Continued from part 1 ...
But there have been calls for acceptance of the apologies made by Mr. Imus. While many politicians have made no comment so far, Senator McCain has expressed a willingness to accept the apology made by Mr. Imus and appear on his show. The President has accepted the apology made and reserved further comment. Basically there is a lot of waiting happening.
Yet the double standard of this situation remains. I mean the fact that while everyone is focused on the comments of Mr. Imus, and should be aware of the words of Mr. McGuirk, they have missed the fact that this is a symptom and not an end result. Mr. Imus is not the source of why women are called hos, nor why calling an African American “nappy-haired” is an insult. He is not the cause of the status of Black culture today. And we cannot be upset by what he has said without being angered by others that say equally offensive words.
If the action of Mr. Imus calling women, specifically Black women, hos is abhorrent so must be rappers when they do so. There is no difference. There should be lo lessening of our anger. When a rapper defames women, they defame all women. When they use the n-word, they insult all African Americans. And again I say that that word is insulting no matter who uses it. There is no difference in the word, because like all words, its meaning is exactly that.
We cannot be upset because one person says a thing and not when another does it as well. That’s hypocritical and stupid. The fact that various aspects of life in America are skewed against minorities is not a release from the bounds of decency or language use. We cannot demand that a music and/or radio entertainment corporation punish an employee and allow them to profit and promote music that contains the same language and defamatory comments that the firing entailed. Equality requires the same reaction to the same inflammatory source.
But why is virtually every African American that hears of this event upset? Why is this so inflammatory? Why are words spoken by one person more vile than another saying the same thing? Because Black Americans were slaves in this nation, and then persecuted for over 100 years after that, and no one wants to talk about that.
It’s that simple. In my opinion almost all the problems that face African Americans, and race relation in America, are connected to the fact that slavery of the most dehumanizing nature. I’ve spoken about this several times. We have not healed, and we cannot until we resolve the pain that has festered in this nation for 400 years. Let me show you the connection.
Continue part 3...
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