening in our schools, in our

churches, and our homes, and our relationships. In everything. And for me, as far

as racism is concerned, until we can be honest that we have been conditioned to

do one of two things, because of the language of—the language! The language

in the dictionary that everything dark or black is evil, wrong. Black magic, you

know. Impurity tied to blackness. Anything tied to darkness is evil. We call African

religion voodoo. You know, all those. Until the language, when we look at the

legal system, in statistics in the legal system, even as simple as, what’s the

percentage of time that you’re gonna get if you’re a Black defendant as opposed

to a White defendant? Or the lack of percentage of time if you’re a victim of

violence from a White person and you’re a Black person? You look at

percentages in the court rooms. The percentages of people being locked up. The

loss disparities between crack cocaine and cocaine. When we look at the legal

system, racial profiling, all of that. When we look at the justice system, we look at

the educational system, environmental racism. When we’ve been conditioned to

do 1 thing, we’ve been conditioned to think as an oppressed person and we

interact accordingly, or we’ve been conditioned to oppress. Forget being called a

racist. Let’s just say we’ve been conditioned to think one or two ways, and it’s

really kinda taught to you. When you go out, and you see Little Johnny, and he’s

in line at the store, and he’s like jumping all over top of people, disregarding

everyone in line and his parents are looking at him, oppress everybody in line by


stepping on their toes, cutting them in line, cutting you off. If I go up to a counter

or a deli—this thing where White men think they don’t have to wait for anything,

and they just cut you off in line. Or they come up and it is simple when I go to a

deli. Say I go up to a deli, and this is funny experience. You’ll go to the deli and

it’ll be a White guy behind the counter or anybody behind the counter, and you’ll

sit there, and you’ll be sitting there knowing that you made eye contact with that

person in the deli, and then a White person will come up after you, that person

behind the deli will not say, May I help you? or look at me. They’ll say, Who’s

next? If not just look at the White person and take them first. That’s oppression.

That’s oppression. The ideas that I don’t have to wait is conditioned oppression.

White privilege is conditioned oppression. The fact that I have to be careful about

speaking out about racism, cause I don’t want that person that’s oppressing me

to feel uncomfortable is oppression. It’s the same thing with the Penn State

situation. It’s, these people, this guy was raping the little kid in the shower and we

have to tiptoe cause his feelings are hurt cause he didn’t call 9-1-1 or stop it. It’s

oppression. So we’ve either been conditioned to one, think as an oppressed

person and hold our head down and scared to speak out or scared to do things

that we haven’t normally done, or we go along with it or do inter-racism and we

self-hate. We deny it, we sell ourselves just to get some White privilege that

doesn’t really belong to us to begin with. Or we’ve conditioned to oppress. Once

we do that, then we can have a conversation about racism. Until we can admit

that, we will never have a conversation about racism.


R: Do you think segregation has gone from racial segregation to economic

segregation as the means to segregate the—

B: I think it’s both, but I do not believe we live in a post-racial society. I do not

believe we live in a post-racial society, but I think it’s hand-in-hand now, and I

think you saw that with Martin Luther King’s work was part of the reason he

spoke out against Vietnam, but he also was addressing the racial disparity and

poverty. He was addressing that, too. That’s another good reason to have him

assassinated, you know. But I think they’re equal, to be perfectly honest. I think

it’s equal. But I do not believe, there’s no way you can listen to—I think it’s two-

fold. And it’s interesting, I’ve had this conversation. When you look at the words

that they use to describe our president: tar baby, he’s been called all kinda

things. The disrespect that President Obama has received speaks to that I think.

