(upbeat hip hop music) - "A Slice of the Community" is made possible by the support of the First Horizon Foundation.

Hello and welcome to another episode of "A Slice of the Community."

I'm your host, Jerome Moore.

Today we are joined by barbershop owners, Steve "Big Steve" Nelson, and Dejuan Conley.

How y'all doing?

- Good.

- We're doing great.

- Y'all doing, it's good to see y'all.

- That's right.

- You know, I gotta say this on behalf of my daddy, you know, I taught you how to cut, you know what I'm saying?

(group laughing) You know, I had to say it more- - Spiritually, spiritually, right, right.

- I'm glad both of y'all can join me as we all are master barbers.

People might not know, but I got my master barber's license too, so I'm part of that master barber fraternity.

So, you know, whenever y'all wanna do a cutting battle, I'm down to do it.

(group laughing) But now today we are here to talk about Cutting the Stigma, how y'all using y'all's platforms as barbers and just the conversations that barbers always have to talk about the wellbeing of our community, specifically around talking about HIV.

But first, before we get into that, I'm just curious, how did y'all both get into barbering?

And I wanna start with you, Big Steve.

- I found barbering.

- Okay.

- I'm not one of those guys that cut hair since I was a kid, anything like that.

I was actually in a bit of trouble, on probation, and couldn't find a job due to a drug felonies, and then I actually asked my parole officer at the time, "If I went to school, would it count?"

- Right.

- And they said yeah.

And I had a person from the public in the community, they worked with TTCN to get a barber because I had been a CNT.

So I had went through that, and then I still couldn't find a job.

So they said they needed to find something that I could do where nobody asked me if I had a felony.

And it happened to be barbering, and I went to school when I was 40.

So I knew that it was like, the last shot for me.

But I found out that I was a natural.

I fell in love with it.

You know, I had the right teacher.

- [Jerome] Yeah.

And who was your teacher, what was his name?

- Mr. Moore was my instructor.

- Right, make sure.

- And the rest is history.

- [Jerome] How about you, Dejuan?

- For me, I've worked in the barbershop since I was a little kid.

- Okay.

- My grandfather was a barber, Reverend Fred Conley, and I was a kid.

I used to go to the barbershop every weekend, and when the guys got out of the chair, I would dust their shirt, back of the shirts off and get their hair off the back of their shirt, and they would tip me dollars, $5, $10, you know, depending on what they had.

And so after the death of my sister in '95, Adrian Dickerson, I went to Mid-State Barber College.

They used to be located on Jefferson Street in Nashville.

And I've been licensed since 1997.

I actually started cutting when I was about 13.

And then when I got 15, my mother allowed me to turn the garage into a barbershop.

And so my grandfather pulled up on me and he saw me cutting some of his clients.

And he was like, "Oh, okay, I'm gonna turn you in to state board since you're bootlegging."

And the rest is his history.

- It's a lot of that.

- Yeah.

- When we talking about Cutting the Stigma, especially around HIV, why did y'all decide to want to take on that type of platform to have that type of conversation?

I start with you Big Steve.

- Okay.

Well, I'm actually one of the founding members and create the curriculum and the course for the Cutting Out the Stigma.

And the way I got into it is I've already been dealing with Street Works, Miss Sharon Hurt and them.

And I was disseminating condoms, because, you know, like I said, I come from that type of background in the city.

We never had those type of conversations, and getting a condom when I was coming up was hard, because somebody was gonna say something, you know what I'm saying?

So it wasn't nothing that you could do and have it be private or anything like that.

So they were giving out condoms for free.

They were going to give me, they gave me a batch of condoms and I could disseminate 'em outta my shop free.

And so that's how I got in, that's how I got into the community service work and the community service part of it.

And then when Dr. Aima reached out to Street Works and they had the idea of reaching out to the community through the barbershop, naturally I was one of the guys that Street Works contacted.

And then we did a lot of Zoom meetings, and then she picked me as one of the, you know, I guess she liked the way I responded and all that type of stuff.

And so she picked me and another brother named Nate, and we became like the founding barbers, the actual hands-on barbers of the Cutting Out the Stigma program.

- Dejuan, I want to ask you a different question.

Is it difficult to have those conversations with some of your clients that may come through the barbershop?

'Cause I'm assuming like, you know, you know, you sit in the barbershop, you get comfortable, you relaxing, you know, sometimes you get the pillow talking with your barber.

