April 09, 2007
Proving his essential manliness, shock jock Don Imus
officially tipped his hat to the hip hop nation with a pair of vicious
on-air slurs about black women. The latest incarnation of the marriage
between hip hop misogyny and hypersexual imagery of black women, Imus'
reference to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as
"nappy headed hos" has been roundly condemned by African American activists
and commentators who have called for the shock jock’s removal.
Imus' comments highlight how the degradation of black women in
mainstream media parlance has become a bankable commodity within public
culture. Thanks to the global influence of hip hop, the “h-word,” is
almost an Americana staple, used to demean young women as sexually
promiscuous while male proprietary control of women's bodies
is rewarded. While sexist exploitation of black women is hardly a new
phenomenon, plantation era stereotypes about black women’s sexual
availability have bubbled up into so-called urban (white America’s
euphemism for all things black) American film, TV and video as a crucial
ingredient for success. Rappers get Academy Awards for “whooping
that trick,” become admired entrepreneurs for hawking products
like “pimp juice” and grotesquerie like Eddie Murphy’s
recent movie Norbet, whose ad campaign features an obese scantily clad
black woman straddling the film’s namesake, rake in millions
at the box office.
Though clearly worthy of outrage and censure, Imus' comments
are symptomatic of the kind of cultural blowback that occurs when communities
of color aid and abet the global commodification of their own sexist
conventions. While Imus has made scurrilous racist-sexist attacks on
black female luminaries before (e.g., Gwen Ifill and Maya Angelou),
the uproar over his latest offense is partly reminiscent of the continuing
debate over the use of the n-word. Due to its historical resonance,
no other term in recent memory has had such a tenacious hold on the
African American imagination. Blacks from all walks of life routinely
twist themselves into existential knots over the pronunciation, use
and provenance of the word. Whereas many older and/or more educated
African Americans decry its use as a symbol of white supremacy, younger
African Americans insist it has value as an expression of solidarity
and camaraderie. The global influence of hip hop has transformed this “positive” spin
into an equal opportunity coinage—sprung from the linguistic
closet, young whites, Asians, and Latinos use the n-word freely amongst
themselves, gobbling up every new idiom, scowl, swagger and booty shaking/gold
digging black female stereotype that the bird flipping hip hop empire
has to offer.
In this regard, Imus’ sexist swill is totally in keeping with
the ghettoization of black women’s images and the lack of mass
outrage over the circulation of these images on the world media stage.
In Los Angeles and other cities, advocacy initiatives like the Mother’s
Day Radio campaign have engaged young women and men to challenge sexist
misogynistic images and language in all musical genres by demanding
that corporations and radio stations devote one day in May to music
that doesn't sexualize or degrade women. When the hip hop generation
is socialized to regard racist and sexist imagery as unacceptable in
any form the Imus’ of the world won’t be able to hide behind
the guise of shock jocularity.
Sikivu Hutchinson is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor of blackfemlens.org,
a journal of progressive criticism and literature. For more information
on the Mother’s Day Radio campaign check out www.mothersdayradio.com
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