We’ve all by now read and heard the comments Don Imus made in calling the young women of Rutgers basketball team, “nappy-headed hos”. Many people are calling for his firing for his racist slurs. Some supporters of Imus even say that he is not a racist. He even says he is not a racist. He has gone on air to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio program to apologize, but I feel that damage control will not work this time. I feel that Imus has gone too far and has offended more than just these young black girls and their college basketball team. He has offended the sensibilities of many Americans. People need to rid America of the filth of so called “shock radio”. It serves as nothing but mind rotting hatred disguised and protected under free speech.There is freedom of speech. And then there is hateful, libelous , slanderous vicious character assaults of the drive-by-of-the-mouth type.And Imus is guilty of this type of character assassination of the most brutal kind.
HERE ARE LINKS TO THIS STORY: http://arizona-basketball.aol.sportsblog.com/2007/04/06/whos-worse-don-imus-or-billy-packer/
Who’s Worse, Don Imus or Billy Packer?
Two broadcasters, Don Imus and Billy Packer, have created controversy this week in the college basketball world. So which was worse, Imus calling the Rutgers players “nappy-headed hos” or Packer saying the word “fag”? First, watch the video:
My vote goes to Imus. Although it’s a close call because Imus has apologized whereas Packer has said he will use the phrase again, Imus has more to apologize for: With Packer, you can make the case that he was using the word “fag” to mean something other than a homophobic slur. There’s only one way to interpret what Imus meant.
Previously at Fanhouse:
Billy Packer on ‘Fag’ Comment: ‘I Will Use That Phrase Again’
Don Imus Calls Rutgers Women’s Team ‘Nappy-Headed Hos’
Fire Billy Packer
If CBS is Looking For a Reason to Fire Billy Packer, Here They Go
In Defense of Billy Packer
http://www.nabj.org/newsroom/news_releases/story/53027p-81729c.html
http://mediamatters.org/items/200704060003?f=i_related
White men were the ones who started calling black women hos (whores/wenches) during slavery and Jim Crow segregation. And looking at America’s long history of racist hatred of black women by white men, Imus was just saying out loud what many white men already think of black women. Imus is just another white man being a white man: a race of men who have for centuries committed the most brutish, the most perverse and the most depraved abombinations that one group of people (white men) have shown towards another group of people (black women).
I have no problem with “nappy”, for that is a term used amongst black people to describe our hair. But, when a white man uses the phrase the way Imus used it, it brings up many images of white men’s hatred and CONTINUED disrespect/contempt of black women.
It was white men who raped black women and girls daily during slavery. It was white men who raped black women and girls during Jim Crow segregation.
It was white men who called black women//girls “black bitches”, “black sluts”, “lascivious”, and “unrapeable”, all the while raping and impregnating us during both slavery and segregation.
The contempt that America has for black women started with the inhuman atrocities committed against black women by white men. That there are still walking around now, white men during segregation who raped, impregnated, and brutally beat to death, many black women, is a testament to America’s wanton attack upon black women; an attack that will never end.
And the lies told on black women to justify white men’s cruelties against black women/girls still live among us as a result of the legacy of slavery/segregation:
-White men were able to walk into a black family’s home and rape and attack the black females of the family and there was nothing that could be done about it;
-White men who fathered countless children with black women, then those white fathers turned around and abandoned their own flesh and blood;
-White men who said over, and over, and over again the continued lies/mythology of black female lasciviousness……that not only was there no such thing as a chaste black woman—but that a black woman could not be raped, that it was never against her will;
-During Reconstruction, white rapists perpetuated massive rapes against black women: in the Memphis Riot of 1868, whites (the Irish, before they became “white”) angered by the presence of black militiamen attacked the city’s black community, murdering, beating and raping its inhabitants and burning homes and businesses;
-When Jim Crow pigmentocracy reigned supreme, black women continued to be the objects of sexualized gendered racism for over 90 years—-sexual aggressions stemming from the practice and ideology of white supremacy. Black domestic servants working in white homes were the most vulnerable to be raped.