And does anything come out?

Have you found it easy or difficult to have those type of conversations around just, you know, mental health or HIV or just your overall sexual health at all?

- It is not really difficult.

You just have to find a way to segue into those type of conversations because you already talk about it anyway.

You just don't talk about it on the serious spectrum.

You know, guys come in and they'll, you know, "Yeah, yeah, I da-da-da-da-da."

You know, so in the process of that you, you know, let 'em get their spiel out of them and say, "Well, did you strap up?"

You know?

- Right.

- "Hey bro, you know, such and such is going on with these numbers."

You know, you give 'em the statistics to run down, then it turn into a, it can go from there to a full-blown conversation throughout the shop.

And it's not really hard for me because I've already been kind of doing something similar, but it was with mental health, and it was with the Confess Project of America.

- Now, Big Steve, if somebody's coming into your chair, how do you engage or how do you get into that conversation?

- Well, generally, the thing about being a barber and the barbershop community is that we get repeat business.

So these are not strangers.

You know, and if you are a stranger, you only a stranger once, and then, you know, so- - Unless you mess 'em up, you know.

(laughs) - You still only a stranger once, you know what I mean?

You probably ain't gonna see 'em again if you mess 'em up.

But the thing is, me personally, I drive community at my shop.

One of my banters is we're more than just a cut.

So if you just come get a haircut at my shop, you're going to get pleasantly surprised.

You're gonna get a whole lot more of that.

We believe in community.

We believe in having conversations with everybody to come through the door on a plethora of things.

So when this came up, it was really easy, 'cause I, my people knew that I was transitioning into it because when I was being trained, I was sharing that with 'em.

- Right.

- When I finished training and I got my certificate, it's on my wall at my shop, so I shared that with 'em.

So first we talked about me going into training and why, simpler questions, similar questions that you're asking today, I was asking.

So then when it, I had the information, it was easy to disseminate it because these the same people, coming back on a repeat basis.

And then, so it wasn't like I just jumped out of the, out of the from nowhere, "Hey, you got HIV?"

You know, we don't even make, that ain't even a question that we ask anyway.

It's more about making them aware that HIV is a community concern and that you should know your status, as simple as that.

And then we give them resources and things on how to get that answer for themselves.

- Right.

Are y'all still finding it that people are just, especially in the Black community specifically, where, you know, we see these numbers just out the wall, right?

Heavily increasing in the Black community.

Do you see people still being conscious or cautious of going to get their status check?

That's something they don't want to do, don't want to go to the, you know, what do you, how do you have that conversation when you say, "I ain't really trying to get my status checked."

And like, why not?

I'll start with you, Dejuan, on that.

- Well, one of the things is, what we kind of emphasized on is going away from the, "I'm good."

You know?

- Yeah.

- That's like, the cool thing to say, "Hey bro, I'm good."

You know?

- Right.

- And so when somebody comes at you like that, because most of the time, I mean, you know, it used to be the death sentence to find out your status and know, you know, when you go to get your physical and they test for everything, you on pins and needles waiting around on it, knowing that you might have taken a chance and did something that you could possibly regret.

Well, when they come with the, "I'm good," we say, "Hey man, instead of saying I'm good, really know that you're good."

And so that's how we learn, and we've been taught, and we conversate, and to pivot off of the I'm good and really know that you're good.

Go get tested.

You know, if you're not getting a yearly physical, get your yearly physical.

And even sometimes go do a follow up from your physical and get tested again just to know that you're good.

- Right.

- Because it still makes people nervous to even, you know what I'm saying, have to go through it.

And I'm a member of Omega Psi Phi and I took it back to the fraternity and you know, guys was like, (groaning) you know?

But in the long run, you know, that we're looking at trying to implement that into our health initiative.

- All right.

How about you Big Steve?

You seeing people kind of not wanting to get their status checked, or just afraid, or just not wanting to know for, because like, you know, they understand like they may not be living the safest, you know, sexual lifestyle?

- Yeah, it's been, it's funny.

But like, Black people are, it's been my experience, they love being ignorant in this place, because you know, if you spot it, you got it, and until you do it, you don't have it.

And you know, my whole thing is to get them past that.

Now, me, myself, I'm a diabetic, so I'm pretty regular now that I done got older and found that out and I'm medicated and I got some things with my liver and stuff.

So I get a lot of blood drawn, have my A1C checked, have everything checked.

