The Black Commentator - April 26, 2007

Imus has always been an equal opportunity offender for more than three decades. His no-holds-barred humor has assailed broad demographics of the American public, from heads of state to homeless citizens.

So why now his firing? And any explication that Imus’ firing is because his influence is far more reaching and egregiously vile than the gangsta genre of hip-hop, from which Imus appropriates the language, is an example of modern-day Orwellian doublespeak.

Or is there a subtext here in this imbroglio?

Unspoken is that Imus hurled a gender specific racial invective that struck a raw nerve in the African American community - black women’s hair. He ridiculed the Rutgers women’s basketball team by not only calling them “hos” but by also calling them “nappy-headed” ones. The other n-word in the African American community.

While the etymology of the work “nappy” derives from Britain meaning a baby’s cotton napkin or diaper, in America, the word became racialized to mean unkempt wild and wooly hair associated with people of African descent. Used to demean and to degrade African Americans, the word “nappy-headed” is a loaded word in our cultural lexicon, even today since the afro hairstyle.

However, depending on the users’ tone, tenor and intent, the word can also be received as a compliment. But when it is not, the word is unquestionably a put-down. And hearing the word used pejoratively from the mouth of Imus stoked both the historical flames of American racism and the shame and stigma African American women have borne for centuries about their hair.

And any acts of contrition by Imus, from going on the obligatory “beat down” trail by appearing on Al Sharpton's radio show to expressing a heartfelt apology - both publicly on the airwaves or privately to the women’s basketball team - would not absolve Imus for jokingly stepping on this land mine.

But even with good intentions the land mine can be detonated. In 1998 Ruth Ann Sherman, a white third grade teacher, who taught in a predominately African American and Latino elementary school in Brooklyn, learned that lesson. Unlike Imus, Sherman’s intent was to teach acceptance of racial differences and to teach black children, especially, about self-acceptance when she read African American author Carolivia Herron’s award winning children’s book “Nappy Hair, ” a celebration of black hair. And while Sherman’s children loved the book their parents and the community, however, loathed the book’s premise and the topic being taught and talked about by someone outside of their cultural milieu.

While many African American women today wear their hair in afros, cornrows, locks, braids, Senegalese twists, wraps or bald, our hair - both symbolically and literally - continues to be a battlefield in this country's politics of hair and beauty aesthetics, within and outside of the African American community.

And it is also the elephant that sits in middle of the Imus debate.

BC columnist, the Rev. Irene Monroe is a religion columnist, public theologian, and speaker. She is a Ford Fellow and doctoral candidate at Harvard Divinity School. As an African American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Her website is www.irenemonroe.com. Click here to contact the Rev. Monroe.