Today in 2007, it is still okay for white men to degrade and insult black women.
Black women in America are still being “raped” and “lynched”by white men.
White men may not be able to walk into a black familty’s home the way white men of just a few decades ago were able to, but, this society still gives carte blanche to white men to desrespect, defile and defame black women.
Patricia Collins speaks of the ideology of “controlling image” And the Imus insult “nappy headed hos” is an extention of the Jezebel controlling image that white men created to justify brutally raping black women for over 400+ years.
There is no doubt about the connection. White men do control the media, so they have the most control of how images of groups of people are seen by people the world over. By controlling the image of black women as Jezebel/Slut/Whore, white men can bombard the mind with poliferated images of black women as less than human, as hyper-sexual, as lewd, as non-human.
White men justified their hatred of black women even after slavery, with the continued rape and assault upon black women. Immediately after slavery when black women were working to overcome the brutality of the conditions of slavery, many of them aspired to be ladies and finally be what they were: women, something they were not allowed to be under the abombinations of slavery. Many white men seeing this sought to tear down black women and accosted them on the streets, putting their hands on them in the most sadistic and crude ways.
Black women have long been the victims of racially motivated sexual violence by white men: that these perpetrators have characteristically committed their crimes with impunity; that their evil cruelties have long been obscured by racist notions that render many whites more ready to believe, at any given moment, that a black woman is a whore than that a white man is a rapist.
But, real racial violence has been visited upon black women for CENTURIES without adequate redress or even acknowledgement. (When was the last time a white man was sentenced to death for raping a black woman? When was the last time a white man was sentenced to life without parole for raping a black woman?)
For black Americans, especially for black women, the wounds of this history remain painful and unhealed.
At the same time, for many other non-black Americans, especially for whites, the image of the white man as racially motivated rapist resides safely (or so they hope and believe) in the past and supposedly no longer walks among us.
But the white man as “rapist” has never left this society.
Don Imus’s comments attest to that.
In Professor Patricia Hill Collins’s “Black Feminist Thought”, she states:
“Freedom for black women, has meant freedom *from* white men, not the freedom to chose white men as lovers and friends”. Moreover, she observed, “given the history of sexual abuse of black women by white men, individual black women who choose white partners become reminders of a difficult history. . .Such individual liaisons aggravate a collective sore spot because they recall historical master/slave relationships.”
And white men’s continued denigration of black women is alive and well in America.
When Imus made his comment he knew what he was speaking of. He made no slip of the tongue. And he was speaking for many people in America who have racist hatred of black women, no matter what black women do, no matter how hard they strive to better themselves, no matter how hard they work.
In many people’s eyes, all that black women accomplish will never be enough to overcome four hundred years of racist lies and filth that white men have created to destroy black women.
On racism, or what I prefer to call, white supremacy.
Racism comprises both omission, and comission. And there is no such thing as “Big Racist vs. Little Racist.
Racism is racism. Whether it is the face of a white father who loves his white children, sending them to the best schools in the city, but on the otherhand that same white father who may be on an all-white city council board that okays the gutting of programs by not allocating funding for libraries, community centers, and after-school programs in a black neighborhood. If this white father goes home and says within earshot of his young child, “Well, today we voted unanimously not to let those niggers have approved tax funding for a park/pool/social program in their neighborhood”, the young child will see racism in its most evil: the denying of basic needs and humanity to people because of their race/skin color. People teach by example. And contrary to what many people think, racists are not some fire-breathing dragon, foaming at the mouth monsters.
Racists can be very calm, kind and benevolent in the face they turn towards those whom they love and validate as human beings, yet cold, cruel, calculating and evil in the face they turn towards those they seek to destroy.
And as long as white and black America continue to be segregated from each other in segregated enclaves/neighborhoods, the racism will continue unabated. The ingrained imagined fears, preconceptions, misconceptions, prejudices and stereotypes will continue to remain unabated, unchallenged, unchanged.
