Professor in feud with
Fox's O'Reilly
Watkins defends race-related remarks in
exclusive Q&A
Dr. Boyce Watkins, finance professor at
Syracuse University, has quite a few words to say about
syndicated talk show host Bill O'Reilly.
CNN's "Newsroom" program on Wednesday, Sept. 26, featured
Watkins as a guest to discuss controversial comments
O'Reilly had made earlier about a popular restaurant in
Harlem called Sylvia's.
O'Reilly said going to the restaurant was "exactly the same,
even though it's run by blacks," and "it was like going into
an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of
people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having
fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all."
In his CNN discussion with blogger La Shawn Barber, Watkins
talked about the effect of what O'Reilly had said in terms
of race relations. What stood out most from the newscast was
what Watkins said about FOX News panelist Juan Williams.
"Juan Williams sitting there, (as) sort of the 'happy negro'
agreeing with Bill O'Reilly, doesn't impress me at all,"
Watkins said. "A man cannot walk into your home and
congratulate your mother for not being a prostitute and not
expect you to be offended."
On O'Reilly's Sept. 27 airing of "The O'Reilly Factor," he,
Williams and guests Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson
spent the hour discussing Watkins' comments.
Today at 1 p.m., Watkins said he will meet with Dean Melvin
Stith of the Martin J. Whitman School of Management and
several other administrators to discuss the comments.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Orange, Watkins
talked about the situation with O'Reilly and how the
university plans to handle it.
The Daily Orange: Tell me what happened and your
reaction, when it comes to not just what O'Reilly initially
said about the restaurant in Harlem, but also what he said
about your comments.
Boyce Watkins: Bill O'Reilly created some controversy
with his remarks. I'd been called on by CNN on multiple
occasions to discuss the comments. I gave my opinion and
within the context of that opinion they asked me, they said,
'Well, Juan Williams agrees with him. What do you think
about that?'
And I said Juan Williams sitting there as Bill O'Reilly's
happy little negro congratulating him on his racism is like
Hugh Hefner hiring a stripper to tell him that he's not a
sexist.
And this comes from, not just what Williams did that day,
but the reading of his book, which many African Americans
are very angry about. A few days later I got a call from
someone telling me that the O'Reilly factor was basically
having an entire episode where all they were talking about
was me. . .
Rev. Jesse Jackson comes on the show and O'Reilly claims
that Rev. Jesse Jackson called my attack on Juan Williams
'despicable,' which isn't true because I talked to Rev.
Jackson's daughter the next morning, and they don't have any
problem with what I said. . .
Juan Williams wrote a piece about me in Time magazine which
is read pretty widely. . .
(On the) O'Reilly radio factor, they have a show where they
talked about me quite a bit. There's this interesting effort
to flag the attention off of Bill O'Reilly and what he said
onto me and my alleged attack on Juan Williams.
I wrote a response piece to Juan Williams…and it's basically
entitled: 'Why I called Juan Williams the 'Happy Negro.' I
didn't want to publish it in Time magazine, I wanted to
publish it directly with the black community, so I sent it
to Essence magazine, also Black America Web and
blacknews.com, which are highly read Web sites in the black
community. … It's just really one of those things that
represents the division going on in the black community.
DO: Tell us about the kind of responses that you've
received in the past couple weeks.
Most of the response that I get from Fox viewers and Fox
listeners have a very angry, nasty tone. Some of them are
'how dare you do this to Juan Williams, he's such as sweet
guy,' and then there are those that are like 'You're an
idiot, how can a prestigious university like Syracuse have
someone like you on the faculty, I can't believe you're a
professor.'
When people say that, that tone is interesting because
that's almost an acknowledgement that I have credentials.
When people say something like that, 'I can't believe you're
a professor at Syracuse, I can't believe you have a Ph.D., I
can't believe you're a doctor,' that's interesting to me
because that's saying, 'I'm really angry about what you
said, but I have to acknowledge what you're saying because
your credentials are so strong.' I think if I were a bus
driver and I said this, people would just ignore it. Really,
I think when an educated African American makes strong
statements like that, it causes people to kind of have a
moment of pause and they respond.
Some of the e-mails have been angry, but then I've gotten a
lot of e-mails that are full of 'thank you very much.' I
even joked in the article that I was going to make 'happy
negro' T-shirts, and I've had people e-mailing me back and
say, 'Yeah, make those T-shirts, I'll buy one.' There are a
lot of people who have been angry at Juan Williams for a
long time.
DO: What has your experience been at SU for situations
with other media publications you've helped out?
It hasn't been bad in the sense that they leave me alone…but
it's been made very clear that my position as a black
scholar, a black leader, is not important nor is it worthy
of respect to the university. Not at any point in my entire
six years that I've been here have I been asked by the
central campus and central administration to get involved in
any of their initiatives to reach out to inner city, and
that's exactly what I'm known for. . .
When I came to this university, I think they thought I would
be a finance professor who happened to be black. I made it
clear to say, 'No, I'm a black man who happens to be a
finance professor.' I think that threw some people off. . .
For example, on the Don Imus controversy, I was on the air
with Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton to devise a
strategy on how to deal with Don Imus, and they wouldn't
have had me there if they didn't respect my expertise as a
finance professor. I get that respect from Rev. Sharpton,
Rev. Jackson and I don't get that respect in my own
university. When I e-mail the chancellor, e-mails get
ignored or forwarded on to my dean (Melvin Stith). I can't
help but wonder if they say, 'Oh, your outrageous black
faculty member is getting out of hand, so we're going to let
you handle it because you're both black.'
DO: What do you expect to be discussed at the meeting
tomorrow?
I don't assume that the dean's intentions are malicious. It
could be one of those meetings where you have the meeting to
say you had a meeting. It could be something more dramatic.
I do know that a lot of people were carbon copied to the
e-mail. … I don't think they're going to do anything
dramatic or drastic to me.
I don't have a problem with my dean. I think he respects my
right to freedom of speech. I think most of the problem has
been with there are some people that don't know what to do
with me.
DO: Anything else you want to say?
I encourage the chancellors' office to be true to its
mandate in which it asks faculty to be more open and
involved in real-world problems. I'm hopeful that when I go
up for tenure that my role as a well-respected black public
scholar will be taken in to consideration. I don't
necessarily care that much about making tenure, that's not
that important to me. But it is important in terms of making
a point.