But before that I wasn't just lining up in Lentz to go- - [Jerome] Right.

(laughs) - You know, unless I had an issue, you know what I'm saying?

- Yeah.

- And one of the things, I know Dr. Aima would definitely want me to say this, so I'm gonna say it.

Like, they don't even consider, like HIV, the AIDS thing, you know how they says, "You have HIV, then you have AIDS."

- [Jerome] Right.

- They don't even really use that terminology no more, the AIDS part.

They do use HIV and they say it's a chronic illness.

And what that means is it's a treatable illness, and that you can live a certain quality of life by having HIV.

So the whole thing is, it's not a death sentence.

So don't be so afraid to find out what your status is, because like cancer and all these other things, the earlier that you know, the better the treatment and the better your outcome is and the better your quality of life.

So it's a chronic illness, it's not a death sentence.

So, you know, that's one of the things we wanna convey to our clients that come in, that the reason why you want to know is because you can protect yourself and your partner.

You know, and that, and they have a lot of different treatments.

And one of the things I stress with them and the medical community about is that it's still seen and labeled in our community as some kind of, it's a gay disease, and it's still marketed a lot, when I see PEP and PrEP commercials and things on TV, it's always two guys, or you know what I'm saying?

It's still marketed a certain kind of way.

So we want the world and the other, the rest of the community to embrace it as a community issue, like cancer.

We have to start treating it like anybody can get it, because the truth is anybody can get it.

- Right, regardless of your sexual lifestyle.

- Right, exactly.

- Yeah.

- And it's a lot of different ways that you contract it outside of sex, like intravenous drug use.

- Right.

- And that's something that's- - Shared needles.

- Right.

That's something that's way outta hand right now.

You know, we have a epidemic in that.

So that's having a lot to do with new cases of HIV and stuff like that.

So we just wanna make people aware that it's a chronic illness, it can be treated, and you can live a high quality life.

- How do y'all differentiate that messaging between, you know, older adult, you know, whether they're in the 30s or 40s or 50s, to young adults that may be, you know, 18, 19, 20, or even younger with just, you know, kids, adolescents.

'Cause I know that messaging, in the ears are different when you, you know, delivering that type of message, when you talk about just health in general.

Do y'all see one being received more than the other or you know, are you getting young clients, young men that's coming into your chair, it's like, "Yeah, this is something, you know, I didn't know, thanks for informing me."

Now I'm finna go, especially if I know if I'm sexually active, now I need to go to Lentz or work with my, you know, physician or whatever it may be.

Y'all have, what has that experience been like?

Or have y'all just seen like it's been kind of the same with adults or younger adults or kids, teenagers?

I start with you, Dejuan.

- It's kind of the same.

I mean, it goes back to what Steve just really said.

The whole outlook of it is still, it's a gay disease.

- Right.

- It's not, you know, if I'm heterosexual, I don't really truly have to worry about it.

So, and the question, the reason why I had the look on my face, it came up the other day.

- [Jerome] Okay.

- And I got a former football player says, "Man, listen, it's only like that in places where it's a lot of down low men and they taking it to the women or either they doing it with a man too."

I said, "Listen, you don't know where the person, if it's not your wife or-" - [Jerome] Right.

- "This long, with your girl for this long, you don't know where that person has been."

I said, "So you could be heterosexual, but she could have been with somebody that was in the closet."

- Right.

- "And then it spread to her, now it's to you."

I said, "We don't know what road a person has come from."

Like Steve said, it could have been someone that had a drug problem.

They got cleaned up, they look good now, and you with 'em.

- Right.

- You don't know.

- [Jerome] And they never knew their status.

- Exactly.

- Yeah.

- Exactly.

- Are you seeing the same thing, Steve?

- I do.

Only thing different, I'll be 55 this month, so when you get my age, you going to the doctor something, something's going on.

So when you're dealing with people in their 50s and up, it's a little different, because they've been introduced to the medical situation without their permission, you know what I mean?

But for the younger dudes, I try to big bro 'em, big uncle, and I lean heavily into contraceptive and safer sex.

And when we having the safer sex conversation, because a lot of them are just thinking about babies.

- Right.

- Then I slide in the, "No, it ain't just about babies.

It's, you know, you got, what about HIV, herpes, and you got other diseases, you know what I'm saying?"

And then you got those things that you can have a condom on and still get like the clap and all these other things.

