Equality

Unfortunately, I too will way my opinion on the controversy surrounding Don Imus and the Rutgers women’s basketball team. Giving life to this story seems to be giving life to a war of words and an endless debate on the state of race relations, yet I feel compelled to weigh in with my opinion.

So he described them as some, “nappy headed hoes.” I honestly can not be offended by the statement because I described them a lot worst. This is not to say that either of our comments is acceptable or do not have any social impacts, but the firestorm around Imus’ comment was taking to a level that could not have been foreseen by anyone. His comments described a particular group, used terms that are lighter than what we as a people use to describe one another and did so in a joking manner, yet woman and African-Americans took strong offense. A people, a culture, a country, that believes in freedom of speech and expression, we condemned a man for description that was not that far from the truth. But why?

Listening to prominent leaders in the African-American community, Imus is a raging racist who attacked an entire community. His words were not an attack, just a poor choice of words trying to describe a group of young woman who played hard and look a little rougher than your average female. Should we be made at Mr. Imus for calling them hoes? Ok, he was wrong for that, but has he done anything more than what we do to our women? I believe firing him was over kill. Some people may think that I’m too far removed from the civil rights moment to understand the significance of his words, to this I say you could not be further from the truth. The problem with most of our civil rights leaders today is they are not seeking equality, they are not fighting for a world that is equal for everyone, but a world where no other race can degrade us. The problem with this, the fight that is taking up toward other races needs to start within. Calling our women bitches and hoes has become so common place that they can be found in lyrics of our songs to describe someone we actually love. No, this is not an attack on hip hop culture, this is an attack on African-American culture, because we accept this, we have allowed ourselves to believe that it is ok as long as no one else says it about us.

Somewhere, someone told us that we can take power away from the word, Nigger, if we use it, use it and change its social meaning to denote friendship or kinship. By adapting this form of thinking we not only opened the flood gates to include other words and try to warp their meaning, but we have in fact set ourselves up to become living models of these words. A nigger is an ignorant person. Are we not ignorant if we decide we will change the meaning of a word and think that we have gained power over it? Where in our struggle to gain equality have we lost focused on equality for all? In becoming pro black, most of us have grown to accept being anti-white, anti-authority to be second nature. This is the image we are displaying when we call ourselves niggers, bitches and hoes but cry out when another group calls us the same thing. No one should be calling us Niggers. The outrage of classifications like the word Nigger and Hoe should be across the board. We should get equally as mad when we refer to each other as niggers, hoes and bitches as we get upset when another race of people use the same language.

I don’t want to bash hip hop culture, because most of the rappers are the products of their environment and have not been taught that this type of behavior is unacceptable. Who I will attack is our misguided civil right’s leaders who take up their cause only against the “white man.” I was listening to a radio program and I believe it was Rev. Al Sharpton, a man that is one of the most electric speakers I have ever heard, said, we can not attack the rappers because they do not hold the power, we have to go after the executives, the men who carry all the real power. I could only shake my head in disappointment. When will we start taking ownership for our flaws and claim our destiny? Rappers choose the lyrics that come out of their mouths. The choice has always been ours whether to degrade ourselves or stand on principle, the problem is most of us will choose to stand on our principles in order to grab a check from the devil. Do you remember a few summers ago we were singing along with Busta Rhythms, I Love my bitch, or pointing at some women in the club while There’s some hoe’s in this house played on the stereo. These lyrics were penned by the artist not the radio executives. It’s easy for us to blame someone else, this way we don’t have to look within. We are being destroyed from within, someone else is just simply profiting from our mistakes.

We as a people need to wake up and realize we have been down this rode before. During the height of the slave trade, Africans killed, wounded and captured one another in what simply could be described as an instigated turf war. Each side were provided weapons by the same “Master,” who sat back and collected the bodies of the captured and not badly injured combatants. See what we focused on was the “white man” who bought us over to America, not our brothers’ who helped to carry us on the boats for land that would eventually be taken from them. See we were defeated from within, outside forces didn’t have to do much, just provide the weapons for our destruction and the motives. The weapon is different, but the motive behind our downfall is the same, economics. Our mouths have become our weapons, the pen, the mic, are our enhancements for our internal war. Yes, we have gangs but that demon, even though it is connected, goes to another social demon that I will probably blog about sometime this year. We use our words to attack ourselves, to make excuses for our shortcomings and to spew our own racist comments. The worst of the three are our excuses. In our inability to take responsibility of our actions, with the continue attitude that someone else owes us, we have become lazy and accepted a culture of excuses and inferiority. “America owes me 40 acres and a mule,” who lied to us? We owe it to ourselves to work for everything we have and not accept a handout from anyone. Instead of working towards anything, we settle for quick cash degrading ourselves with lyrics, we sit on the corners killing one another and wait for a handout. Our children grow up hearing the adults talk about land and an animal that is owed to us, listen to rappers refer to women as bitches and hoes, refer to each other as niggers and dogs, comedians making fun of their addictions and poverty, then they grow up buying into the disgusting mentality which is the ghetto. Defeated before they begin, the cycle continues, and evident with the current state of our culture they get worst.

Sadly, we continue to label and demonize those who belittle and berate us from outside, not realizing that we celebrate and reward the same behavior from within. We will not grow, we will continue to endure the disadvantages of being unequal citizens of this country, if we don’t correct the problems from within. A car will not run if the engine and battery doesn’t work no matter how well you fix the exterior.