As I’m sure everyone knows by now Don Imus has been fired by CBS after information came to light late last week that tied Imus to fifteen murders throughout Mississippi in the mid-60′s. It appeared that Imus, before becoming a popular and controversial radio talk show host, would stalk and hunt teenage black women and kill them in forests… Oh, wait. None of that happened at all but that’s what some people would like you to believe.
Here’s what I know as indisputable facts: 1) Don Imus is a washed-up, used-to-be, former alcoholic and coke addict with a large fan base, 2) he made a ridiculous statement that tried to be passed off as a joke, 3) Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton gave up fighting for what really matters to black people a long time ago, 4) that people believe race is still a really big, do-or-die issue, and 5) racism does not fit into any contextual logic and this is why we confuse it with so many things.
1) Honestly, what’s Don Imus’s demographic of listeners—is 85% of them above the age of 55? 95%? Don Imus is an old guy who made a living off of being controversial and the times have caught up with him. It’s like Bobby Knight used to say, “Everyone thinks I’m a genius until I have a few losing seasons consecutively.” Well, Don Imus, much like Knight, is being viewed as obselete and unrefined by the new school of thought. Whatever. Times change and everything’s cyclical and it had to happen some time.
2) I didn’t hear the sound byte or read the transcripts of the entire dialog but he called a women’s college basketball team of bunch of “nappy-haired hos.” Is it wrong? Absolutely. But, if it wasn’t improvised then it means that a producer OK’d it (probably because Imus’s show, much like all controversial talk shows, have been enabled to say things like this so people will talk about the show). People may be offended by it but we’ve also played a huge part in enabling it, whether you’re white or black.
3) It still kills me that Jesse Jackson is seen as relevant within the black community. The guy clearly uses his power to make him and those around him profit by the controversy he generates. This guy has absolutely no service to provide to the real illiterate, crime-ravaged, and destitute inner city people he proclaims to be willing to speak truth to power for. He is power! He’s not a nomadic prophet struggling to go from place to place in hopes that his message is heard; he’s larger than the most corrupt of politicians. It’s a shame people keep getting suckered by his games because the people who truly believe they’re being looked out for by him are the victims. Al Sharpton, however, is someone who I believe is legitimately intelligent and thought-provoking but he’s bound by the rules of the game that people like Jackson have written is ultimately powerless to do anything of great substance.
4) Racism is a very serious thing, and it’s something that can be greatly reduced when education is held as a primary value. When education becomes de-valued and knee-jerk emotion is seen with greater fondness you have a society with groups at odds with each other. Racism, at its core, is essentially the belief that an experience with a single member of an ethnicity represents the entire ethnicity.
5) What racism is not is the idea that one ethnicity is exempt from a society’s natural checks and balances. Are black kids prone to be left behind in a city school system that teaches them next to nothing? Do cops treat minorities differently than white people? Are drugs more likely to ravage a poor minority area rather than a rich white area? Most everyone would answer “Yes” to all three. The reality is that regardless of race all kids suffer in schools where education is sparse or in an area that is overwhelmingly poor. White kids, Mexican kids, black kids—they all perform bad in poor areas. Education and an environment conducive to consistent creative thinking is the biggest enemy of racism. If you don’t instinctively blame others or can rationally see situations for what they are racism doesn’t stand much of a chance. Racism preys on the weak and ignorant. Racism is not a white person wondering aloud why it is that Kanye West told a bunch of kids not to graduate high school because it’s pointless and how this might be a microcosm of schooling in predominantly black area. That’s not racism, that’s a good fucking question! Normal reaction should be to call West a douchebag for saying something like that.
Education, especially amongst the poor (regardless of race), is of the utmost importance in this country. We live in a time where marketing begins targeting children at six months old and tries to convince parents that their children should be in charge of making decisions like what car to buy. We live in a time where some kids really believe that the only way to make it is to become a musician or a pro athlete—two things that are indicative of some of the most morally corrupt pyramid schemes. Kids should be taught more valuable things like you should go to college (especially since the gap between schools like Harvard and schools like an Illinois State are being closed more and more), or if you want to be a pro athlete your odds are 1 in 1,500,000, or that respect for your ability to learn complex things is the very essence of being a human being.
This may sound very Utopian and some of it is. But you know what else is Utopian? The belief that Imus’s firing somehow fixed or explained anything. This will be forgotten in a year: not because of the corporate world in which we live in or because racism is still permeating throughout our society. It’ll be forgotten because it was bullshit. Imus’s firing did nothing to affect the national illiteracy, gang-related death rate, or school dropout rate.
But, hey, at least Jesse Jackson was on television and he had a message or something.