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Don Imus and the Rutgers Nappy Headed Hos

The Rev. Al Sharpton wants Don Imus fired for Racist remarks Imus made on-the-air last week about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.

I agree with Al Sharpton even though I have written positively about Imus here in the past.

Sometimes there are things spoken that are so inconsiderate and so hurtful that no apology and no excuse can ever erase the psychological and physical damage done.

Imus, and his show Imus in the Morning, allegedly have a well-documented history of Racism and intolerance and he needs to immediately and permanently leave the airwaves:

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Race and the American Humor Line

Yesterday’s post on Don Imus and the Rutgers Nappy Headed Hos has sparked a secondary discussion in our moderated comments area that — because of bad language and cruel intent — cannot be published here. The topic those horrible comments are trying to enlighten — Where is the Humor Line Drawn When it Comes To Race in America? — deserves wider, but calmer, critical attention.
I love editorial cartoons and this is how some of them are framing the Imus issue this morning. Sometimes a public correction is felt deepest in the bones under the guise of humor:

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The Lesson of Don Imus: Red is Thicker than Green

In examining the Don Imus controversy over the last few days here in our Don Imus and the Rutgers Nappy Headed Hos and Race and the American Humor Line articles — I now realize when one ponders on the core purpose of this Urban Semiotic blog — one cannot escape the hard reality that an “Urban Semiotic” has most powerfully come to mean in this blog the matter of Black skin and its place in The American Dream.

Time and again many of our most poignant and powerful articles published here have addressed Racial issues in America — and that necessary, and sometimes uncomfortable dialog — has been examined and perpetuated in conversations here that are as invigorating as they are enlightening and, for that, I thank you.

If you have a favorite Urban Semiotic article that deals with Race and The Color Line, I would appreciate it if you would provide the title and a link in your comments — along with your reason for picking the article(s) — so we can create a new thread of understanding, a new way forward, and a context for the history and the now that we have tried to covet and change when it comes to getting along with each other beneath the barriers of our skin. 

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Creating Consequential Context: A Semiotic Moral Correction for Don Imus

As we wrap up our necessary Don Imus coverage this week — Don Imus and the Rutgers Nappy Headed Hos and Race and the American Humor Line and The Lesson of Don Imus: Red is Thicker than Green — we turn the page by taking a scholarly, semiotic, examination of The Imus Incident and its created Consequential Context expressed in national editorial cartoons.

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A Semiotic Imus Wiping

I thought we were finished wiping up after Don Imus this week, but the ongoing reverberations in the media and in our comments for all our coverage are still too strong to ignore — Don Imus and the Rutgers Nappy Headed Hos and Race and the American Humor Line and The Lesson of Don Imus: Red is Thicker than Green and Creating Consequential Context: A Semiotic Moral Correction for Don Imus — and while some of our regular commenters have fallen off into the darkness, their voices have been replaced with new commenters offering counter-advocacy and fascinating arguments.

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Jack Roosevelt Robinson

Today is the 60th anniversary when Jack Roosevelt Robinson — Jackie Robinson — became the first Black player to take the field in a Major League Baseball uniform. He played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Few know that in 1941 Jackie Robinson was the first athlete in the history of UCLA — of any color — to letter in four sports: Baseball, Football, Basketball and Track. There are perils when you are a pioneer and a barrier-breaker and — in the light of our Don Imus Conversations — we cannot deny how the past haunts us with a similar hatred that still chases us today as witnessed in this letter sent to Jackie Robinson on May 20, 1951:

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Return of the Racist: Don Imus on ABC Radio

I suppose it was inevitable: Don Imus of “Rutgers Nappy Headed-Hos” fame is back on radio as of Monday and one can only begin to wonder about the why of his return.


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