The Tea Party was formed from angry people who were pissed that a Black man,

a man of color, you know, was—and he’s biracial! But his mother’s White. His

father’s Black. I think somebody said, Hey, we got ours. Claim yours. But I think

part of the Tea Party was formed from people angry, and I think what’s out of

touch with it racially, is that what they don’t realize, a lot of these older racists, or

oppressors, or whatever you wanna call yourself, do not realize that the

demographics of the United States has completely changed, and their children

grew up in that diversity. So they don’t see the color the way, cause all of their

friends were different colors and different races and ethnic backgrounds and

make-up, and they don’t realize that the demo—because they’ve been in their

bubble. And they’ve been disassociated and they’ve been segregated from it


because they didn’t have to financially intertwine. So they don’t have any idea

that the majority of Americans are not thinking like that anymore, and they all

look differently and it’s okay, and their grandkids are playing with these people

and they’re the best friends and they’re dating them! And they’re creating

families. And they don’t get it. So I think that that’s part of what’s happened is

they’re completely out of touch, but I think it’s dangerous to say that we live in a

post-racial society right now because of who decides what gray is?

R: Do you think that it’s become more—do you think that the majority is targeting,

for instance, like all the cultures that are different from them? For instance, as the

way they’re targeting, because the new Census projections say the minority is

gonna become the majority in a few years from now?

B: Oh yeah, I agree with that.

R: So do you think they’re just trying to put the law as a way to stop that from

occurring?

B: Yes I do. I agree with that one hundred percent. I think that they’re frightened to

death of change, they’re frightened to death of losing what they call as their

power. And so they’re trying to change all kind of laws to try to keep that from

happening. I don’t think they’re going to stop it. You can’t. It’s too late. I think by

the time they realized what happened it’s too late. [Laughter] They’re here. That’s

why they started all of that EEO training a long time ago, is they realized that

there had been a drop-off rate in White male births. Many years ago, and not

realizing there was gonna be a population explosion, with Spanish population,

you don’t know. And so what has happened, is that now that they figured it out,


it’s way too late. It’s too late. You can’t do anything about it. What would be

interesting is to see how the minorities interact with each other. What’s been a

unique experience as a Black person, you’ll hear a lot of us say, is that every

minority that comes over here not realizing that colonization for the most part

occurred worldwide, and until you educate yourself to that, then you start to do

the inter-racism thing. And every minority wants—my friends and I joke about

this, but I guess every time a minority comes over here nobody’s worse than the

African American. “Well, We’re not Black, we’re not Black American, I’m

Jamaican.” “I’m not Black, I’m Trinidadian.”

R: Caribbean—

B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. “I’m not Black. I’m Puerto Rican.” “I’m not Black, I’m Cuban.”

It’s like, “Wow, really?” So we’re just no matter what, you can’t get any lower than

a Black American. We’ll just go right down here to the bottom where you want us

to be. We all just got off at different bus stops, that’s all. It’s calmed down.

[Laughter] That’s all. You know, relax. Because they don’t look at you, they don’t

look at you and see, “Oh, you’re Jamaican.” No, they see color. That’s why I said

we’re not, I know we’re not past a post-racial society.

R: What do you think the biggest obstacle is for African Americans? Do you think it’s

education?

B: You know what? That’s a great question. I think my friends and I have been

discussing this a lot. And it’s so much now. I don’t know if I can pick one thing

because I think what you’re seeing now is the sum of all effects. You’ve seen the

summation of Black males killing each other, the Black family is almost non-


existent because of it. You’re seeing the effects of a lack of education. You’re

seeing the effects of them being jailed, murdering each other. The mothers not

being in the household. You’re seeing the effects of reality TV. The numbing of

violence, of the excess of—I say what’s killed us is mediocrity reigns supreme.

You see it from the desensitization of violence and sex. The communication, I

think all of the technology has sent us forward and backward simultaneously. We

can’t come in the room and have a conversation with each other. You’ll have

students come in and they won’t say two words to each other, but they’ll be

texting. They’ll be at a concert and be texting and on their—like you can’t be

entertained. They can’t be fulfilled. They’re numb. I think part of that was the lack

of excellence, I think part of it was desegregation. You took all of our great minds

