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
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
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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.
AAHP 220; Burney; Page 4
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
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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
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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
AAHP 220; Burney; Page 7
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,
AAHP 220; Burney; Page 8
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
AAHP 220; Burney; Page 9
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
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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
AAHP 220; Burney; Page 11
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
AAHP 220; Burney; Page 12
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
AAHP 220; Burney; Page 13
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
AAHP 220; Burney; Page 14
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
AAHP 220; Burney; Page 15
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.
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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.
AAHP 220; Burney; Page 17
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,
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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,
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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-
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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
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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-
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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Final edit by: Ryan Morini, February 21, 2019