Imus and Race in America

I was just sitting here thinking that there haven’t been enough diaries on Imus.

I’ve been surprised to see so many of the Imus diaries either defending him in some way, or else focusing their critique on the critique ("outraged by the outrage" in a sense). It’s occasionally (ok, frequently) gotten to the point of acrimony, which I find both troubling and fascinating, given that opposition to racism and bigotry is one thing you would think all Kossacks would agree on. It seems clear that the problem isn’t that some of us are "pro-racism", but that there is disagreement on what words like "race" and "racist" really mean, what they imply, when they apply, and what consequences flow from the words we may or may not consider racist.

The frustrating thing of it is that the topic is too damn complex to tackle in a lousy little diary. By necessity I’m going to use a lot of shorthand here, which leaves me open to valid charges of generalizing and simplifying. But I don’t see any other way, so here goes. I want to start by addressing some of the arguments made by the folks who are either partially defending Imus or otherwise less bothered by his comments than by the reaction to them.

1. "He’s just a shock jock; it’s his shtick. He isn’t really racist"

2. "Black people use those words"

3. "Why aren’t we focusing on the much worse likes of Coulter, Limbaugh, et al."

4. "He’s an equal-opportunity offender"

5. "This is all just misplaced energy. We should focus on the real issues, like Iraq/impeachment/world hunger."

Let me take these backwards:

5. Imus may or may not be of national significance, but race and racism surely are, and this incident, while not the best (or worst) example we could use, is in the current consciousness, and thus affords us the chance to move the conversation forward. It doesn’t mean Iraq and other things aren’t important, and if we could only talk about the one most important thing in the world, this blog would be entirely devoted to global climate change (or John Edwards. One or the other).

4. Presumably this defense doesn’t imply that, say, misogynist or homophobic talk cancels out racist talk. I guess what is meant here is that he "hates everybody" or just "abuses everybody" for fun. Well, to pick a popular target, if I want to express my hatred of Al Sharpton, or just abuse him for fun, I might call him a pompous, hypocritical, self-promoting asshole. If I called him a "wooly-haired darkie", well, I’m sorry, but that’s not a poke at Al Sharpton, whatever the motivation.

3.  If the "we" here is the MSM, this is a good question, but a separate issue, and the response is to try to get them to turn their attention to these other folks, not to wish them to back off from scrutinizing Imus. And Imus presents himself and his show as non-partisan, or at least not clearly to one side or the other, and thus is granted by many (far too many) an air of some respectability. If Limbaugh says it, it might still be unacceptable for the non-conservative crowd; but if Imus says it, how bad can it be?

2. On one level this is just a silly argument. I would hope that we all realize that Mel Brooks and Mel Gibson are not equally entitled to poke fun at Jews. It’s the simple but very clear difference between "Jesus I am such an asshole" and "Jesus you are such an asshole".

But on another level there seems to be some crosstalk around the term "ho". It gets confusing, I suppose, because it may or may not have racist implications (depending on who is saying it), but it pretty much always has misogynistic implications. So we get this nutty back and forth where some accuse others of thinking it’s okay for black men to insult black women and others accuse some of thinking Don Imus isn’t racist because he didn’t coin the term himself.

Let’s be clear about the term. We all get its referential meaning, but we’re missing some broader context. "Ho" is the word for "whore" in what linguists (inelegantly) call AAVE, or African American Vernacular English, aka Black English or Ebonics. You can call it a language or a dialect (Max Weinreich famously said "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy"), you can even call it "wrong" or "bad" English (though you’d be both wrong and bad if you did), but it’s there, and its use, as a stigmatized speech of a stigmatized people, carries a lot of meaning beyond the meaning of the words spoken. In other words, "ho" doesn’t simply mean "whore", unless it’s uttered by a native speaker of AAVE (and even then it is more commonly used as the rough equivalent of "gold digger", at least in hip hop circles).

What happens when, say, a sixty-some-odd year-old rich white guy calls a black woman a "ho" as opposed to a "whore". Well of course the latter is bad enough but the former clearly adds race into the sorry mix. Clearly, but in what way, to what effect, of what consequence? There’s the rub. There are basically two reasons why a non-AAVE speaker would speak AAVE: to immerse oneself in or exude a love of hip hop culture; or to mock black people via their speech (and of course not all African Americans speak AAVE and not all AAVE speakers are African American, but it still works as a code). The former raises interesting questions of cultural appropriation and authenticity, the latter is just flat-out racist. If someone can come up with another purpose served by temporarily adopting AAVE, I’m all ears.

