so, the man that looks most like a confederate soldier on msnbc has opened up a race debate that the country is exploring now. The seemingly wide discussion is great, cos unfortunately these problems that never go away are only given some attention when one of America's stars makes a "mistake," unless 20/20 has run out of ideas and wants to do a test on the street to see how people will react to things they see others doing.
The only problem is that, the central point of the discussion so easily gets lost because the focus has been shifted away from the main point of the conversation in the first place, which is: he said something (in the simplest terms) wrong, and how he is punished or dealt with is a reflection of his superior's understanding of the depth of the problem. He's been handed a two week suspension = CBS/NBC don't get it, and neither do a lot of the people on TV that are interviewing others and talking about it. Most of the Black people that's been on TV has a united front, they say Imus should be fired, cos in their understanding, the offense was that serious. And to me, it is, and should be to anyone who thinks about those three words that he said that's been played over and over again.
To explain: 'nappy headed:' For many years past and even now Black people have been socialized by American society to think that their natural, nappy hair was ugly, dirty, and not acceptable. I don't know when women started putting perms in their hair but I know I did from since before I was 10 up until a year after I graduated from college. We think we need to because the straight hair is what everyone else has, it looks better and your more likely to get a better job because we have taken a small step towards whiteness. So, Imus spit out a phrase thats never been used in any kind of positive light (especially when followed by 'hoes') to desribe a succesful group of women that are so much more than the state of their hair, most of which by the way looked like they actually didn't have.
'Hoes:' hoe, one of the minor derogatory ways to describe women but, again, nobody put pimps call women hoes as a term of endearment. Like one of the teammates said, he's calling someone's child, educated women at one of the nations notable schools, all playing a varsity highly demanding sport and completing a degree, and he reduces them to a hoe.
So, like I was saying those are highly problematic words to say. But when there are experts called in, or its discussion time on a daytime talk show - the focus gets shifted away from the gravity of what he said and how he's not held accountable for it, and goes to: 1) well, the top 3 rap songs has hoes in the lyrics, 2) don't we have freedom of speech in this country?, 3) is there a double standard whenever race comes up?, 4) but he's been on the air for 40 yrs, give some respect to his whole career, and so on. Like Spike said today, those are whole other discussions, what people are supposed to be talking about now is an appropriate punishment.
People even question the need for punishment, cos he's a shock jock of sorts, u gotta expect him to say shocking stuff every once in a while. These are people, like Rosie on the View, that aren't paying attention to his victims, and who are ignorant enough to not recognize that that was a racist statement. She is taking the high road of privilege and not even thinking about how big of an issue race is in the country. That's kinda the fundamental problem with the dialouge thats happening, a lot of people that are handling the discussion don't really understand it themselves. There's also the ignorance of Joy on the view, who when asked, why is this an issue now, she offered - maybe its because Barack Obama is running for office. Ah, I see, so now that America possible might have a Black president, NOW we can't say bad things about Black people anymore, NOW it is unacceptable. It makes me chuckle and my blood pressure rise at the same time to continually see how all those white people that make sense about a lot of issues on their talk shows and everything always fail on the Black show.
I remember on Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect, he seemed like a sensible guy, but when the time came around for him to have a Black panel, or there was some race issue discussed, he dropped from the level of grad student to 3rd grader. And now the same thing has happened with Rosie, she lost 2000 points, strangely, the crazy Elizabeth is making the most sense out of all of them whenever it comes up, but again she easily gets swayed to the points of the discussion that are not the main point. It's historic even. This is also a women's issue, but I haven't seen white feminist leaders taking a stand on the shows. Didn't this happen with the suffrage movement? White ladies wanted all women to support, but as soon as that issue was resolved and it was time to give their Black counterparts a helping hand, it mostly wasn't there. And in the Civil Rights movement, there were whites that marched at the front of the line beside Dr King, but what about the plight of Black female athletes, teachers, waitresses, whatever - who all had white counterparts that again, didn't support the other cause. Maybe it wasn't cos they were just selfish people, but again, when it came to issues of underlying disadvantages cos of skin color, they weren't willing or able to feel the gravity of how big of a deal it was.