And ingrained stereotypes are hard to destroy when people are too apathetic and lazy to challenge them.
A white mother sitting in her car with her child, upon seeing a black person approach the car, when all of a sudden she starts locking the doors sends a more sinister message to her child than all the “Nigger this”, or “Nigger that” comments. A white parent in an elevator who pulls their child closer to them when a black person enters the elevator sends a message to the child that a black human is less than human, a monster to be avoided at all costs.
Actions speak louder than words.
And there are many ways to “teach” racism.
And words are not the only way.
Just because a white person does not burn a cross on a black person’s lawn (sin of commission), does not mean that on a daily basis they can not send racist signals to their children of the continued devaluation of black Americans (sins of omission).
Yes, this is harder to overcome. But as long as black and white America live lives of “separate, but unequal” of inner city (black ) and white (suburbs) isolation, expect the animosity, the hatreds and the stereotypes to continue.
It past high time for white America to stop treating her black citizens like strangers in their own country. White people are not the only people who live in this country, and the continued disregard of black people as if they are some anamoly that should be pushed off to the margins, needs to stop.
And I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood and the black parents did not teach their children to be dregs of society, nor to think of themselves as such, just because white society decreed it so.
But, black people are still human beings just like anyone else.
And even we get tired of the racial slurs, the blackface, the ghetto parties, the nigger-this, nigger-that, the they are all just savages, so who cares what they think.
Say whatever you can about them, what the hell, ther’re just black people
Contrary to what SOME people out there in America think, black people get tired, worn and put upon like any other human in this world.
And we are sick and tired of being sick and tired.
One hundred years ago during the time of W.E.B. Dubois, it was called the “Negro Problem”.
Negro problem. As if it was all the fault of black people that racism existed, came about and is still in existence. As if it’s all the fault of those aggravating, bothersome black people that stereotypes were created against them centuries ago. As if it’s all the fault of black people that white people centuries ago started the stereotypes of
coon/jiggaboo/rastus/whore/Jezebel/slut/mammy/sambo/unrapeble wench/nigger/beast rapist/pickaninny/darky/Sapphire/welfare queens (thank you Ronald Reagan)—-need I go on?
Black people are sick of racial profiling/followed around stores when we have money to purchase goods/pulled over on the flimsiest of traffic stops/driving while black/living while black/dying while black/vilified while black/looked at as freaks of nature: “Oh,you’re so articulate. Oh,you’re so nice, quiet and studious for a black person.”/having to be twice, no three times more qualified than everyone else just to get into the door.
Black people did not create this racist condition in America. If you want to be realistic about the “race problem” in America it was never black people.
WHITE PEOPLE were and still are the race problem, and it certainly worked in their best interests to put all the burden of race on black people.
There is NOTHING in this world stopping white people from acknowledging and treating with respect and equality black people.
And running to all the lily-white suburbs, running to all the all-white rural towns, running unto the ends of the Earth will not eradicate a problem that was started by white people.
The onus should not always be on black people. White people can work to make this a better country just like black people.
Hell, we aren’t the only ones who can give a damn whether this country swims, or sinks.
And we should not be the only ones to shoulder the burden of always trying to get this country to live up to its supposed ideals.
We black people tire, bleed, cry, suffer, and rejoice just like anyone else in this country.
But, people like Imus prove every day that black citizens have no rights that white America is bound to respect.
And you can definately be assured that he would NEVER have called a white woman a “ho”.
Only black women have had open season declared on us.
And we are still running the gauntlet of the racist/sexist hatred against us started by white men centuries ago.
And make no mistake, white men running the companies where the likes of Imus and his ilk work are the ones laughing all the way to the bank as they make millions and billions of dollars from the continued degredation of black women. White men who run the corporations, the record studios, the radio stations that give the green light for Imus and his kind to spew forth every imaginable excretory vomit that comes from the detritus of their minds that harbor the most evil racist and sexist hatred of a group of women who have done no wrong to anyone in this country. A group of women who have been considered the mules of the world, women who have had heaped upon them the most vile epithets that have ever crossed the tongues of a race of men who consider their mistreatment of black women as business as usual.