and you had us in one community: doctors and teachers and plumbers and

artists and all in one area and nurturing and raising the village. And when they

desegregated they split those Black communities and we went from a village

raising to suburbs. It’s sparse, you know. We weren’t together as a community as

much. You see the AIDS that nobody’s talking about. The HIV rates that have

exploded with Black women. And it’s one in four college students being exposed

to it. And because it’s not on MTV or on a commercial or on a video ad because

it’s killing our communities, we’re not talking about it. Nobody’s—that’s another

elephant in the room. Nobody wants to talk about HIV in Black community. So

you have that, you have them in the jail systems, becoming privatized in a way

for corporations to make money so you’re just locking them up left and right for

these mandatory sentencings, then throwing away the key. The mothers have


now, because of that there’s not—Black women outnumber Black men greatly. I

mean, it’s hard for my friends to find a suitable Black man if we wanted to to date,

because they’re not there. And then they’re not reaching maturity now until the

age of like forty or fifty years of age. They’re not working, they’re not running the

household, so their mothers, when they do have a Black male son, they baby

them. They make them their man, they do. They baby them, they coddle them,

they make them their man. And also these young Black men grow up and what

they see is, they see the Black woman probably being a single mom, working two

or three jobs, or working a job and holding it down and getting a career, going to

school, providing his food, his clothes, cleaning for him, cooking for him, bringing

home the bacon, fixing stuff and repairing it because there’s no man in the house

to do so, right? And doing everything so he grows up with the ideology that this is

what a Black woman is supposed to do. She’s supposed to provide for me every

single thing, and I’m just supposed to show up. So then the roles have

completely reversed, but at the same time he wants to be a man. And so there’s

this confusion of roles, you see, and the Black woman is exhausted. And the

roles are reversed. And it’s like, “Well, what do I get? I’m supposed to do

everything?” And of course we burn out ‘cause we’re trying to be everything. So

that’s part of the demise. Education is definitely the demise. Everything is killing

us: health initiatives, environmental racism, health, educational, financial. We

don’t have any financial planning cause we’re just trying to survive every day.

You know, you have a class, and you go, Well why don’t you have life insurance?

Well if you’re trying to figure out how you’re paying the electricity month-to-


month, life insurance doesn’t make the cut-off, you know. They don’t have this

ideology of what that can be, and so you look at our disparity you look at, to be

honest, if you wanna have an honest dialogue, look at your peers and you will

have all of my friends who are educated. They’re lawyers, they’re doctors, and

they will work in a practice at a facility and they’re equal peers and sometimes

mostly not equal, not from the same institution, I’m talking about I have friends

that went to UF, and went to Penn State, that went to Ohio State, went to very

good schools. To Harvard. And their peers make ten to twenty thousand more in

a year than them.

R: Do you see—what do you think of the differences with the higher-end jobs and

how they don’t mirror the population of the country? For instance, I’ve read that

attorneys, only three or four percent are African American, yet the population is—

B: Which I find that hard to believe because out of all of my friends that I went to

school here with, the group of my friends, of immediate friends, say fifty of them, I

would say at least a third of them are lawyers or in the legal field. I find that hard

to believe. I have like twelve immediate friends right now that are lawyers. So it’s

about the good ol’ boy system. You know the spades is gonna call a spade, for

lack of a better word. It’s a good ol’ boy system. I look at it now. Look at me. My

peers here, I’ve been trying to get an upgrade in this position for six years

straight and have not gotten one, and they cannot give me a valid reason why.

And all of my peers had the upgrade, and they make an average of eight

thousand more a year than I do. See this is one of the elephants I was talking

about that we don’t like to talk about in the room. Look at your peers—it’s back to


numbers, diversity. Why aren’t we allowed to make the same amount as you

make?

R: Yeah, that’s true.

B: I mean, I have friends that are county attorneys, that are district attorneys, that

are deans and they just are not making the money that their peers are making.

And there’s always a reason why. And it’s a flimsy one.

R: What do you think—

B: I mean, if the President of the United States doesn’t get respect, how

disheartening do you think that makes us feel as a people?

R: That they’re questioning every aspect, birth certificate and everything?

B: Or calling him, making racial comments about him! And then going, Oh, no.

