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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: The art of distraction, Gangsta rappers pose a bigger threat to black community Thank you, Don Imus. You've given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem. You've given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality. Jeremy M. Lange THE NEW YORK TIMES (enlarge photo) While anger is fixated on Don Imus, seen here talking to the Rev. Al Sharpton on Monday, what of rappers who use the same language? MOST POPULAR STORIES Storms could bring hail, isolated tornadoes tonight Former Hutto High police officer charged with photographing girl Acid spread in Leander city park Go ahead and filet Imus, but skin his bosses, too Bible elective class bill stirs religious debate Share This Story del.icio.usdigg Newsvinereddit Yahoo!Facebook What's this? You've given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor. Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it's 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred. The bigots win again. While we're fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I'm sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent's or Snoop Dogg's or Young Jeezy's latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos. I ain't saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don't have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas. It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent. Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves. It's embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud. I'm no Don Imus apologist. He blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack. But he didn't do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should've been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it's only the beginning. It's an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$. I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had. Somehow, we're supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers' wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage. But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended (and now fired) and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction. In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive? I didn't listen or watch Imus' show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it's cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they're suckers for pursuing education and that they're selling out their race if they do? When Imus does any of that, call me and I'll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you're not looking to be made a victim. No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There's no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.
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#12. To: christine (#0)
(Edited)
This entire week of lynch mobbing is a great example of the finest racial huckstering we've ever seen. Not since George Wallace vowed to never be "outniggered" in a political race again, have we seen such an audacious display of racial gamesmanship from a virilent racist. I'm not talking about Imus. I'm talking about Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton, and all the phonies who trotted onto the TV and did what blacks have been doing for the past 30 years: blaming some white man for what they've done to their community. It's blacks killing blacks. It's blacks saying "be a nappy headed ho" instead of "be a Rhodes Scholar." It's blacks making excuses for boys who won't go to school, won't get a job, won't work hard if they do, won't lose the attitude, won't pay their way, won't be a father, and won't contribute in our society. The black community is all about acting one thing and living another. "We take care of our own" is the fiction they speak, but the reality is that everyone else in our culture takes care of the all the screw-ups in the black community. The reason more black kids go to bed in foster homes every night than all the other races combined is simple: Blacks don't take care of their own. These are the kids who have no relative - not one - who will take them in and care for them. So some white couple is paid some small sum from CPS to care for those kids. But if one of those foster families decides they want to adopt the black child living with them, guess what happens? CPS and the National Association of Black Social Workers rears its ugly, racist head. They would rather see some poor, beatdown black kid denied a family of his own, if that family is white. They would rather keep this kid in foster care, and CPS will fight the white couple who tried to adopt such a child. I've given one small example, but the black community is full of such failures. If blacks want to address black problems, the place to start is in front of a mirror. By always supporting the race card, by undermining education with poor attitudes among black parents and students towards scholarship, by making excuses for the hip hop values, by making allowances for black men who won't meet their obligations as a father or husband, the black community dooms itself. There's a reason Vietnamese and Indians have succeeded in America the past 30 years. They don't lay in bed until noon, play video games until dark, and buy all their food at fast food restaurants. They work hard. They save. They learn to adapt to this culture. Yes, there are many very hard working and admirable blacks. Unfortunately, they are the minority of that minority, and they aid and abet all the slackers and criminals, by NOT contradicting the race card. Only the black community can save the black community, and they're not doing it. Every year, they fall further back. Lack of personal responsibility is the reason.
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