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Nappy-headed? Now those are fighting words (IT AIN'T THE 'HO', IT'S THE 'NAPPY')
Chicago Sun-Times ^ | April 12, 2007 | MARY MITCHELL Sun-Times Columnist

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


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: doublestandard; hos; imus; macacamoment; rutgers; trashtalking; wordpolice
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To: Chi-townChief
The term "ho" (hoe?), as used by rappers, seems to be the female equivalent of a rake.
41 posted on 04/12/2007 4:50:48 PM PDT by Fiji Hill
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To: Chi-townChief
So you can say a black person's hair is kinky, or frizzy, or tightly curled, but you can't say nappy.

I still don't really know what nappy means, or why it's bad. Why is referring to the texture of one's hair an insult anyway?

If I said my hair was straight, would the Gaystapo boycott me?

42 posted on 04/12/2007 4:50:57 PM PDT by Lizavetta
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To: ClaireSolt

I’ve been referring to my oldest son as ‘my nappy-headed kid’ for years. The other son has board-straight hair. Earliest exposure to the term I trace to working with sewing patterns & fabrics.


43 posted on 04/12/2007 4:53:08 PM PDT by elli1
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To: Chi-townChief
I know the N word is offensive, the ho word is offensive but I did not know “nappy” was offensive. Is there somewhere I can go where offensive phrases are defined? Maybe I’M JUST TOO WHITE. Oops! I think I just offended myself.
44 posted on 04/12/2007 4:56:58 PM PDT by jackieaxe (This one hour pre-flight security screening is brought to you by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia)
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To: Chi-townChief

I spent a couple of days in Chicago last December during the NFL playoffs. The “Trash Talk” about the New Orleans Saints heard all over the local radio would have made a “nappy headed ho” blush!


45 posted on 04/12/2007 4:57:06 PM PDT by Species8472 (We will never Forget !)
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To: Cecily
"I’m as mystified as you are. What is wrong black women’s normal, unstraightened or unbraided hair? I had no idea it was considered any kind of negative or lesser style."

What I'm wondering is how that '5-alive' drink comercial stayed on the tv for so long. It had a wide eyed, nappy haired dude pulling canned drinks out of his hair. And as far as rap "music' goes, if all the intentional derogatory insults are "ok", then there should be no reason Johnny Rebel country music isn't given the same airtime.

46 posted on 04/12/2007 5:04:22 PM PDT by Nathan Zachary
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To: Nathan Zachary

Oh, my friend framed it as a “woman” thing, not a race thing.


47 posted on 04/12/2007 5:05:31 PM PDT by NativeNewYorker (Freepin' Jew Boy)
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To: Chi-townChief

So we have the elitist racial leaders who are more insulted by a comment about their hair than a comment about their sexual promiscuity. Hmmm....


48 posted on 04/12/2007 5:07:23 PM PDT by gotribe ( I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution... - Grover Cleveland.)
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To: P-40
Wasn’t he the guy that said Jigaboo?

McGurk was replying to Imus' mention that the Tennessee girls were cute and the Rutgers girls had tattoos.

McGurk made reference to Spike Lee's "School Daze" where one group of black girls were referred to as "Wannabees" (white) and the other group of black girls were revolutionaries and referred to as "Jigaboos" by the "Wannabees".

The movie had a whole production number with a dancing chorus singing about the differences.

Since Imus is quite catholic in his music choices from show tunes to rap, he's probably heard the "nappy" phrase in a Ice Cube song.

All that aside, I think some of this is staged to get Imus out of his contracts and go to satellite radio under his old boss, Karmizan.

49 posted on 04/12/2007 5:07:23 PM PDT by leadhead (Vote Fred Thompson, we've had enough bad actors!)
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To: Windcatcher; Cecily; Lizavetta
Nappy Hair


50 posted on 04/12/2007 5:08:12 PM PDT by Enterprise (I can't talk about liberals anymore because some of the words will get me sent to rehab.)
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To: Enterprise
Nappy What?


51 posted on 04/12/2007 5:09:28 PM PDT by jaz.357 (...diagonally parked in a parallel universe.)
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To: Chi-townChief

I have nappy hair. It’s just not on my head!


52 posted on 04/12/2007 5:11:46 PM PDT by gotribe ( I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution... - Grover Cleveland.)
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To: Fiji Hill

I thought “ho” is short for whore in ebonics. Correct or not? Anyone?


53 posted on 04/12/2007 5:12:36 PM PDT by Paulus Invictus
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To: NativeNewYorker

maybe that’s it, it’s a black woman thing. They were on Oprah today- Oprah certainly wasn’t going to miss out on an opportunity to shout “racism” but I couldn’t stomach listening to the BS “coach Vivian” was spewing and turned the channel.
Didn’t take them long to go from refusing to talk to Imus to demanding he meet with them, and advancing their “victim” claims.


54 posted on 04/12/2007 5:13:38 PM PDT by Nathan Zachary
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Comment #55 Removed by Moderator

To: TheDon
Sharpton and Jesse are a couple of nappy headed hoes!

Let's be accurate those two crackers are professional victims not prostitutes (hookers are more honest). They should be forced to explain why they defend the lyrics of rappers who say much worse things about women than Imus.

56 posted on 04/12/2007 5:14:12 PM PDT by Fraxinus (My opinion worth what you paid.)
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To: Renegade
Mangum belongs in jail. I don’t buy any explanation that she might believe her own story. She made it up to avoid going to jail for being under the influence.
57 posted on 04/12/2007 5:15:53 PM PDT by Enterprise (I can't talk about liberals anymore because some of the words will get me sent to rehab.)
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To: Fraxinus

I thought “crackers” was a derogatory name Negrow’s called white people.


58 posted on 04/12/2007 5:17:12 PM PDT by Nathan Zachary
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To: Chi-townChief

All this hoopla is kind of like Seinfeld: a show about nothing. . . honestly, how absurd can a national cultural dicussion be?


59 posted on 04/12/2007 5:17:19 PM PDT by RatRipper
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To: Paulus Invictus

Ho is short for street walker, a prostitute. Ho for “honked at”. The lowest form of prostitute, although “crack ho” — a ho addicted to crack is arguably lower than low. And that’s the down low, homey.


60 posted on 04/12/2007 5:17:31 PM PDT by bvw
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