cLEARING THE AIR ON JACKSONVILLE MILITARY MEMBERS FROM AGES 28 – 35 AND THE PATTERN OF THE PATRIOTIC CITY BEING HARMED.
When the Uniform Does Not Change the Person
By Adrienne Floyd | 4HIO Label
You see this photo? That’s Christa, and there’s me. This is the article picture to show how mean girls will smile in your face and still have an ugly spirit, and how they can’t be influential because they’re mean and masculine for Uncle Sam while being Auntie Tom to the streets they are supposedly serving for, chile.
There is a particular kind of disappointment that comes from watching women associated with institutions built around discipline, service, accountability, and professionalism participate in the same “mean girl” behavior many women thought they left behind in high school.
For me, that conversation has personal roots in Jacksonville, Florida, and reaches back to Terry Parker High School. Several women became part of that experience for me, including Christa “Chris Chris” Parker, Bethany Larson, and Jassandra Jackson.
This article does not attempt to determine anyone’s character in its entirety. Nor does my personal experience represent the United States military or women who serve honorably within it. I am writing about behavior I personally experienced, statements I remember hearing, circumstances I witnessed, and how I interpreted those experiences.
And they left me with a larger question:
What happens when the maturity we associate with military service does not translate into how women treat other women?
There Is a Version of Military Service That I Know Intimately
My father served in the United States Navy for 28 years and became a Master Chief. My grandfather also served. Because of them, military service has never meant a uniform, benefits, social status, or an impressive title to me.
It means sacrifice.
Longevity.
Accountability.
Family.
Discipline.
Responsibility.
That upbringing established my expectations. It also taught me something important:
A uniform can change your occupation. It cannot automatically change your character.
Service deserves respect.
Individual behavior still deserves scrutiny.
And perhaps that distinction is where this entire conversation begins.
WHEN HIGH SCHOOL REFUSES TO GRADUATE
One of the strangest parts of adulthood has been watching people from Jacksonville remain fascinated with a life they never fully knew.
We may have attended some of the same schools. We did not necessarily come from the same households, inherit the same expectations, or leave with the same ambitions.
My parents emphasized education, structure, and planning.
I was not walking through school announcing what my family possessed. I was living the life my parents worked to provide.
There is a difference.
Sometimes difference becomes comparison.
Comparison becomes resentment.
Resentment becomes gossip.
And when nobody interrupts the cycle, teenage social politics can survive long after everybody receives a diploma.
Jassandra Jackson, Bethany Larson, Jameisha Sparrow, Christa Parker, and others within or adjacent to that old Jacksonville environment became part of experiences that caused me to question why adolescent conflict continued appearing in my adult life.
Their friendships do not establish collective wrongdoing.
They do, however, provide context for understanding how information and narratives can travel.
And Jacksonville’s grapevine has taught me one thing:
Knowing somebody who knows me is not the same thing as knowing me. Please stop confusing proximity with personal jurisdiction.
THE BURGLARY CHANGED THE MEANING OF EVERYTHING
One event is particularly difficult for me to separate from this history: the burglary of my childhood home.
My recollection is that Joshua Curry, who was involved with Bethany Larson at the time, contacted my old cell number the day before the burglary and asked me to ask my parents for money. Bethany has never liked me, ever.
I remember that interaction because of what happened afterward.
The underlying criminal history should be described according to applicable official records. Likewise, whether another person knew about, facilitated, or participated in criminal conduct is an evidentiary question—not something I will manufacture into a finding through an article.
But the emotional consequence belongs to me.
Someone entering your childhood home changes the meaning of conflict.
A home is not simply property.
It contains childhood memories.
Family privacy.
Security.
The evidence of what your parents worked to build.
That violation stayed with me.
And when people socially connected to painful chapters later reappear in adult conflict, an outsider may see a single interaction while the person living it experiences an entire history.
Context matters.
JASSANDRA, JAMEISHA AND THE MOMENT MY HOME BECAME THE BOUNDARY
My history involving Jassandra Jackson is not based merely upon whom she knows.
I maintain that I experienced communications and conduct from Jassandra that I considered threatening, malicious, or damaging to my reputation.
Where those communications have been preserved, I do not need excessive adjectives.
Screenshots have excellent memories.
Dates do too.
My recollection involving Jameisha Sparrow is more serious. I recall Jameisha coming to my home with a firearm in circumstances I experienced as intimidating.
I also perceived Jassandra as playing a role in the circumstances surrounding that encounter.
Those are serious allegations. Whether conduct legally constituted a threat, offense, conspiracy, or accessory liability is determined through evidence and law—not my anger.
But my personal conclusion about my own boundary is simple:
My home is not your high-school hallway.
Whatever somebody thought about me as a teenager did not provide permission to carry interpersonal conflict into my adult residence.
That is where childishness stops being entertaining.
VIOLENCE IS NOT A PERSONALITY TRAIT
Another memory involving Jassandra remained with me because I recall her discussing a high-school incident in which she described striking someone in the head with a lock.
My concern is not simply what somebody may have done as a teenager.
Teenagers can make terrible decisions.
The real question is what the adult thinks about the behavior now.
There is an enormous difference between:
“I hurt somebody when I was younger, and I regret it.”
and:
“Look how tough I was.”
Past violence should become a lesson.
It should not become a personality.
Motherhood makes that distinction even more consequential—not because having children is shameful, but because children watch what adults glorify.
Growth sounds like:
“I did things when I was younger that I would never teach my children to repeat.”
That is maturity.
Everything does not need an encore.
CHRISTA PARKER AND THE MILITARY MEAN-GIRL QUESTION
My experience involving Christa Parker raised a different question because Christa has military experience.
I experienced interactions with her that I interpreted as unnecessarily personal and antagonistic, particularly concerning mental health.
Another Jacksonville native with military experience separately reported to me that derogatory language concerning my intellectual or mental capacity had circulated within this broader social environment.
That information was reported to me.
It is not the same as something I personally witnessed.
My direct interactions with Christa are different.
Those interactions affected me enough that I responded immaturely.
I own that.
My reaction was distasteful.
But accountability does not mean removing everything that happened before the reaction and then presenting the reaction as the entire story.
Do not provoke a woman, crop out the context, and then submit her reaction as your character assessment. That’s not psychology. That’s editing.
Mental-health terminology should never become ammunition between women.
If you genuinely believe somebody is struggling, humiliation is not concern.
Provocation is not advocacy.
And gossip is certainly not diagnosis.
WHY I CHOSE OUR PHOTOGRAPH
That is precisely why I chose a photograph of Christa and me for this article.
We are smiling.
Someone seeing the photograph without context could reasonably assume friendship and comfort.
Life taught me something more complicated.
“People can smile in your face while you have absolutely no idea what they privately think about you.”
The photograph does not prove jealousy.
It does not prove hatred.
It cannot establish what Christa was thinking.
It represents something much more interesting:
A photograph establishes proximity. It does not establish loyalty.
I later interpreted aspects of our relationship through a different lens, including tensions I associated with relationships and commentary I experienced concerning my mental health.
But I do not need to read another woman’s mind to tell my story.
The record is stronger when I don’t.
YOU KNOW MY NAME. YOU DO NOT KNOW MY LIFE.
This is where the Jacksonville grapevine becomes exhausting.
Someone can know people who know me and still not know me.
You did not experience my adulthood.
You did not earn my education.
You did not build my career.
You did not experience my professional victories or failures.
You did not live inside my family.
You did not survive every experience that changed me.
And you cannot diagnose my mental health because somebody from high school gave you a recap.
Knowing ten stories about me does not mean you know me. It means you know ten stories. Learn the evidentiary difference.
That distinction becomes particularly important when people begin repeating conclusions about someone’s mental health, family, or character.
The grapevine is not a deposition.
