As Imus continues his free fall from grace as one of the most widely recognized and listened to radio personalities following his recent skewering of the woman’s basketball team at Rutgers, the beleaguered iconoclast’s career will end with a sudden impact. Publicly, the damage is irreversible; already two sponsors, P&G and Staples, have withdrawn from the show and it is difficult to imagine that more will not follow suit. Imus has requested a meeting with the basketball team, I assume, to offer a personal apology, which he should but I also hope this will not remain as an issue in isolation as there are ancillary points that also need to be addressed.
The circumstances surrounding Imus illustrate one of the more powerful scenarios for the dynamics involved in free speech and its consequences: there is an unwritten metric, for example, that tends to resolve certain polar categories such as white male/black female by generally declaring the white male as racist. I am not offering an apology for Imus nor am I promulgating some new approach to continue or to inflame the deplorable specter that slavery has inflicted on all racial and ethnic groups. I do think it is time for a broader and more inclusive discussion of the issues given national attention by the incident involving Don Imus as well as a recent book by Jabari Asim, The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why.
Context is everything is a wonderful truism; it can also double as an over-used rationale. As a truism, I am depending on the context of what I am writing to allow a critical reader to recognize that hot-button terms used in this piece reflect a method of analysis and not a disguised advocacy for their adoption or their validity. However, I do agree with a comment made by Dick Gregory that using the term, the N word, as a more benign place holder for the original epithet, –which, I elect not to use– sanitizes the word, and after a fashion ameliorates the vile nature of this sweeping expletive; it is simply a word that is rarely used to express anything in other than a pejorative sense.
The volatile nature of the N word is inherited from its complex etymology according to Asim. While derived in part from the Latin, niger, the simple definition of that word as an obvious adjective doesn’t adequately explain the historical layering of the pain and psychological destruction wrought by the institution of slavery. Taken at face value, Asim’s book title appears to accede to the implication that there are times when the use of the N word may be appropriate; however, it is a short list and not surprisingly does not give carte-blanche approval to all of those born into “color”. Historians, scholars, and artists are the exceptions Asim has in mind when he suggests who may use the word. Perhaps the most challenging group to assay is the one containing artists; ascertaining a clear definition of art compounds the problem: Snoop Dog’s evolving melodrama of trying to avoid incarceration doesn’t necessarily rule out his qualification as an artist; and Snoop definitely uses the term profusely in his music. On the other hand, Sidney Poitier’s status as artist is as obvious as his elegance and character are impeccable; he chooses not to use the N word in any of its manifestations. Some may charge that the above comparisons are unfair, that there should be more nuance in the use of examples, but that wouldn’t make the issue any less cloudy, which is the point about the N word’s usage in any but the most defined and restricted use.
The richness and viability of language depends on its adaptability and flexibility in accurately capturing and conveying the nature of its speakers and their environment; to do so requires both a static and dynamic component, a conundrum, which considers the past in the formation of the present without being bound in an eternal recurrence. One might ask if there is any occasion on which the term “hos”, for example would not be pejorative and even if it were construed as pejorative, could there be any condition that might outweigh the pure meaning of the word in favor of its intended effect, say the artistic value accrued to it by its usage. Some might consider what Imus does as art, there are those who look upon Lenny Bruce’s and Richard Pryor’s early stand-up routines in such a light. The dynamism of language in a society of an equally changeable character by nature seems to collide with placing limitations on distinctions; it may be more accurate to say that we prefer to mete out judgment on an individual basis than to be bound by an intractable precedent. If humor must always attain the status of art before it may be distributed, the Supreme Court is in for extended sessions, even if they already had a clear definition of what art is.
The pivotal element in the Imus episode is the nature and extent of his platform. Imus had an unfair advantage when his skit aired; now the tables have been turned with the inclusion of a wider audience. Every prank degrades into stupidity or even hurtfulness whenever the audience is larger and more diverse. Imus got called out by the Rutgers women and I don’t think they are going to meet him privately only to say “Gottcha!” as they burst into smiles. They don’t have to have to raise their voices for Imus’ dismissal, he made that an option himself when he risked tainting his sponsors. When Bob Dylan sang “money doesn’t talk, it swears“, he summed up one of the prevailing tenets of business; and, while neither my nor Dylan’s cynicism will weigh in the final verdict meted out to Imus, it is fair to question how much of this will simply become a diversion while other offenses are not redressed and if Du Bois‘ prophetic words on “the problem of the color line” go unheeded and are relegated to the status of a footnote.
