Unless you've been buried under a rock somewhere, you've probably heard by now about the racist and sexist comments radio broadcaster Don Imus made about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. In case you haven't, on his radio show he was talking to his producer about them, how he thought they were really "rough" looking and then proceeded to call them "nappy-headed hos". This comment was made about a basketball team that started at the bottom, perservered, and made it all the way to the finals, representing a prestigious university. To taint their accomplishment in that way was despicable, disgusting and abhorrent. Imus called it comedy.
Some people are calling for his firing. MSNBC is suspending him for two weeks. Sponsors such as Proctor and Gamble and Staples have pulled ads from his show. Bigelow Teas is revisiting whether it wants to advertise on the show.
However, what is disturbing to me is the number of people who think Don Imus should not even have been suspended. I just went to the MSNBC website to vote on whether Don Imus should be fired, suspended, or whether suspension was even too much. 33% felt Imus should be fired. 30% felt a two-week suspension was enough. But 38% felt that Imus should not even have been suspended, and that he was a shock jock, it was his job to shock people.
What does this say about our society? Granted, 157,000 voted, and it is not a scientific survey, but I've been reading a great deal about this scandal, and quite a few people feel that everyone should just get over it, Imus made a mistake, let him get his wrists slapped and move on from it.
The problem with this is that these sorts of comments are made over and over again in the public venue with no repercussions other than public embarrassment for the person saying it. Yes, we do have freedom of speech in this country, but where has the sense of decency gone where people in power can call people the "n-word" or "nappy-headed hos" and get away with it? People are trying to compare this with rappers saying the n-word and while I do not agree with rappers using that word or putting down women, I believe that this is an issue of power, and rappers do not wield the same power as a Don Imus using the phrase "nappy-headed ho" or a political candidate using the word "macaca" or even Michael Richards using the "n-word".
In the last two weeks the newspapers have been filled with misunderstandings between the races. Danny Westneat, a columnist for the Seattle Times wrote of his frustration with the Seattle School District and his perception that the district was "obsessed with race". He was bombarded with hundreds of responses, some agreeing with him and others accusing him of "not getting it" and suffering from unexamined white privilege. He was open to discussing the issues although in his follow-up article, he still didn't seem to "get it" and did acknowledge perhaps it was due to his own white privilege. He also felt that he probably wasn't really very good at talking about race and hoped the new superintendent would be better at talking about it. Interestingly enough, one of the candidates for Seattle Schools Superintendent says about race, "We should all stop talking about it and deal with it." Okay, but how do you deal with it if you don't talk about it?
Unfortunately in our society, many people don't want to talk about it. When people of color bring it up as an issue, they're accused of bringing up "the race card". But the fact of the matter is, if a person of color is in a group where they are the only person of color, it is disingenuous to think that race might not come up as an issue if that person is feeling isolated or disenfranchised. Many white people do not understand this until I pose this question: "If you walked into a meeting, and you were the only white person, and everyone else was African-American, and you were feeling isolated and left out, do you think that part of the reason might be because you're white?" And of course, everyone says yes. However, the fact of the matter is most whites are never in this situation so it is difficult for them to envision being "the one and only" or to envision a situation where race is an issue for them. They don't live in a world where it is. Our society is one where whites are in power, whites can walk into a room or a workplace, and pretty much count on the fact that the majority of people will look like them. So when people of color bring up race, they accuse us of playing the race card, when in fact it may be a valid point.
As a diversity trainer and multicultural educator, it is my job to talk about race, as well as all dimensions of diversity. It's important that we start feeling comfortable talking about our differences as well as our similarities. Until we can start talking about our differences in a safe, non-threatening way, these problems will continue to divide us.
For an excellent blog by Jon Landau about the Don Imus scandal go to the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-landau/imus-words-recognizing-_b_45532.html