Rumor is not testimony.
And popularity is certainly not expert qualification.
MY GRANDFATHER IS NOT SOMEBODY ELSE’S PUNCHLINE
I was also deeply offended by commentary I understood as suggesting that my grandfather was gay.
For clarity, my grandfather was not gay.
But there is a larger principle here.
Being gay should never be treated as an insult.
My objection is to someone’s alleged sexuality being turned into ammunition against his granddaughter.
My grandfather’s actual legacy is considerably more important.
Family.
Service.
Structure.
Responsibility.
Those are the things he left me.
And nobody’s gossip gets to amend the inheritance.
MY FATHER DID NOT RAISE JACKSONVILLE
This point needs to be unmistakably clear.
When I discuss my father’s military leadership and how he raised his daughters, I am speaking about our household.
My father did not raise my high-school classmates.
He did not mentor every Jacksonville teenager who knew his daughter.
He did not teach them military ethics.
He did not authorize anybody to attach themselves to his legacy simply because we occupied the same city.
My father brought the lessons he learned through decades of service into the home he actually built.
He provided.
He protected.
He established structure.
He raised his children.
That is his legacy.
If somebody has a problem with Adrienne Floyd, address Adrienne Floyd.
My mother does not become collateral.
My father does not become collateral.
My sister does not become collateral.
My grandfather does not become collateral.
My businesses do not become collateral.
And my family’s accomplishments do not become evidence of somebody else’s deprivation.
You do not get discovery rights to my entire bloodline because you developed an issue with me in high school.
That subpoena was never issued.
A MESSAGE TO TERRY PARKER, WOLFSON, LEE AND THE HALLWAYS I OUTGREW
To individuals from Terry Parker High School, Wolfson, Lee, and the wider Jacksonville circles who have carried old perceptions of me into adulthood:
We may have attended schools in the same city.
We were not necessarily raised inside the same culture.
I come from my own version of Southern hospitality.
My household emphasized education, manners, service, planning, accountability, and family structure.
That does not make me superior.
It makes my upbringing mine.
If somebody interpreted difference as arrogance, adulthood should have provided enough vocabulary to reconsider the conclusion.
Because different does not mean disrespectful.
Private does not mean pretentious.
And structured does not mean somebody thinks she is better than you.
WHAT I CALL “HOODRATISM”
I use the word hoodratism intentionally.
I am not using it as another word for poverty.
It does not mean Blackness.
It does not mean growing up in the hood.
To me, hoodratism describes a pattern of conduct.
Gossiping obsessively.
Recruiting friends into disputes.
Glorifying violence.
Threatening people and then scrutinizing their reactions.
Dragging relatives into arguments.
Treating another person’s relationship as community property.
Monitoring somebody you claim not to like.
Weaponizing mental-health terminology.
Turning every disagreement into a campaign.
That mentality can exist at any income level.
A wealthy woman can practice hoodratism.
A suburban woman can practice it.
A college graduate can practice it.
A service member can practice it.
A professional can practice it.
A résumé can change your tax bracket without changing your mentality.
And that is precisely why my criticism is about behavior rather than socioeconomic status.
DO NOT CONFUSE MY ISOLATION WITH WEAKNESS
Another thing people misunderstand about me is my ability to isolate from the masses and focus.
Everybody does not need access to what I am building.
Everybody does not need an explanation.
Everybody does not need a preview.
Sometimes people cannot see what you are working toward, so they fill the empty space with assumptions.
Silence becomes arrogance.
Privacy becomes secrecy.
Focus becomes rejection.
And boundaries become an invitation for people to invent motives.
No.
You cannot hate what you cannot see me building and then rewrite my character because I refused to give you the blueprint.
Privacy is not weakness.
Isolation can be discipline.
And separating yourself from an unhealthy social environment does not mean you secretly want its approval.
THE UNIFORM IS NOT A CHEAT CODE FOR CHARACTER
I do not believe military service is the problem.
