The Daily Orange

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.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools