Don Imus, meet Boots Riley

Now let’s take a look at his exact words: nappy headed hos. To be nappy headed can be taken two ways. It can be an insulting reference to having hair that is unkempt. It can also mean having hair that is natural and free from chemical straightening agents used to conform to a European standard of beauty. There are Black hair salons that use derivations of the word nappy in their name. Trench of Naughty by Nature once rapped that he was “happy to be nappy.” Nappy may not be an insult in and of itself but it does signify blackness. There are white women on the Rutgers basketball team, but since their hair is naturally straight, one can assume that Imus was not referring to them. I don’t see the Black players doing anything the white players don’t do, but according to Don Imus, the Black players are hos and the white players are not. Connecting nappy headed and ho implies that one follows the other. Imus is simultaneously reinforcing European standards of beauty and assimilation (Well ladies, if you don’t like being called nappy headed, get a perm.) while reminding us that even if we try, we can only assimilate so much (But even if you straighten your hair, however, you’re still a ho).

 

Like Michael Richards before him, Imus used the language of Black rappers to justify his racist statements. It amazes me that someone with no apparent connection to Black culture, like Richards, or with a well established distain for Black culture like Imus would use Black culture’s influence on him to defend himself. I’m also stunned at how easily they are able to deflect the conversation from their own actions and statements to the way Black people speak to and about ourselves.

 

Another thing I’ve noticed is how some pundits are equating the Don Imus incident with Black leaders’ call for a ban on the “N word” (and in case you were wondering, the “N word” is “nigger”). They often fail to acknowledge the most obvious fact: Imus didn’t use the word nigger in his attack on the women of Rutgers. It just goes to show the futility of trying to wrap all anti-Black racism into a single word. Would Michael Richards’ tirade have been much less offensive if he had screamed that African Americans should be hung upside down with a pitch fork stuck in them? Even if we were to ban the word nigger for use by Blacks and whites there will still be language, coded and explicit, to express racial hatred. The mayor of Valley Park recently referred to Latin American immigrants as “tacos.” Taco is not an offensive word in and of itself, but it was obviously being used in a racially charged way. If this usage were to catch on, would Taco Bell have to change its name?

 

Black people are and have been self critical and rightfully so. From bell hooks to Chris Rock the conversation about misogyny in rap music is an ongoing one. It was not initiated by Don Imus. It was the good sisters of Spelman College who led the campaign for BET to cancel its “Uncut” program, but Imus probably would have called them nappy headed hos too.

 

What bugs me about the response from Black intellectuals is how easily the fall into the white media’s trap of painting all rap music with the same brush. They pay quick lip service to the fact that not all rap music is sexist and then spend the rest of the segment name checking sexist rappers and leaving progressive rappers in obscurity. Every time we attack Ludacris or Nelly or 50 Cent by name without comparing and contrasting them to Mos Def, Talib Kweli and Common, we give more publicly to rappers whose negative images of women already get heavy rotation on BET, MTV and radio while denying the conscious brothers their existence. 

 

There is a substantial gap between the civil rights generation and the hip-hop generation and when Black intellectuals and civil rights leaders reject rap music wholesale, the gap widens. I would love to see the Al Shaptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world publicly embrace, support and even coalition with artists like The Roots, The Coup or Dead Prez. It could be a win-win situation. Civil rights leaders would get some much needed street cred, progressive rap artists would get some much needed publicity and more hip-hop fans would be exposed to an alternative to the commercial rap that we are bombarded with.