I believe people sometimes expect institutions to complete transformations they have not completed internally.
“It’s as if people intentionally do outlandish stuff immaturely before they are able to say, ‘It’s time for me to change,’ then they get into the military and they don’t change.”
People enter the military with histories.
Families.
Trauma.
Education.
Insecurities.
Friendships.
Strengths.
Prejudices.
Old conflicts.
Military training can impose discipline.
The individual still has to practice it.
The uniform cannot become a cheat code for character.
Rank may tell me what you earned institutionally.
Behavior tells me what you learned personally.
SOMEBODY FOUGHT FOR THOSE OPPORTUNITIES
This matters particularly to me as a Black woman.
Black men and Black women before our generation fought through segregation and institutional exclusion to create opportunities that younger generations can now pursue throughout American life, including military leadership.
Those doors carry history.
Two Black students can attend the same high school and walk away with dramatically different understandings of what education can unlock.
College.
Graduate education.
ROTC.
Commissioning opportunities.
Professional careers.
Entrepreneurship.
Public service.
People discover those pathways at different stages.
Neither pathway automatically determines character.
But once we receive access, we should understand what somebody sacrificed to make that access possible.
Leadership is not bragging because you got through the door. Leadership is knowing who bled so the door could open.
That historical humility matters.
BLACK EXCELLENCE IS NOT A CRAB-IN-THE-BUCKET CAMPAIGN
Black excellence should not mean one Black woman succeeds and then weaponizes her accomplishment against another.
It should not mean someone earns military rank and treats civilians as inferior.
It should not mean someone enters law and converts a personal vendetta into a professional identity.
It should not mean somebody obtains money and returns home looking for an audience to impress.
That is not advancement.
That is an old hierarchy wearing a new outfit.
Our ancestors and predecessors fought too hard for access to universities, military leadership, law, business, and professional institutions for us to reduce those opportunities to another high-school popularity contest.
If your success requires another Black woman to become smaller, what you built was never excellence. It was hierarchy.
I refuse that version of progress.
DO NOT WEAPONIZE MOTHERHOOD, LAW OR THE MILITARY
Being raised by a single mother does not create deficient character.
Becoming a single mother does not make a woman intellectually inferior.
Entering the military does not make somebody morally superior.
Going to college does not make me morally superior either.
And wanting to enter law after experiencing difficult relationships does not automatically establish vengeance as someone’s motive.
But no title should become camouflage for unresolved hostility.
If you enter law, learn justice.
If you enter military service, learn service.
If you become a mother, model growth.
If you become an entrepreneur, learn responsibility.
If you become successful, learn humility.
The accomplishment is impressive. The unresolved mentality underneath it is still discoverable.
That is the lawyer in me talking before law school ever begins.
RANK DOES NOT MAKE A CIVILIAN LESSER
Military benefits exist because military service requires genuine sacrifice.
That does not make military personnel inherently superior to civilians.
Service members earn rank.
Civilians earn things too.
Degrees.
Professional licenses.
Businesses.
Homes.
Promotions.
Families.
Recovery.
Stability.
Peace.
Different pathways do not need to compete.
A civilian does not need military rank for her discipline to be legitimate.
A service member does not need to diminish civilians for her service to become meaningful.
Your rank exists inside a command structure. It is not a universal title over the American public.
That distinction should not be controversial.
WHY SHOULD I SERVE?
These experiences eventually made me ask:
“Why should I serve?”
I do not consider that an anti-military question.
I consider it a patriotic one.
What does the oath mean after the ceremony?
What does leadership look like when command is not watching?
How should a service member treat a civilian she dislikes?
What happens when institutional authority meets an unresolved ego?
Those questions matter precisely because service matters.
My father’s example taught me to take the uniform seriously enough to ask difficult questions about the people wearing it.
JACKSONVILLE DOES NOT DEFINE THE MILITARY
My experiences cannot responsibly become an indictment of Jacksonville.
