I was just going to respond to Craig's post below but as my response was getting ridiculously long I decided to make a new post. I'm not going to say that Imus' comment was not racist - that would just be silly. I want to address the sexist part. I not so sure his comment is offensive to all women like Oprah seems to want everyone to believe. Imus was efficient but I'm pretty sure he could have gotten in the same amount of trouble with 33% less words. Besides the fact that it was his producer that first called them hos and Imus only added the nappy-headed part, there are tons of things out there in the media way more demeaning to women - like 99% of rap videos.
Not to long ago, I was sitting with a 1st grader helping him on a worksheet when he started singing "I'm in love with a woman." For those of you who, like Craig, might be unaware of the actual song, the real title is "I'm in love with a stripper" and the lyrics can be found here. I don't know how he learned this cleaner version of the song, I can only image some weird scenario in which he was singing the real song and his mom told him to say woman instead, or maybe he asked someone what a stripper was and they told him "a type of woman." - I really have no idea. But thank goodness he only knew the first line and the other kids had already finished their papers and headed off to P.E. It is scary. The same kid who sings "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar" with me in the morning should not be singing that song in the afternoon. I'm pretty sure he has never heard "Imus in the Morning" but he is being exposed to lots of stuff that is impacting how he views women and no one is calling for T-pain to lose his contract.
I agree that a lot of not just rap, but a lot of popular music today, is demeaning for women. I think every woman in the Britney Spears genre, who trades on raw sexual suggestion instead of talent, is harmful to little girls and their perception of what being a woman should be.
ReplyDeleteBut as for Don Imus, this doesn't excuse his calling those women hos. I also feel like it's extra mean to bag on female athletes, because they have a hard enough time anyway. People (and here I'm picturing people like the ones that post on texags, i.e, jerks) get on their cases enough not just from the "butch" angle--not being good enough women--but also for automatically sucking at sports--not being as good as men.
And, if you really want to get down to brass tacks, he wouldn't have used a sexualized term if he were insulting a men's team. "Nappy-headed manwhores"? That just wouldn't happen.