O-TAY!
Posted on 04/12/2007 4:07:07 PM PDT by Chi-townChief
It isn't the Don Imus "hos" insult that has a lot of black people calling for his head. It is his use of "nappy-headed."
After all, no one's saying that Bernard McGuirk, Imus' executive director, should be fired, even though it was McGuirk who started the on-air insult by referring to the Rutgers team as "hard-core hos."
Frankly, not even the most popular rap artist could get away with calling black women "nappy-headed hos."
Those are fighting words.
Despite the fact that sisters of the '60s thought they had stomped out the nappy phobia, another generation ran back to the straightening comb and relaxers --adding Korean weaves and synthetic extensions.
So you can best believe that before the Rutgers basketball players showed up for a news conference Tuesday, they groomed their braids and spent time with a flatiron.
Lance Williams, a professor at Northeastern Illinois University's Jacob H. Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies and an expert in youth culture, observed that some of the women in his class were more outraged by the "nappy-headed" part of Imus' comments than they were with the "ho."
"That was really what offended them," Williams said. "Why is it that nappy-headed offends us so much, when being nappy-headed or having a tight curl pattern is natural to us?" he said. "Why do we still perceive nappy as being something negative?"
I can walk around all day with my hair in twists or an Afro, and no one gives a second look. But don't let me put on my No. 33 curly, honey-colored wig -- the compliments flow.
There wasn't a nappy-head among the Rutgers players even after they sweated through a championship loss.
"You look at the sisters, and they were all straight [hair] and permed," Williams pointed out. "These were highly educated, successful student athletes with perms. Still, after all of that, they are called a nappy-headed ho. At some point, we have to please ourselves and not other people," he said.
"Can you imagine what they probably have to go through every day to keep their hair straight, the torture so they are not called a nappy-headed ho? It should be a wake-up call for us. We need to take the same energy of protest and use it to proclaim our natural beauty and talk about the beauty of black women."
To add insult to injury, Imus put down the black female players to entertain his predominantly white audience. That's why Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the NAACP should keep the pressure on CBS to fire Imus. That's the only way to get the message across that racial insults are out of bounds -- even for highly paid shock jocks.
But the Imus fallout also puts the spotlight on the black community's failure to control its own images.
"I'm willing to bet that Imus got that comment from somebody black," Williams said. "There is no way you can tell me a white man came up with that word on his own. I bet he got that from a black person and he repeated it, not understanding how inflammatory the slur was."
The Imus controversy also exposes the same dilemma that African Americans face when they complain about the use of the n-word. How are blacks to hold Imus accountable when black women are denigrated in their own communities?
"They are regularly calling women chicken heads, bustdowns and tricks and so forth. What [can] we say when people outside our community make the same comments?" Williams noted.
Still, Imus did black people a favor.
Often, it is hard to confront shortcomings in one's own family as aggressively as one addresses an outsider's faults. Black people can't deal with Imus without confronting the denigrating rap lyrics because the same corporate greed that spawned Imus fed the misogynist rap genre.
"If you look at MSNBC, it is ultimately responsible for the comments of Imus. It is the vehicle in which this information was delivered," Williams said. "This same kind of organization is responsible for the gangsta rap. At some point, we have to talk about how these images of dehumanization impact people, and how the general public perceives black people and how we perceive ourselves."
If you hate what Imus said about the Rutgers team, you should stop supporting music that denigrates black women.
Imus was the mimic. Rappers were the muse.
mailto:marym@suntimes.com
O-TAY!
Pelosi’s treasonous behavior is barely covered in comparison to this story. Great timing...maybe Sharpton is in on it? Good diversion of the public. Rope...get them some additional rope!
worse thing Imus did in my opinion was try to smooth over Sharpton by saying he’s not one of those right wingers ... so, that implies it depends who is saying the comment on whether it is okay or not? That is just wrong.!
I don’t like Imus but he shouldn’t be fired for comment ... you hear worse stuff in muscs lyrics?!
Quite a conversation going on at work, the consensus?
Its a witch hunt by Sharpton and those who are weak kneed.
Not once has a black or any other nationality been fired for making ethnic slurs against whites. We are the ones called racist, yet they are the ones with
United Negro College Fund
NAACP
the list is long, but have a white version of any of the above and in the list, and were racist.
I don’t condone what Imus said at all, it was in bad taste, and untrue about the basketball players, but lets all take a deep breath here....
I hear 10 times worse than this on TV
Blacks tear themselves apart and create the very stereotypes they abhore...yet they blame whites...why?
Bill Cosby stated that Blacks can no longer blame whites for holding them down, they are doing it to themselves.
When Other ethnic entertainers in all genre are held to the same ethics that the sharptons of the world hold whites, then and only then will this be acceptable.
When sharpton was asked why he is trying to hang Imus when we are called every racial slur imaginable with impugnity by blacks, he would not answer, and for good reason. It shows clearly his one sided opinion of what is acceptable and what is not.
It is a double standard that exists sadly because the media and the community allows it to exist.
Accountability and fairness is a two way street, and it crosses ethnicity and cultures...
Grow up America, and as for the MSM, your pathetic.
A black pal told me today “You don’t EVER make fun of a black woman’s hair....”
I have never heard a white say “nappy”. I learned it from black friends.
Old Mr.: "She black as tar, nappy-headed, got legs like baseball bats, and I hear she got that nasty women's disease."
Old Mr.: "Boy, you goin' let this ol' nappy-headed girl cuss you out like that? You sittin' at the head of your own dinner table and actin' like a waiter."
Won't happen. Not enough people actually think with their minds, and the "culture" is now so crass, most won't even know about the Imus controversy.
gang sign for bounty hunter
he is straight up taunting!
http://www.enhancementcourses.edu/gangs/gang_signs.htm
This is the key point. Imus was actually trying to compliment the team by speaking to them in their own language. To him, it was akin to saying "tres bien" to a French athlete. As it turns out, the political advantages of lynching Imus far outweighed the benefits of sticking by a friend, so the left skewered him.
The academics claim that the language of Ebonics is a beautiful language, as legitimate as classic Greek or Latin. In Ebonics, "nappy-headed hoe" translates to "awesome chick" or "mensch". Apparently, you can learn the language at any University in the country, including Rutgers, but no one but black people dare speak it.
Looking back on when i
Was a little nappy headed boy
Then my only worry
Was for Christmas what would be my toy
Even though we sometimes
Would not get a thing
We were happy with the
Joy the day would bring
I’m still waiting for someone to explain what “nappy” means. I’d never heard of it before this.
“Bernard McGuirk, Imus’ executive director, should be fired, even though it was McGuirk who started the on-air insult by referring to the Rutgers team as “hard-core hos.””
Finally, somebody mentions it.
Guess they are going to go after this guy next.
Wasn’t he the guy that said Jigaboo?
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