Jacksonville contains honorable military families, professionals, working-class families, educators, entrepreneurs, veterans, and young people building extraordinary lives.
My experiences with particular Black women also cannot become an indictment of Black military women.
That would reproduce the same kind of generalization I reject.
My concern is conduct.
Not poverty.
Not motherhood.
Not being enlisted.
Not being an officer.
Not being from the hood.
Not being from the suburbs.
Conduct.
Because character has never required a ZIP code.
CHARACTER IS WHAT REMAINS AFTER THE TITLES
Eventually, this story became less about who was popular in high school and more about what adulthood is supposed to accomplish.
A person can become a mother.
A service member.
A paralegal.
A lawyer.
An executive.
An entrepreneur.
An artist.
A graduate.
A homeowner.
None of those titles automatically creates maturity.
Adulthood should require evolution.
Being nasty is not leadership.
Being cruel is not confidence.
Being loud is not authority.
Violence is not an accomplishment.
And humiliating another woman will never become evidence of your success.
The strongest story about your teenage years should not be how effectively you hurt somebody.
The stronger story is:
“That was who I was. Look at who I chose to become.”
People can change.
The teenager who fought can become the mother who teaches her children not to fight.
The person who gossiped can learn confidentiality.
The immature recruit can become a disciplined leader.
The woman who resented another woman can eventually realize that somebody else’s life was never stealing from hers.
But growth requires confronting yourself.
No uniform can do that for you.
No degree can do that for you.
No title can do that for you.
And no amount of attention directed toward another woman’s life will substitute for doing the work inside your own.
Sometimes walking away from conflict is not weakness.
Sometimes it is the first evidence that you finally outranked the mentality that created it.
And sometimes the cleanest clapback is not revenge.
It is a record.
— 4HIO Label
EDITORIAL & LEGAL NOTICE
This article constitutes first-person commentary reflecting Adrienne Floyd’s personal recollections, experiences, perceptions, emotional reactions, and opinions. Quotations attributed to the author intentionally preserve aspects of her personal voice and should be understood within that context.
References to alleged threats, firearms, burglary, intimidation, defamatory statements, violence, coordinated conduct, or other wrongdoing concerning identifiable individuals should be understood as allegations, recollections, information reported to the author, or the author’s interpretation unless expressly supported and identified through authoritative records. They are not presented as independent judicial findings or determinations of criminal or civil liability.
Statements concerning another individual’s motives, jealousy, resentment, knowledge, intentions, mental state, or reasons for pursuing a particular career should not be interpreted as established facts unless directly supported by identified evidence. Friendship, family relationships, parenthood, military affiliation, or romantic association alone do not establish participation in another person’s alleged conduct.
Any final published reference to the burglary of the Floyd family home, Joshua Curry’s involvement, Bethany Larson’s knowledge or participation, or authority granted to Adrienne Floyd through a power-of-attorney instrument should be conformed to the applicable official records. The precise title, date, and scope of any power-of-attorney instrument should be taken directly from the executed document.
Nothing in this article authorizes or purports to authorize disclosure of information protected by a sealing order, confidentiality requirement, or other legal restriction.
References to communications involving Jassandra Jackson, Jameisha Sparrow, Christa Parker, or other identifiable individuals should be evaluated against available messages, screenshots, contemporaneous records, witnesses, or other documentation when factual verification is required.
This commentary does not speak for or represent the United States Navy, the Department of Defense, or any branch of the United States Armed Forces. Criticism of an individual’s alleged or perceived behavior is not criticism of military personnel generally.
References to motherhood, single-parent households, socioeconomic status, educational background, neighborhood, military rank, or career aspirations are included for contextual discussion and are not assertions that those characteristics themselves establish deficient character, misconduct, or criminality.
The broader purpose of this commentary is to examine interpersonal boundaries, adulthood, women’s relationships, mental-health rhetoric, violence, accountability, Black achievement, leadership, military service, and the distinction between institutional accomplishment and personal character.
Leave a Reply