The Crazy World We Live In! Blog

Should Don Imus be fired for calling the women of the Rutgers basketball team ?roughî and ?nappy haired hosî? My take: No, and here?s why.

[More:]

Psychologically, firing Don Imus and others like him, may achieve the goal of deleting offensive remarks from the public airwaves, but it won't delete them from the public mind.

What I mean here is that our society has put an emphasis on being politically correct but not on eradicating the prejudices themselves. Instead, they go underground where prejudice and bias can truly flourish. Why? Because prejudice and bias needs separateness in order to grow in power.

Look, Imus, and those like him, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, wouldn't say these outrageous offensive things if THERE WASN?T AN AUDIENCE THAT WANTS TO HEAR THEM.

One aspect of racism, sexism, or any ism, is that the person demonstrating the bias doesn't realize that he or she has a prejudice. Rather, the bias itself is misinterpreted as mere reality. In fact, when you have a preference, bias or prejudice it is actually BUILT on your assumption that you are seeing REALITY ACCURATELY. Imus apologized for the remarks but also in part defended the use of the words because Black hip-hop culture uses denigrating words such as these and much worse in their very popular music. Well, okay, rap music contains horrible characterizations of women and glorifys violence but Imus wasn't using these insults to make a point about rap music.

However, Imus IS right that the word "ho", slang for whore or prostitute, has filtered into public language in a way that has taken the SHOCKING bite out of the word. By that I mean, that friends can call each other "ho" without it being demeaning, and in fact, can be interpreted as a sign of good friendship, intimacy and endearment. Now wait, before everybody gets nuts on me: I'm not implying that that is true in ALL CIRCLES, just in some circles. But for Imus to call the female basketball players "hos" isn't obviously an endearment but also it might not have the same negative impact as another word.

So let's talk about the use of the word "ho". Living in a large city as I do, I've noticed that that word has become more acceptable and not necessarily used to mean a whore. Social psychologists study this kind of thing all the time. A word loses the impact of its original meaning over time. Or implies different meanings depending on context.

For example: A very negative word may be used WITHIN A GROUP but be totally in appropriate ACROSS GROUPS. Consider the "n" word. If one African-American calls another African-American the "n" word [a within group usage], that is not the same as a Caucasian person using the "n" word to refer to an African-American [an ACROSS group usage].

Don Imus doesn't get it -- really. He keeps saying he's a good person -- but that isn't the point. The point is that he thinks that the prejudicial comments he makes about African-American is supported by an objective reality. That's why he thought the comment was a JOKE -- that there was a "truth" in commenting on the basketball players looking "rough" and looked like "nappy-headed hos".

Getting back to Imus: even if "hos" wasn't meant to mean whore, what DID Imus mean by those comments? Now while everyone is upset about the remark being racist and sexist, I'd like to imply that Imus' comments go to a deeper prejudice -- about women and homophobia.

Part of the reason Imus felt his comments were okay and funny was because he was actually commenting on the unacceptability of athletic, tall, strong female basketball players who don't necessarily conform to the idea of how females should look and present themselves according to majority White culture. Okay -- I'm not going to mince words here. This is about men believing that athletic women, especially in a sport like basketball [revered as a man's sport until title IX opened it up for women] are gay.

Imus and his producer zoomed in on that with their comments about the women having tattoos or being big like the TORONTO RAPTERS -- the implicit idea here is that they are NOT ACCEPTABLE females-- whether they are too mannish or too promiscuous. The "nappy haired" comment just adds to that idea that they don't conform to a white man's conception of acceptable femaleness.

In my opinion, FIRING Imus would send these prejudices underground and that would NOT be helpful.
Heck, we STILL aren't talking about the implications of what he meant by what he said, just about the words he used.

The fact is that Imus' comments sparked a controversy that has caused the Internet, TV and other media to launch into a substantive discussion precisely about these kinds of issues. So firing Imus accomplishes nothing, and lets him trot off to another job. Think Howard Stern.

Instead, let him remain but demand that he demonstrate some change when he returns to the mike -- well, that outcome just might inspire a change -- a psychological, sociological change that isn't just intended to change Mr. Imus, but maybe the rest of us as well.

Which brings me to two final thoughts:

First, we need to alter the current climate of disrespectful speech in our culture. Sure, rap music has injected an unpleasant and violent tone into our culture. But so has the political discourse which aims to demonize "the other". I'm thinking here of Tom DeLay's current book which likens the Democrats to Hitler. I mean, come on, Hitler, really?

We need to take responsibility -- each of us individually for our own contribution to the culture of insensitivity. Our language comes out of our thoughts. How we use language indicates how we think and feel about certain things. Does your language suggest inner prejudices? Is your language contributing to an air of disrespect?

And the second and final thought -- which might appear a contradiction to what I've just said -- we should keep in mind that Imus is a comedian. As a nation we have always given a wide berth to those comics, satirists and commentators who use humor to help us take a look at ourselves and our society. Certainly, Imus' comments were neither funny nor enlightening. But we need to see his comments in context of being part of an irreverent comedy performance.

Be clear: this isn't to excuse him. His comments were hurtful, inappropriate even within a comic context and suggests some deep-seated prejudices. But likewise, these comments were meant to be humorous and were not out of hate and anger.

Should Don Imus be fired? No. Having him around just might get the rest of us to look at some very complicated and sticky issues which need to be discussed.