“Thank you, Don Imus,” writes Jason Whitlock, a black columnist
at the Kansas City Star. “You extended Black History Month
to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like
it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your
hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.
“The bigots win again. While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked
by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the
marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere
snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or
Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and
hos.”
Whitlock has it right. Eliminating Imus’s program won’t do much
to solve the problems in the black community. When it comes to
determining black self-images — or as Whitlock sees it,
self-hatred — Don Imus isn’t a major player.
To identify the “real black-folk killas,” Whitlock holds up a
mirror. “It is us,” he charges. “We are our own worst enemies. We
have allowed our youths to buy into a culture — hip hop — that
has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture.
“The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is
anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug
dealing and violent. Rather than confront this heinous enemy from
within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip
of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say
about ourselves.”
On MTV News, Snoop explained why it’s okay for him to rap about
nappy hos but not Imus: “Rappers are not talking about no
collegiate basketball girls who made it to the next level in
education and sports. We’re talking about hos that’s in the hood
that ain’t doing s[—]t, that’s trying to get a nigga for his
money. These are two separate things. First of all, we ain’t no
old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC.”
Jumping into the hysteria, Sen. Barack Obama, the Illinois
Democrat running for president, called for the firing of Imus. “He
didn’t just cross the line,” said Obama. “He fed into some of the
worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal
with today in America.”
So here’s Imus, trying to be hip like Snoop, and his place is at
the end of the unemployment line. “There’s nobody on my staff who
would still be working for me if they made a comment like that
about anybody of any ethnic group,” Obama told ABC News. “And I
would hope that NBC ends up having the same attitude.”
Last November, Sen. Obama invited rapper Ludacris to his Chicago
office to talk about, as the Associated Press reported it,
“lighting the way for the nation’s youth.” They discussed
“empowering the youth,” said Ludacris, whose hits include “I Got
Hos” and “You’z a Ho” and just plain “Ho.”
Here’s the milder lyrics: “You’z a ho, ho; you’z a ho, ho; you’z
a ho, ho; you’z a ho, ho; I said dat you’z a ho; you doin ho
activities; with ho tendencies; hos are your friends; hos are your
enemies; with ho energy to do whacha do,” etc.
It’s not all nuts. There’s a line in the same song for the kids
from Ludacris about the environment: “Reach up in tha sky for tha
hozone laya.” And about nutrition: “And here’s a ho cake for the
whole ho crew an everybody wants some cuz hos gotta eat too.”
There’s also a lesson about upward mobility: “Can’t turn a ho
into a housewife.” And geography: “It’s a ho wide world, that we
live in.” And feelings of abundance: “There’s hos in tha room;
there’s hos in tha car; there’s hos on stage; there’s hos in tha
bar; hos by near, an hos by far.”
Still, even with “hos on a crack pipe” and “horrible,
horrendous” hos with “ugly chicks’ faces,” Ludacris ends with
sympathy and inclusiveness: “But hos don’t feel so sad and blue,
cuz most of us niggaz is hos too.”
So far, “You’z a Ho” is still playing, and Sen. Obama hasn’t
charged that Ludacris is making it harder for his girls to live in
today’s America.
