Is Don Imus an Innocent Victim?

Recent "racial slurs" said on Don Imus' nationally syndicated radio program have caught the attention of the nation, the press, and certain well known and always available publicity seekers.

America is now blessed with fresh dose of Jesse Jackson's and Al Sharpton's self-righteous posturing over comments made on Imus's show. Jackson and Sharpton are both demanding Imus be fired from his show. This may or may not be appropriate but as talk radio host Larry Elders pointed out, dunderheaded comments by the two, like Jackson calling New York "Hymie-town", racist remark against Jews, goes mostly unnoticed and gets by with a simple, single apology. Imus has apologized three times publicly and is still feeling the repercussions.

The offending comments occur in THIS context: a discussion about a basketball game last Wednesday. I was shocked at the reports of the slur until I saw the context in which they were made.

DON IMUS: So I watched the basketball game last night between a little bit of Rutgers and Tennessee, the women's final.
SID ROSENBERG: Yeah, Tennessee won last night, seventh championship for Pat Summitt, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by thirteen points.
DON IMUS: Some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they've got tattoos and -
BERNARD McGUIRK: Some hardcore hos.
DON IMUS: That's some nappy-headed hos there, I'm going to tell you that. Man, that's some -- ooh! And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so -- like kind of like a -- I don't know.
BERNARD McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.
DON IMUS: Yeah.
BERNARD McGUIRK: The Jigaboos versus the Wannabes -
DON IMUS: Yeah.
BERNARD McGUIRK: That movie that he had?
DON IMUS: Yeah, it was a tough -
CHARLES McCORD: Do the Right Thing.
BERNARD McGUIRK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
DON IMUS: I don't know if I'd have wanted to beat Rutgers or not. But they did, right?
SID ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.
DON IMUS: Well, I guess, yeah.
LOU RUFFINO: Only tougher.

The slurs "nappy-headed ho's" and "jiggaboo" are really old school ebonics and direct dialogue from Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing". It has been noted that, in a society where the black culture heroes (ganstas) call each other ho's , bitches, and muthaf**kers twelve times in 16 bars, only oldheads like Sharpton and Jackson would make a national case off the word "jigaboos." It is especially odd that they are targeting Imus for the jiggerboo reference when it was his producer who used it -referencing the "Spike Lee Joint". I guess those references are reserved for certain races only?

Although I personally find it offensive I'm amazed at how many blacks who are racist against whites and whites who are racist against say...hispanics, want to take the high ground on this one. Especially when the conversation is one that I might hear and chuckle at lunch with my black coworkers. I guess "nappy headed ho" is just something a white guy is not allowed to say.

Does this mean we need sensitivity training? Well don't we all? We all are observers of the culture we live in. Some of us are good at participating in it and pointing out it's foibles while others are not.

If you want to respect diversity, you should respect the differences. Perhaps Imus would have been better to respect the difference that while a black person can call one of his own race a "ho", a white man can't under ANY circumstances. But just because a white person has no word like "nappy head" that he can call another of his own race- that a black man can't- doesn't mean a person should be punished for a badly done satire. And there is nothing more revolting to me, other than pure racism, than taking something out of the periphery and calling it the context. Imus was wrong for his choice of subject matter here. But the media reaction and the "offended publicity hounds" are perpetuating their own brand of unadulterated racism as well.