So I believe, actually in my day, I believe, the older men, they have more candid conversations with us in my day than they're having with these young brothers today.

And they got way more information today than we had with our day.

But at least I didn't go into, I didn't go into being sexually active not knowing about the claps and gonorrhea and all that.

Now, we didn't have HIV when I was coming of age.

But you know, we sure knew where Lentz clinic was and we knew not to tell Mama, 'cause she was going to tell Granny and everybody was gonna find out.

(Jerome laughing) - Yeah.

- You know, so like I said, they got way more information, they got way more access than we had when I was coming up.

And I try to deal with the young people from big bro, big unc status.

- And I think you just mentioned something that just registered with me that for whatever reason, I think some people might even see it as embarrassing to go even find out your status.

You know, as if, "Oh, somebody see me going to find out my status, they may believe I have something."

Which is not the case.

It's like, no, I'm just being responsible with my health and you know, and if anything, if I'm doing this regularly, I probably don't have anything.

And so it's not embarrassing.

I think getting that message across too, like don't be, you know, persuaded by other people's perspective because you care about your health, you know, and your sexual activity and how that plays and affects not only yourself but other people as well.

Barbering is one of those practices, one of those professions where, you know, you encounter all people walks of life.

Which I think what makes having this conversation and cutting to those candid conversations around cutting the stigma, like, important.

Are there other conversations that could be had in barbershops that maybe, you know, they can't really be had in other places just because, you know, sometimes you get into a place is a bubble.

But a barbershop, it's like, hey, at any given moment, you know, you just don't know what somebody's going through, been through, or walking into.

Big Steve, I start with you on that one.

- Yeah, I'm smiling because, you know, that's right where I'm at, right?

And I say that because you know, like you got a lot of, you got like, they got a barbershop podcast in New York and then they got LeBron and them got a barber shop podcast.

But those are set up podcasts.

They bring in certain types of people to have certain conversations.

- [Jerome] Right.

- But like in my shop, man, you know, we'll start something called Real Barbershop TV where we actually have the real conversations that go on every day in the barbershop.

And so like, it's so many things that that like, like I want to deal with our community and how we stick together and how we purchase what's going on politically, how we come together as a people.

And I'm in a multicultural area.

I'm on Nolansville Road.

So I allow people to have, I want to know how the other side sees a issue.

I don't need you to agree with me, 'cause if I want to grow in a certain area, I need to know how other people see me, or how other people see my group, how we see them, and we have open conversations.

And I create that type of safe space so we can have real barbershop talk in the barbershop.

And so I was smiling because yeah, man, the barbershop, it's the perfect place for men, because we have high testosterone, we're very combative, and if we don't have a safe space somewhere for us to disagree, then we'll never agree.

- I think even more than a safe space, I think a barbershop as a person, like you, Dejuan, I grew up sweeping, getting tips, you know, honey bun, whatever from the vending machine.

- Right.

- You know, like for all my life.

(laughs) All my life, right?

And so I see the barbershop even as a brave space, you know, to come and maybe talk about things you might not talk about at home with your partner, or with your friends, but your barber in that space, and just on that Saturday, you know, back in the day when you walk-ins, you know, back in those days when it was a real community, everybody had sweets and stuff, right?

You had a, you walked in, you might have seen somebody, network with somebody, could connect somebody, because I don't know who might be in Big Steve chair, but Big Steve might know, "Oh, okay, I need to connect Jerome to Dejuan, who's another client of another barber, and they need to get together."

And I feel like, you know, I think sometimes we getting away from that a little bit in barbering because of the, you know, the app, and then the, you know, just the sweet switch.

You know, if you wanna be comfortable, you wanna be in your space, that's cool.

But the barbershops is community.

- Correct.

- And having those community conversations have always existed.

- Correct.

- And so I wish y'all take on how barbering as a profession maybe is changing in that way, and how does that maybe take away from being able to bring communities together organically and have those conversations?

Dejaun?

- Yeah, he's younger.

I got an old school barber shop.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - Well, for me, no Steve saying 58, I'm 48.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - So I ain't far off.

But I grew up in old school barbershop.

- Right.

- So my grandfather taught me a principle, you're only as good as your network.

And so for me, I have COOs of banks, I have politicians, I have athletes, I have all of those.

So guys come to me for anything, plumbers, electrician, anything.

They call my phone.

"I need somebody for this, for that."

- Right.

- So also for me, in order to work with me in my shop, you have to agree with the principles that I live by.

