'Nappy headed ho’s'
Posted by Bill Skepnek on Apr 13th, 2007
Jason Whitlock, a sports columnist who writes for the Kansas City Star, commented that Don Imus is not the villain; the villain is “us.” He writes that it is black people themselves who have embraced a culture that degrades and stereotypes. All Imus did, Whitlock says, was use language, and images blacks had created and adopted for themselves. We have to think better about ourselves and each other than is possible in the language of hip-hop.
He’s right, but his “us” needs to be expanded. He, I think, meant the “us” to include African-Americans; I mean it to include all of us. Our images matter. How we project ourselves into the world, and how we project the world into ourselves dictates what we do, and how we do it. And that (“what we do, and how we do it”) is a pretty good way of defining life itself.
What we imagine; how we think; what we think; is the source of our behavior. For this reason, going at least as far back as Plato, some of the great thinkers have thought ordinary people cannot be allowed the liberty of thinking whatever they choose. Ordinary people, the idea goes, are simply not capable of distinguishing what is true from what is not. This has been a justification for cultural straightjackets prescribed both by religion and philosophy. This belief was at the heart of the Medieval European Christian theocracy that burned heretics at the stake. It served the purposes of both the Bolshevist and Maoist dogmatists who sent dissidents to Gulags, and “schools” for “re-education.” This is what the Imams in Iraq and Iran believe, and it’s not too far off the mark of some of our fellow citizens today in this country.
How do I get to all of this from Don Imus? Because “nappy headed ho’s” is just one of many on the current menu of labels. We don’t need to fix any of our own meals, we can simply order off the menu. We don’t need to understand the ingredients, the stove, or the pots and pans; all of our meals are pre-prepared. We can order up a dumb and insensitive white guy. On the other side of the menu we can find valley girls and dumb blondes. We have naïve liberals and intolerant conservatives. We have evil terrorists and brave patriots. All we need is to do is choose a label; no need for analysis or understanding. The label dehumanizes, and the person is dismissed.
Analysis and understanding are the tools of liberty. Just as neither is possible without education; neither can be achieved in a cultural straightjacket. People who are not trained to think for themselves are not capable of free thought. Those incapable of free thought are not capable of free action. They are not capable of freedom. If you don’t get my point, contemplate the success of “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
Whitlock’s point is this: We are responsible for ourselves, for what we think, and through our families, for how we act. We cannot ask law, or government to make it right, or show us the way, we have an obligation to throw away the menu and cook for ourselves. How we think of ourselves and the world matters. We must choose to think.
at 12:33 p.m.
I saw Mr. Whitlock on the Today show this morning. I agreed with him that the Rev.s Sharpton and Jackson did not further their cause by making the Rutgers players appear to be the victims. Playing the victim, intentionally or unintentionally, does not further anyone's cause.
On the other hand, it was a horrible and thoughtless thing to say.
I didn't know much about Imus before but, from what I can tell, this is a rather pathetic 67-year-old man, on the downslope of his career, trying desperately to relate to the young crowd by mimicking their raunchy, cruel language. He should have known better, yes, and I agree he deserves his comeuppance. But the blogger is right, we ALL need to think about labels and what they say about all of us.
at 8:39 a.m.
>We don’t need to fix any of our own meals, we can simply order off the menu. We don’t need to understand the ingredients, the stove, or the pots and pans; all of our meals are pre-prepared. We can order up a dumb and insensitive white guy.
Hysterical and insigtful a the same time...great post, great blog. I agree that each individual has a responsbility to create one's own perception of "self" and the surrounding world; however, I'm probably a bit fatalistic (must be the generation). I think it's unrealistic to assume the mindless automata (white, black, pink, purple, etc.) will ever understand that education is the bedrock of a free society, and that self reflection is a tool that is essential to human understanding, much less enlightenment. These are values that are largely taken for granted by the "American Idol, celebutaunt obsessed, my God is better than your God-crowd." How do we as a broader community encourage people to take charge of their own lives and "cook for themselves?"