When I said tar baby I wasn’t referring to a negative term. It’s a sticky situation.

Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Seriously? I hadn’t heard tar baby in a

long time either. I was like, “Wow. Where are they pulling this stuff from?” How

do you think that makes a Black child feel? To hear their president being called

racial slurs? I mean, and then there’d be an excuse about it. Unacceptable. We

should be ashamed. That’s why they laugh at Americans overseas. We should

be ashamed and we’re not, and that’s unfortunate. I do know that probably every

hundred or so years we have a renaissance, and I’m prayerful. And I actually

think that a return to consciousness. Now, some of us have aided and abetted in

this demise. I mean, you look at the change from hip hop to rap, and you could

go back and you can blame directly Luke from Miami on the demise of rap. And

really that’s what happens when you look at hip hop, when you look at social


consciousness movement that starts to make political change. So you had rap,

you know, that was positive when it came out. Even the women, Queen Latifah,

talked about. You have Afrika Bambaataa that talked about African history. What

the gear we wore. Even Public Enemy who was talking who was about racism.

And those type of things. Even NWA out of LA, they were talking about fight the

police, they were talking about police brutality. And the minute you start to talk

about, you have a group of minorities that are being empowered and fighting the

movement, you have try to stop it. So what do they do? They go get this clown

from Miami to start talking about sex constantly and disrespecting women and

move something and you get these yahoos that come in and I'm gonna put

Master P in there, you know, and you get all these idiots, Puffy. And you get to

talk about nothing and to take something that was a movement and we were

wearing stuff like Malcolm X hats and HBCU gear you know, and African

medallions. That was what we wore with it. And then you go from that to a move

something dress where you're just disrespecting and you're just ignorant. And

from then on rap has gone downhill. It’s not Hip-Hop, it’s Rap. And we talk about

just making money and exploiting people and drug dealing, and it’s okay to have

your outliers, but we’re not offering them anything else. Like I can't pick up, I

grew up loving Hip-Hop. I grew up with Hip-Hop. I was with Hip-Hop when Hip-

Hop started, you understand? And we had fun and people used to actually dance

and interact. And I think what hurts me is that when you turn on MTV, and you

turn on BET for the most part we’re not—when you look at Black videos, we’re

not giving them any alternatives. That represents my people. When you turn on


the white video at least you get a variety. What they’re doing is they’re using that

and that's what people who do look like me think we all are, and our kids will

believe it because that's all their being saturated with. We're not offering them

anything different. If it’s not what Drake, Lil Wayne, and Nicki Minaj, then nobody

can be on a song? And that’s your criteria of art? Oh you got to be kidding me. It

doesn't even rhyme, they mispronounce words to make it rhyme. It’s trash, it’s

garbage, they don't even know music. And I blame Puffy for part of it. I do. Puff,

grow up. Jay-Z who just sat there recently and took the Occupy Movement and

wanted to make money off of it by doing Occupy Streets and not even donating

the money to them. How much money is enough money? And what’s happened

is you've confused our younger people to believe that excess is everything. And

they can't be satisfied. So they’re not happy, and they don't know how to get

happiness out of anything that’s not materialistic. We've done a grave disservice

to our youth because of it. We really have. And we don't understand the beauty

of having natural resources.

R: Do you think one of the big issues is the African American community values

more materialistic things instead of things such as art and intellect and stuff like

that?

B: I don't know about that. I think we have had some recent people who've gotten a

lot of the limelight, and if we can turn off the TV for our children, the art is all

around us. I don't know about that because one thing Black people will joke

about all the time, we are survivors. See we're still here because we could

survive, everybody else died off. We can survive. You could give us nothing,


we’re gonna make a way out of something. We're known for that. You ask any

Black woman, we'll figure out a way to survive. You don't hear too many ever

since the slave trade pretty much you don't hear about too many Black people all

dying at one time. [Laughter] We don't even have to know why we're running. We

would just run. Okay. We will get out of there. We do know how to make a way

out of no way. So I don't think this whole notion of us being materialistic. We're

the biggest consumers, but we don't have anything. You know, we like to look

good, but I don't think we like to do it more than any other culture because I’ve

worked for doctors, medical doctors, millionaires and all kinds, and they do it, too.