Another aspect of this scenario has to be taken into consideration.
The white men who run the radio, broadcast and recording studio conglomerates are today’s aristocracy/planter class masters. They control and dominate the images of black women in America. Imus and Bernard McGuirk, are the slave overseers working to keep alive the racist/sexist ideology of these corporate masters.
And one more question needs to be asked.
Why was Imus the only one singled out during this broadcast? Was it not Bernard McGuirk, the producer, who started this racist/sexist diatribe? Why does he have more protection than Imus in all of this? Why does he remain unscathed from all of this? What kind of blackmail does he have over MSNBC?
If Imus must go down, then so should McGuirk go down as well.
And if Imus must go down, so too should all the CEOS and owner’s of corporations who create and peddle this racist/misogynistic filth. Getting rid of Imus will not remove the underlying cause of Imus’s remarks.
We all live in a woman-hating rape culture, and this racist/sexist rant of Imus’s is just the oozing over of a long-festered disease of black woman hatred that America has shown for so long against black women.
This piece of human (Imus) said two things in his slander against black women and girls:
-Black women are whores no matter what they do, no matter who they are, no matter where they live. And of course it’s just got to be true because Massa said it is so. Massa’s been saying it for over 400+ years. Massa’s been raping black women for generations, so to justify his hatred and perversions against black women, he created the worst kind of blame the victim insult that has ever been done to one group of women: he called black women “black bitches/whores”, “nappy headed wenches” after he raped black people 10-20 different shades of brown, tan, yellow and beige;
-He also said that black women and their features are not to be considered as beautiful. In other words, black women’s tightly coiled, gravity-defying hair is considered bad in white America’s eyes, therefore, a black woman cannot, and should not, be considered as beautiful because the raping Massa said so.
Black women are beautiful, and we know it. We know that all the while non-black people are denigrating us, they are going to plastic surgeons to get ample asses, full lips, dark tans, and to the beauty shop to get braided hair——beauty attributes which we black women come by naturally—-beauty attributes we black women have that everyone who doesn’t have them, continue to disparage us about, but in the meantime they run off to cosmetically get what God did not give them.
Imus is just saying out loud what many white people, especially some white men, are thinking:
“We can’t rape those wenches/bitches/whores anymore with impunity. The only thing we have left is to call them names. And venom is all we have to act on.”
White America has had a long history of hatred of black women.
This week, the young ladies of Rutgers are to meet with Imus and to consider whether or not to accept his apology. Even though the decision is theirs, I would NOT ACCEPT his apology if I were them. All the apologies in the world can never make up for 400+ years of racist/sexist hatred of black women. Because of America’s hatred of black women from slaves on the auction block to living segregated lives in the South (all the while black people as a race kept on becoming lighter, and lighter, and lighter; so much for “segregation” of the races), has lent this country a psychotic vicious contempt shown towards black women that no other race of women in this country as suffered.
White men Imus’s age grew up during a time where it was socially and legally sanctioned to rape and abuse a black woman with impunity. He grew up as a child, when in the South white men could walk into a black family’s home and brutally force sex AND pregnancy onto black women and young black girls. Girls as young as 13-, 14-, and 15+ years-old.
This hatred of black women is entrenched into the minds of people that black women are not to be considered as humans, and most especially, not to be considered as women.
The degrading names hurled at black women started with white men, as they screamed racist/sexist epithets in the faces of black women as they lay on top of the black women raping them. And there are still, walking around alive, white men who raped and beat to death, black women who still would be alive were it not for the sadistic cruelty of white men during Jim Crow segregation.
White men who are still walking around eating, drinking, shitting, pissing, breathing air, and taking up precious space while the many women they destroyed, both in body, spirit and mind, lay cold somewhere in some unmarked grave. Mute testimony to the perverse depravities that have been visited upon the minds and bodies of black women generation after generation.
