Introducing Mr. Williams

The old deli two blocks from his house - quietly owned by Jewish immigrants - used to enjoy offering a half-priced bacon, egg and cheese sandwich to the studious Sean Williams and his classmates who attended school barely a mile away. In that time, when the weather was kind, he would walk past neighboring homes and brick stone retail buildings to sit in a clearing behind the park. “There” he breathed with a smile creeping near the lines that surround his mouth “was nature and I and real silence.” His favorite part of Flatbush was just that, the perfect mesh of a cultured township and a forested oasis. Now (with the introduction of big brand franchise and hip farmer markets) he notices how no deli in sight will ever be as kind as they were back then.

“I would just go there and be one with the nature” he explains. “I like to hear the birds and watch them animals scurry around. So, it's interesting. It's interesting because it's like a very Caribbean area. Even though I'm from the city in Jamaica I have this thing with nature that has really come into play.” He is looking straight ahead, past the classroom windows and perhaps at two giant trees with reddening leaves that swayed to an Autumn wind. “And so, I'm just one with nature and nothing about a park is distracting me, especially in the summer when they have so many things going on” he continues “and now there is horseback riding and boats that will help those caboose and concerts, you know, free concerts. So, which is why gentrification has pretty much taken over the area.” He nods at himself, then to me with a grimace on his face as if to say ‘well, what can you do?’

As a man who considers himself a “Flatbush Brooklyn Native,” Mr. Williams will never let the gentrifiers get his home. And even if they do get his home, he will never allow them to make him pack up his things and leave the town. That is because his family lives there, and since immigrating from Kingston, Jamaica more than forty years ago, they always will.

“It's a lot, like people who have been there in the 80s and 90s, they've been priced out. Unfortunately, [there was a time] when a lot of people, you know, sort of lived through the crack epidemic. There was a time when people were scared to come to the [Flatbush] neighborhood or the community, period.” He has the aura of a true teacher now, palms spread out and eyes peered at me, explaining how gentrification has changed Flatbush over the last 20 years. “It's interesting” he furthers “because like what I've seen over the years is for example train stations changing. There was a time when there were only blacks and Hispanics. But now it's as many non-blacks as far as white people. They're going to college because there's so many of them in the neighborhood now.” He nods again, as if I should know this and continues to stroke his face.

The phenomenon called gentrification is essentially the forced removal of a less fortunate group of people in order for a privileged group of people to benefit from the area. We can see this in most U.S cities where news outlets would replay scenes of murder, theft and gang violence to such a degree that when they were called emergency dispatchers would put Flatbush natives on hold after hearing the location. The trend is that after a neighborhood or town better establishes and rids itself of most crime, few upper-middle class and affluent people would rent homes or apartments for (commonly unbeknownst to them) more than normal. This cycle repeats and with dollar signs for eyes landlords continually replace original apartment owners for those who can pay triple the asking price. Either that or owners are bought out from prospective buyers. For sure, prices of a townhouse in an up and coming town like Brooklyn are relatively low compared to others. “And it's done that way also because as soon as somebody who's been living there for 10 15 20 years it's rent they paid a certain amount of rent. Once that person moved out the landlords were owning those properties realized they can record up to four times the amount. And because of the location and the fact that everything is so easy traveling so easy and so on, I could understand why people would move in, but I didn’t care for my friends to move out.”

Mr. Williams is a co-worker of mine at York College Learning Center. However, I had never officially met him until the day we arranged to meet for an interview. It was a Monday at 3pm and the sun was out. We sat facing it in an abandoned room the college had upstairs. He sat at the desk and I dragged a chair to sit beside him. Although it was his lunch break, he hadn’t eaten anything and wasn’t going to. This seemed strange to me, but by the way he met my stare and his lips squinched in a straight line I knew that this was normal behavior.

His taping fingers against the amber wooden desk reminded me how he was not too eager to sign up for this interview, but was willing to help a student finish her homework. He is a black man with a grey beard, with grey protecting the territory of his hair’s edges. He has big, wide eyes and a long droopy mouth. He is a very skinny man. I’d figure because of the healthy lifestyle he was forced to live after being raised a religious Jehovah’s Witness. Even though he has since left the faith, he still keeps some lifestyle choices like eating whole grains, fruits and vegetables and refraining from heavy meats such as pork.

He leans in his chair and sways back and forth as he mentions Jamaica, the answer to my question “where are you from”. There is a faraway look in his eyes as he remembers a place where his parents were still together and his siblings not yet born. A happy memory, yet, still he kept fidgeting – his right hand constantly touching his beard, cheeks, eyes, brushing across in a face washing motion. I think to myself that this must be adult ADHD, or something of the sort. He talks like the way he moves his fingers, a jittering of the tongue. There are times when I lean in closer to hear a word or phrase.

He is telling me of Jamaica and the sense of African pride the time there bestowed upon him. “You ever heard of Maroons” he smiles down at me, knowing that I too am of Jamaican descent. “Of course,” I reply,” My mom’s father is an actual Maroon.”

“So, you know what I mean when I say they're the pure-blooded Africans. They've done DNA tests. Most of them are so pure black, like as pure as European.” I express some sort of excitement at this, not sure of its significance to me. “Before coming to America, I didn’t really understand slavery and what it was. In Jamaica everyone praises mother Africa, you know, all the reggae songs say ‘Mother Africa’ and I did too. When I came here I was confused about why black kids hated on Africa so much.”

Mr. Williams found it hard in the beginning to be Jamaican in Flatbush because non-Jamaicans would copy the accent, take on the music and make it seem “aggressive”. “Whenever someone would rob a place,” he told me “they’d use a Jamaican accent”. As he became a teenager though, he realized that even the Jewish shop owners took on the accent, but to connect with those who lived in the area instead of mocking them. “Everyone was speaking patios” he said.

There were points during the interview when I knew my questions struck a hidden cord. When asked who his favorite person was at the time Mr. Williams immediately said “my dad.” He then put his hands on his eyes and started choking up as he explained why. “I looked up to him. I wanted to be so much like him because he was such a family man. You know, I mean he cared so much about his family and he was, you know, he was a typical Jamaican dad. You know, worked while my mother was at home. And so, and I remember, you know, so I just wanted to be just like him and do the things that he did.” I later asked him if he felt like he ended up doing that, being just like his dad. He sighed then laughed, shaking his head. “In some ways, yeah, in most ways no.” By that he meant that unlike his dad he was a single father, but like his dad he truly adored his son and taught him life lessons whenever he could.

“What comes about gentrification makes you upset” I ask to change the subject. “Ignorance” he grunted, “don’t work in a neighborhood you don’t understand because how could you police an area you know nothing about?” He was referring to an incident where a group of Jamaican men were playing dominoes and some police accused them of gambling. This made Mr. Williams especially angry because these people were elders he’d grown up with, some whom have been playing the game for more than 20 years. He is not shy to the idea of change, but rather rapid change, a change that doesn’t have an afterthought about those who came before. “From there landlords are able to get it sorted out and the people that used to be there can’t afford it.”

“Do you know those people you know personally?”

“Oh yes. Yes. Many of my mother’s friends and some of mine.”

A community still makes people feel as if they belong. That’s why Mr. Williams will never leave Flatbush. All his family live there and he says unless things get really bad, he’ll never move. “Really bad?” I ask him. “Yeah,” he says, “When there are more of them than us and they start making demands, you know, because they don’t like this or that, that’s when I’d have to go.”