They just do it a little differently. They'll buy eight-hundred-dollar bottles of wine.

You know, you look at some of the shows you’ll see. Everybody’s trying—I think

it’s not just African Americans. I think right now we've just become a very

materialistic society that wants to for show. That we're all living this crazy life, the

vida loca. And we’re broke as I don't know what. I think it’s just the materialism,

excessive. We’ve gone over indulgent in excess. I mean the housing bubble

would show you that. Why do we need to own a five-thousand-square-feet

homes? You know, you got three people. Why do you have to get a minivan

when you have one child? The first thing you got to do is get an SUV and a

minivan. I don't think it’s just pertaining to Blacks. I think we've become very

over-indulgent. And I think we'll shift back to a more humble existence. We will.

Any day say that I can cry broke, but almost every day I throw a piece of food in

the trash. I scrape some food, and as long I'm scraping food in the trash, I'm rich


beyond means. That’s how I look at it. I think we just have to change our

viewpoint of what poor is.

R: What do you see for the future of African Americans as it pertains to us a society

as a whole?

B: I'm a little concerned right now for the African American family because of the

lack of family values that we once had. I'm concerned that I see it shifting into the

women, the younger women. To be perfectly honest I'm disheartened when I see

Black men who, and now young Black women, who have no pride and no shame.

Who don't hold themselves to a standard of excellence that we once did. That

walk down the street and their pants are hanging off their butt, they don't have a

shirt on, they’re not embarrassed not to take care of their family, to know their

children, to have a job, to take advantage of women, to live off of them. For

women who dress disrespectfully for themselves. You know, to carry themselves

very unladylike out in public, to be too selfish for their own needs, to sit at home

and sacrifice for their children to teach them, to read to them, to be careful about

where they let them go, where they don't. Our lack of excellence is my main

concern about that. And not educating ourselves outside of television. Okay,

about what’s really happening in society and not disciplining our children the way

we once did. Teaching them self-respect, self-love. Based on our value system,

and not one from MTV or BET or video. Allowing Uncle Toms, for lack of a better

word, who have sold out their community to make a buck at the expense. I don't

think that a lot of these rappers and artist and television producers have realized

the effect of video games, of music, of—can you imagine being a young Black


girl and hearing yourself referred to in such derogatory terms constantly on the

radio, on the television? What kind of self-esteem does that bring, and what does

that do to the Black male/female relationship? You have a three-year-old girl and

a three-year-old boy and all he’s referred to is a negative word and she’s referred

to and all she is as a sex object or a gold digger or a slut or a whore. And all he is

is a gangster, and he takes money, and he pimps women and then they’re

desensitized to it, so it ain’t nothing for them to get on the dance floor and dance

to a song that’s talking about you like a dog, and you’re dancing to it. That’s

desensitization, you know. And then you think that doesn’t affect how Black men

and women interact with each other when they become eighteen, nineteen,

twenty, and on? You gotta be kidding me. And the excuse Jay-Z and them is like,

well somebody is gonna buy it. No, you’re, we’re all connected. Cuz then that kid

grows up and goes and knocks your grandmother over the head and breaks into

her house and kills her, you know? Or beats on your daughter. Or impregnates

your daughter, at some point, cause she doesn’t realize that she’s not an object,

she doesn’t wanna be alone. We’re all connected. That’s my concern; my biggest

concern is the lack of excellence in fortitude for the Black community.

R: Thank you very much for the interview.

B: You’re welcome.

R: This was Julian Ruiz with Miss Sharon Burney.

[End of interview]

Audit edited by: Holland Hall, July 13, 2017


Final edit by: Ryan Morini, February 21, 2019

(352) 392 ://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/aa/00/06/65/33... · b: yeah, yeah, you know. and so if you...

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