This country hates black women. It hates what we have survived. It hates what we have overcome. It hates what we have been able to do time and time again in the face of insurmountable odds, odds that would have destroyed lesser people.
And what this country hates, it continues to seek the destruction of———–namely black women.
Black women never have left the auction block. We never have been able to cease having to run the gauntlet of America’s racist mockery of its hypocritical love of womanhood. As long as it is a black woman, our womanhood will always be denigrated and defiled. Open season was declared on black women in this country as soon as the first black woman set foot into this Sodom and Gomorrah, in 1619, brought here against our will.
This country started the tearing apart all that was woman of black women, and it still does it. Which is why humans like Imus know they can get away with comments like his. Which is why black women, no matter how decent they are, no matter how modest they dress, are looked upon as fitting only to be treated as less than.
That is the legacy of America’s hatred of black women.
And as long as America looks upon black women as having no rights to be respected as women, expect black women to continue to have to run the gauntlet of racist/sexist hatred. It’s here to stay unfortunately. It ain’t going anywhere, anytime soon.
Ann
BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS 
Blog discussing interracial dating issues and relationships in today’s world.
Are you in a same-race relationship and are cheating on your spouse interracially
“White men were the ones who started calling black women hos”
Could you qualify that or is that just an opinion?
“Could you qualify that or is that just an opinion?”
White men were the first men to call black slave women:
-Wenches (Whores; Hos [a corruption of “whore”])
-Bitches
Wench is an archaic term for prostitute, or whore. White men debased and debauched black women, and to justify their perversions and sexual aggressions against black women, they hung the propaganda lie of “loose and lascivious” upon black women when it was the white man who was loose, lascivious, immoral and wanton in his sexual attacks against black women and girls:
“Typically, the slaveholder’s could not take their black “wenches” without suffering psychic agony and social opprobrium.” (1)
“Southern slaveholders, like respectable Anglo-Saxons everywhere, had come a long way when William Byrd of Virginia could confide to his diary that he had ‘rogered my wife with vigor’; had ‘good sport’ with an Indian girl; ‘asked a negro girl to kiss me’; and indulged himself royally with pliable servant girls and miscellaneous “wenches”, white, red, and black.” (2)
“As the number of enslaved Africans increased, black women became “nasty wenches” who, because of their condition of servitude, could not avoid the labor and sexual exploitation that defined their status.” (3)
On the word “bitch”, white men disparaged black women mercilessly with that pejorative term:
“I told them he was gone for some meal; they said he was there somewhere, and they called me a damned liar; one of them said: “He is under the house;” then one of them comes to me and says: “I am going to have the truth to-night; you are a damned, lying “bitch”, and you are telling a lie; I know it; he is here;” I told them again he was gone;” (4)
“This time there were some in the house and some outside, and says they to me: “We’re going to have the truth out of you, you damned lying “bitch”; he is somewhere about here;” said I, “He is gone;” with that he clapped his hands on my neck, and with one hand put the line over my neck. . .and with that he beat my head against the side of the house till I had no sense hardly left; but I still had hold of my babe.” (4)
My opinion is grounded in historical records that white men were the first to call black women “bitches” and “hos” (wenches/whores).
REFERENCES:
(1) “Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made”, by Eugene D. Genovese, Pantheon Books, 1972, pg. 424.
(2) “The Great American Gentleman William Byrd of Westover in Virginia; His Secret Diary for the Years 1709-1712, by Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling (editors), William Byrd (author), Capricorn Books, 3RD Edition, 1963, pg. 93.
(3) “Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race and Power in Colonial Virginia”, by Kathleen M. Brown, The University of North Carolina Press, November 6, 1996.
(4) “Black Women in White America: A Documentary History”, by Gerda Lerner, Vintage Books, 1973, pgs. 187-188.
White folks are still in denial about their crimes against Africans. They shoud be glad that we still talk to them on a daily basis, because you know what will happen when we stop…….BOOM motherfuckers!
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