So if I say I wanna go to Warner School, I wanna go to Jere Baxter, I wanna go to West End Middle School, and I wanna do this kind of community service, you have to be willing to go along with that.

- [Jerome] Okay.

- I'm not just in it for the money purpose, I believe in building a community.

- [Jerome] Okay.

- Because the barbershop is a pillar.

The things you can get, go back to what he said, a safe space.

You said a brave space.

It's also gotta be a respected place, where I can come, feel comfortable.

I had a client Saturday, "Man, I don't have an appointment, but I got this amount.

I just need to talk."

- Okay.

- "Come on."

Sat there for two and a half, three hours, find out some stuff I didn't really want to hear, but we prayed.

I ain't no minister or none of that kind of stuff.

We went to some scripture and he got it off his chest.

And a situation that was about to happen, it never happened.

It didn't manifest.

So if you, like Steve said, it's gotta be more than just a haircut.

It's gotta be relationships.

- Yeah.

I think you adequately like spelled, like the, the essence of a barber shop right there.

Big Steve, do you have a story, or do you have something that happened in your shop that might be similar, but you can, you know, if you want to share with the viewers in the same light, just the impact of just having a space where somebody can come and be vulnerable.

- Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you one of the greatest things that my shop done afforded me, and that's, I'm able to help change people lives.

Like people, I have people come through my shop and I know they living better, then, you know, I've had people come to my shop and get licensed while they were at my shop.

- [Jerome] Okay.

- I had people come to my shop and get houses, cars, get theyself, that you don't have to stay here.

We just wanna make sure that we put something in you while you here.

You know what I'm saying?

I have a nephew that works in my shop and he drives the truck.

You know what I'm saying?

I've watched his life get better.

So, you know, one thing about my shop, those politicians or football players and electricians, they all in there at the same time.

So you get to get all those different perspectives and that all that range from A plus living to down low.

You know, not down low, pause.

(group laughing) All the different class, all the different classes.

- You know my daddy gonna see this, right?

You're not gonna trip over this.

- What I'm saying, I'm saying the different levels of class and economics in the shop all at once.

One of the things that helped me is I've actually seen other Black men achieve a lot.

I've been to their houses.

I met them in my shop and then I befriended them.

Million dollar houses, you know, real nice cars.

So now I know it's available to us all.

You see what I'm saying?

So that's my story.

- To kind of close, to kind of close this out, Dejuan, I'm gonna start with you on this one and I want to ask you the same question, Big Steve.

- [Steve] Okay.

- If there's anything you wanna leave with community members on why Cutting the Stigma is important, what would that be?

- Cutting Out the Stigma is important because it gives information to the common man that otherwise wouldn't be able to attain it.

It has resources from Street Works to, you know, the deposits that they give to us, and they train us, and it gives people something that they could learn from someone that they trust.

Whereas if I don't know Jerome, and I'm not comfortable talking to Jerome about something like my status.

- [Jerome] Right.

- If I don't know Steve, I'm not comfortable.

But with my barber, that has been my barber that I talked to about several things, it allows us, as Black men, we are not really going to the doctor as much as we supposed to.

So encouragement from Steve, encouragement from Jerome, encouragement from Dejuan, that helps us to motivate us to do better.

- [Jerome] 30 seconds.

- 30 seconds.

- 30 seconds.

- Okay.

First of all, I'm a part of Narcotics Anonymous.

I have 12 years clean this month.

One of the things we say is, "The stigma is the last thing to go."

So if I tell you I was a crack head, you know, that come with certain stigma.

But when you see my life, you see my wall, you'll see all the things that improved, but the stigma is the last thing to go.

I had HIV visit my family personally, and thanks to this program I had all the information to get in my family.

So we didn't have the one cup for that person, and we didn't ostracize that person.

We were able to embrace that person because we had information.

So HIV is visiting, you know, just like the drug epidemic, when it wasn't everybody's problem, it was a problem.

But now that it's touching everybody, now we want to help, and that's what we want to do now before it gets that bad.

- Right.

Well, look, I appreciate both of y'all, you know, keep cutting like me.

(group laughing) - That's for sure.

- And yeah, keep cutting like me, and I appreciate y'all again for what y'all doing, and what y'all putting in the community.

And I appreciate y'all watching at home another episode of "Slice of Community."

I'll see y'all next time.

(mellow hip hop music) (mellow country music)