1. Finally, to the heart of the matter. All this fuss over a mere "shock jock" – the term has been thrown around a lot lately with the implication that "shock jock" is synonymous with "incorrigible but harmless rascal". Maybe so, I don’t care about the jock part, but I am interested in the "shock". What exactly does this mean? I think if we explore it we’ll be able to make some important distinctions. Okay, you say, it’s really quite simple: a shock jock is so named because he (and isn’t it interesting that so few of them aren’t a he) says things to intentionally shock and offend us. Okay, but why? How is it entertaining to be shocked and offended? Easy. Take sex (no thanks, I’m New English). We’re such a stuffy, prissy, repressed and puritanical society, that shocking sex talk forces us to confront this fact. Then we can laugh when we realize how stuffy and prissy and repressed and puritanical we’ve been. Same goes for talk of pooping and peeing and saying dirty words. Fine, I get it. So does Howard Stern, apparently.

So what, then, are we confronting, or deflating, or cutting down to size, when we listen to a "shock jock" belittle blacks, gays, Jews, women, Arabs, or whathaveyou? What constructive, or just plain entertaining, ends are achieved here? Whose foibles needed to be exposed? I guess some might argue that it forces us to confront our fear of causing offense. So if I think, but only think, that you’re an asshole, then the truly relevant thing is my fear of calling you an asshole, not the fact that I think you’re an asshole? Or alternately, you must put up with being called an asshole to further the greater good of assuaging non-assholes’ fears of calling you an asshole?

Is Don Imus a racist? I think it’s irrelevant. George W likes to deflect policy criticisms by accusing his accusers of not knowing his heart. I care much more about the effect of the speech than the psyche of the speaker. But what do we mean, exactly, by "racist"? Is it a term to be reserved only for those who harbor a hatred of other races? And, well, what of the term "race" itself? It’s well established that race is a biological fiction, but a social fact. That is, there is no set of physiological and/or behavioral characteristics that clearly demarcate people into separate categories. But we all seem to "see" race and throughout our history have taken some horrifying actions based on that fiction. In fact, our obsession with race has permeated just about every aspect of life in the US (and beyond, obviously, but I’m staying parochial for this diary), from the law (Jim Crow, anti-miscegenation laws, federally-sponsored redlining) to the workplace to sexual politics. Things have certainly changed for the better since the Civil Rights era, but the status quo still preserves to a large degree our prior four centuries of race-based inequality. The really insidious thing is, no one even has to have an overtly "racist" bone in their body for this status quo to replicate itself.

My white grandparents, children of immigrants, were able to buy a home thanks to the FHA, which denied the same loan terms to your black grandparents. And even when your grandparents got the money together for a home, they were legally barred from moving to the nicer neighborhoods in the suburbs. My grandparents now had equity they could use to create more wealth, which they could then pass down to my parents and ultimately to me. Not so your grandparents. And when mine retired, they had Social Security. If yours worked as domestics or farm laborers, they didn’t get it.

So I got to grow up in a comfortable neighborhood, which meant I had a decent public education. And because the single strongest correlation with SAT scores is parents’ income, I got into college and you didn’t. But oh, it wasn’t because you are black, it’s because your SAT scores weren’t high enough. And you weren’t fired because you are black, but because you kept punching in late. What? I’m sorry, I don’t want to hear any excuses about unreliable transportation or child care. We treat everyone the same in this workplace – on time or out you go. Instead of blaming the system or The Man, maybe you should consider that you come from a Culture Of Poverty. Your community doesn’t value work; you should work on that.

Right, so there’s a small glimpse of some of the infinite ways that systemic racism plays out in a "color-blind" society. So what goes on in the heads of these color-blind people in power: the boss, the loan officer, the guidance counselor, the clerk in the store, the landlord: I’m not racist, but it’s a fact that you are a greater risk, to not do the job, to default on the loan, to flunk out, to shoplift, to be late with the rent and play loud music and trash the place. It’s not fair, or even your fault that your people are that way. I guess those awful racists in the past drove you all to this point, but here we are, and I’m not going to be the one to stick my neck out.

And I feel justified in doing this, in rejecting you, in following you around the store, in steering you to a "career" in fast food service, because even though I’m color-blind, I see your race. I don’t hate you for it, I don’t want to lynch you. I want to shake your hand, and I love the Blind Boys of Alabama. But before I could take the time to see your individuality, your strength of character and your universal human frailties, your sparkle and your mean streak, I saw your race, and that’s enough to make my informed decision.

I saw your race before I saw your character, and so you are not a sarcastic firecracker; you are a homegirl.

I saw your race before I saw your character, and so you are not a selfless iconoclast; you are a dawg.

I saw your race before I saw your character, and so you are not a sweet, depressed artist; you are a gangsta.

I saw your race before I saw your character, and so you are not a valedictorian or a mathematician; you are a nappy-headed ho.

Those of us who are white are usually the last to recognize (if we ever do) that the ultimate in white privilege is never having to worry that the first impression may be too late.