This Week’s Non-Racist: A Crappy-Headed Host

Among the flurry of other commentary about Don Imus’s sexist and racist comments about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, we offer some perspective.

As we’ve highlighted before, there has been too much emphasis on whether Imus is a good or a bad person (who cares?! – even throughout this firestorm, he continues to raise millions for charity – he’s obviously a good person), whether he’s racist (like all of us, he is), and whether he should be fired (he has been, but again, who cares?!). The Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have been criticized as being too focused on Imus and missing the big picture, but we disagree with those assessments. They are, in fact, trying to get us all to focus on the big picture for once. In the last year or so, we’ve had ample opportunity to do it (Hurricane Katrina, Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, Joe Biden), but we have always attacked the individual and moved on along our merry way, the whites among us smug in the security that unlike these folks, we’re good people.

Earlier this week on the Today Show, Imus used an analogy to explain why he didn’t think he should be fired. After some 30 years on the air, he claims that he should be given some latitude. That comment, he admits, was stupid, but it amounted to a gun going off by accident as opposed to a pre-meditated murder, so the punishment should be proportional. The use of the analogy is illustrative of how completely clueless most white folks are about these issues. Again, as we’ve noted before, we often run to the question of intent.

On Sharpton’s radio show, Imus noted that it was unfair for folks who didn’t know what was inside of him to call for his firing. Sharpton astutely responded that he wasn’t going to call Imus a bigot, but he will say that what Imus said was racist, and for that, he should be fired. Imus certainly could not understand the distinction (apparently he does not read This Week in Race – a crime that unquestionably warrants stiff punishment!). What Sharpton was saying is that with respect to Imus’s public statements, it doesn’t matter “what’s in his heart” (as Imus put it on Sharpton’s program, echoing one of President Bush’s favorite phrases).

This isn’t about Imus, it’s about racism, sexism and classism, which are bigger than any individual or even the sum of all individual attitudes or intentions. By relentlessly calling for Imus’s firing, Sharpton and Jackson kept the story alive. That’s the point. Imus is irrelevant. Free speech, yaddada, yaddada. It matters in our culture, of course (is crucial to our democracy, in fact), but it’s irrelevant to the issue at hand: systematic racism, sexism and classism. So, to use Imus’s own metaphor, we don’t care what you meant to DO with the gun, we care about the gun itself. We all have that gun, but most of us are more careful in making sure it doesn’t accidentally go off. But if we don’t stop to think and talk about why and how we were all given the gun in the first place, we’ll never be able to get rid of it (in which case, we won’t have to worry about it accidentally going off).

Let’s address the sexism aspect of the comment, first. Referring to women in a demeaning and objectifying way is reflective of sexism; it is not sexism in and of itself. Imus and his supporters have been quick to point the finger at members of the black community for using the term “ho” (an abbreviation for “whore”), arguing he learned it there and that the double-standard is confusing and capricious. Quite right. That particular expression originated and is most heavily used in black street slang. While this point is relevant, it deflects the real issue. We need to examine how and why our sexist society has given rise to such a phrase being commonplace. Further, it cuts to the racism of Imus’s picking up on the black vernacular to characterize those young women. Calling them “whores” wouldn’t have made the comment less sexist. It is the fact that women are so often dehumanized as sex objects that demonstrates systemic sexism. That characterization was in his arsenal (to continue Imus’s metaphor) because of his sexism. The particular word he chose was there because of his racism and classism.

There has been a lot of discussion of how the term “nappy-headed” is racist, so we won’t go into that here. What we’d like to add, though, is that the term itself, when used by a white person, is at once racist and classist. To refer to an African American’s hair as “nappy” is to suggest that it is unkempt. Primarily, however, it is a degrading contrast to whites whose “straight” hair has long been part of the prevailing ideal beauty. It suggests the stark distinction between whites who have the means to maintain their natural beauty, and blacks, whose hair is indicative of life as a field hand, the nappy-headed, cotton-picking slave whose wild hair is just another expression of his or her untamed, uncultivated and brutish nature. Nappy hair is contrasted with “good” hair, which, even in black vernacular, is “white” hair – what Malcolm X once referred to as a sign of blacks’ internalized self-hatred resulting from the burden of white racism, and what Cornel West has referred to as “self-loathing.”

Imus was intending to make a joke about how “street” the women on the team were by intimating that they were thuggish (this is inferred largely by the comment about their tattoos that preceded the comment in question – apparently Imus is too out of touch to know that it’s difficult to find an 18-22 year-old person today who does NOT have a tattoo). In doing so, as he notes, he was trying to be entertaining by making a joke at their expense. So why can’t we just laugh it off? After all, if we could just take ourselves a little less seriously, the world would be a better place.

If he was poking fun at an individual because of his or her characteristics, that might be a good argument. But he wasn’t. He was making fun of a race, class and gender by playing on cultural stereotypes that have put and keep folks in those groupings at a disadvantage in our culture. As many others have asked: why would he think that would be funny? In fact, it WAS funny. All the white guys in the booth seemed to think it was hilarious. We need to examine why. This is what Al Sharpton and others have been trying to get us to understand, but white folks don’t want to hear them because it’s pretty painful to realize we’re racist, even if we’re not bigots.

So Imus is gone, for now, but that doesn’t solve anything. If anything good comes from this episode, it will be that we finally take the occasion to have meaningful discussion about the different lives that are lived by white and non-white Americans, that are lived by men and women in this country, and that are lived by middle-class and working-class or poor Americans. CBS President and Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves, in speaking of Imus’s firing on Thursday, moved us closer in that direction. According to the Associated Press, he said of Imus, "He has flourished in a culture that permits a certain level of objectionable expression that hurts and demeans a wide range of people. In taking him off the air, I believe we take an important and necessary step not just in solving a unique problem, but in changing that culture, which extends far beyond the walls of our company." Further, he (who perhaps DOES read our blog) identifies language as a powerful force in maintaining and perpetuating systemic oppression. According to the Chicago Tribune, she said, “There has been much discussion of the effect language like [Imus used last week] has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society. That consideration has weighed most heavily on our minds as we made our decision, as have the many e-mails, phone calls and personal discussions we have had with our colleagues."

As one of our colleagues at the Midwest Political Science Association meeting we are attending this weekend noted, white folks are always surprised when this stuff surfaces. People of color deal with it every day, and are similarly curious about why white folks keep being surprised. It’s about denial and about not understanding that intent is not the issue, and whether we are good people is not the issue. It matters personally, of course, but it’s not the issue here. The sooner we all figure that out, the sooner we can move on with the real conversation and finally get some work done.

That's the AFTER blog (after Imus's firing). In case you're interested, here's the "BEFORE" blog:

Firing Imus Worse than Listening to His Loaded Language

What is worse – the racist ramblings of Don Imus, or firing him for it? Despicable as the former may be, firing the talk show host would constitute a greater wrong than the content of his original remarks. This is because the American public would be left with lessons not yet learned, with the dismissal serving as a distraction from the difficult racial and gender-based realities of American life.

According to Imus’s rationale on the Today Show, there is difference between a premeditated act, murder, and a gun going off that accidentally kills. Over the past few days as this saga has unfolded, we’ve focused a lot on the killing--the offending of the Rutgers women basketball players--and so the airwaves have been crowded with cries for apologies. We’ve spent a lot of time on the gunfire--Imus’s words themselves--and, consequently, the central issue of debate has been the necessary consequences for Imus’s offense.

But it all misses the point. The real issue here is not the gun or the murder, but the underlying question, “Why was the gun loaded in the first place?”

Making the Imus issue primarily about his firing misses the real truth his words reveal –that racial and gender prejudice pervade American society. As with Michael Richards and Joseph Biden earlier this year, racism has once been treated as an isolated incident. But these incidents are merely symptoms of widespread and deep-seated racial prejudice. Firing Imus certainly deals with the symptom, but not the cause, thereby ignoring a fundamental question: Why does such racial and gender-based ignorance and hostility remain so prevalent?

To fire Don Imus would send the message that what is wrong is not one’s underlying prejudices, but making those prejudices known, and worse, getting caught. It teaches America the critical lesson that one should perfect our excuses for why words sometimes spoken are out of line with our “true” character, one’s “true heart.” It teaches us the critical necessity of perfecting the craft of concealment – how to simply deny expression to our underlying prejudices, resentments and fears. But the lesson we should be trying to teach ourselves through this ordeal is the urgent necessity for individual and national self-assessment, the real need to directly confront the underlying issues of race and gender in a way we have not done before.

Firing Imus will not teach us these errant lessons. It would keep us from, yet again, seizing the opportunity to have a national conversation about race and racism and gender and sexism in America. Firing Imus is the coward’s way out, the solution that merely sweeps the taboos of racism, sexism and prejudice under the rug so we do not have to talk about them anymore once the drama of hurt feelings, bad blood and celebrity scandal runs its course. It’s the convenient way for a network to opt for the simple solution – to protect its image and advertisers by using Imus as a proxy for the belief that they themselves harbor no racial prejudices, rather than using its power to begin and continue a real, national dialogue about the realities of race in America.

The fact is, if there were no Don Imuses in the world, we’d almost never talk about race or gender inequality in America; his kind of remarks provide the necessary impetus for us to engage in, rather than retreat from, serious conversation on these issues.