Hello, Babar

Just the other day my dad sent me an article from one of my hometown alternative weeklies about a school I attended for seven years. It's private, white, calls its high school arm "the upper school," counts Bill Gates and Paul Allen among its alums and now its being sued by two former teachers, both Black, for employment discrimination. They charged Lakeside with fostering a hostile work environment. When my dad first mentioned this charge to me week before last at a Mediterranean cafe in Seattle's gentrifying Belltown neighborhood I quipped, "What Black person doesn't work in a hostile environment?" and turned back to the stream of homeless men lumbering down the luxury condo-lined street. Still, I read the article in its entirety intrigued by how the school has changed since my tenure (there are a few more Black people) and the firestorm these charges have fanned (there is a lot more animosity towards this handful of Black people).

For Burgoyne learning is not the acquisition of knowledge but the acquisition of certain kinds of knowledge. And if the blithe ignorance of Black people in America that the Imus incident revealed is any evidence, her sentiments are certainly shared with educators and lay people alike. I only caught the first of the Oprah broadcast post-Imus town hall meetings but I was struck by the inability of any of the panelists--some esteemed, some ignoble--to communicate why the Imus incident struck a chord and what can be done about the racist sexist way of talking about and interacting with Black women that found its home in the slave ship's hold before it found an advocate in mainstream hip hop music. Dammit if former NAACP President Bruce Gordon, former Essence E-I-C Diane Weathers and poet, memoirist, novelist, journalist asha bandele, uninformed ornery Black columnist Jason Whitlock and (no modifier necessary) Stanley Crouch all dropped the ball. The Gayle King corralled Spelman students, attempted interventions, but weren't equipped with the sound bytes to capitalize on their scintilla of screen time. I have, like some of you, consumed my share of Imus/hip hop media in the past. Most has tended toward the sensational whether the product of aggrieved elders or young apologists and has been incredibly low on unspun substance. So I feel compelled to set a few things straight:

+What was wrong about Imus' comment?

Dating back at least to slavery, Black women's bodies have been subject to invasion. Our bodies functioned to breed and were consistently sexually violated. Just like insidious racist notions of Black people's limited intellect were used to justify our legal oppression in this country, notions of Black women's lasciviousness were used to justify the institutionalized and systemic sexual assault of Black women (This is likely why Angela Bassett sagely refused Halle Berry's role in Monster's Ball). The attempts to characterize "nappy headed hoes" outside of this context are completely and totally off base but expected since our lives and our stories aren't generally perceived to be worth much.

+What was wrong with the mainstream media coverage of the Imus incident?

What was of concern in the coverage was how Imus's transgression was widely read as being merely mean spirited or base, or a question of him picking targets too young or not fully in the public domain or even of being just sexist or just racist. Those were all faulty assessments. To focus on just the mean-spiritedness of Imus' comments is to depoliticize them. To focus on the youth of the targets or their accomplishments suggests that they would be valid targets if they were older or were engaged in sundry activities (Snoop Dogg's argument). To focus on just sexism or just racism is to deny the way in which both are inextricably and oppressively linked in Black women's lives. When Imus infamously called journalist Gwen Ifill a cleaning lady that wasn't just racism operating or just sexism, he was drawing on the American historical record from slavery up into the present which exclusively designated cooking, cleaning and care of children, widely perceived as menial and mindless tasks, to Black women.

Thankfully Jill Nelson pointed out another chief concern in the coverage right when the incident popped off. The seasoned journalist, novelist, and activist noted on the WIMN's Voices group blog how few Black women were invited to participate in the public discussion of a public attack against Black women:

It's the same old "race trumps gender" game that we've played too long in black America, a spin that surely doesn't work for those of us who are black, brown and have vaginas. I appreciate the concern for Black women on the part of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and other Black men, but I'd feel a lot better if they gave up some of the face time and didn't suck up all the air in the green room. Last night on ABC it was Spike Lee and WVON radio host Roland Martin. Earlier in the day, CNN featured NOW president Kim Gandy, Michael Eric Dyson, and again, Roland Martin. You'd think NOW's Gandy could've suggested a Black woman feminist to address the issue, and it was disturbing that Martin pointed out the issue was sexism more than racism, challenged white feminists to speak up, which they are, but apparently felt no contradiction in speaking for black women. Don't these people know any feminists of color whom they could suggest might be better suited to speak to the topic than themselves?

+Is hip hop to blame for Imus' racist repartee?

No. There certainly isn't much of a causative relationship between the language of racism and sexism in commercially dominant hip hop and the language of racism and sexism broadcast on Don Imus's radio show but they are parallel concerns to Black women. We are disproportionately assaulted by the tag team of racism and sexism and seldom defended.

+Are commercial hip hop hands clean?

No. As I just noted, Imus' long broadcast record of anti-Semitism, homophobia, racism and sexism suggest that the misogyny in commercial hip hop is not responsible for the racist repartee on his broadcast at most it may have provided a different vocabulary to communicate his Black woman antipathy.

+Why is hip hop singled out for its negative influence?

Let's not get it twisted, hip hop has become a stand in for Black youth culture both by folks in the media and by real live young people of all colors. Young whites often note how hip hop has offered them insight into Black culture and many young Blacks claim hip hop like a set. So if hip hop culture and young Black culture are interchangeable then of course the dominant themes in hip hop have an intensified effect in the self-perception and outside perspectives of Black culture, which is why we tend to talk about hip hop in a different manner than we tend to talk about other genres. And most importantly Black identity has historically been overdetermined by our musicality. We are still perceived to be inherently rhythmic and predisposed to musical creativity. Music is us. We are music. We are hip hop.

+What 'Blood Diamond Russ' said in defense of hip hop?

Commercial hip hop music is not all poetry. Albums are products like books and blankets. Some can be qualified as art--Illmatic, A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Sandwich, Quilts---but a good many just don't fit the definition--Bravehearted, Street Lit, fleece throws. And I'm not knocking the Street Lit or fleece throws (Bravehearted was BS); they are functional. From what I hear Street Lit engages and entertains and we all know that fleece warms but that's as far as it goes.

+What the music critics said in defense of hip hop?

While Jeff Chang and Dave Zirin rightly acknowledged feminist and LGBT concerns in the intro to the LA Times editorial,

Much of the criticism of commercial rap music--that it's homophobic and sexist and celebrates violence is well founded,

New York music critics Jim Farber and Kelefah Sanneh miss the point entirely. Farber, in a statistic heavy portrait of the pop music landscape, in effect imbues misogyny and sexism with a necessary boundary pushing youthful rebelliousness and removes race from the equation. Sanneh, in a misrepresentation of the feminist concerns and mis-characterization of hip hop chart toppers, just patronizes. I can't tell you how disheartening it was to read Kelefah Sanneh, in what is generally perceived to be the paper of record, characterizing the concerns of feminists and their allies as about crudeness or private matters entertaining the public domain. This is question of misogyny and the unwillingness of critics of all stripes to call it that is a significant as Imus' dust-kicking racist repartee. And with regard to the songs he champions as cheerful dance tracks, they are just "Get Low" in another guise (If "Get Low" doesn't immediately strike you as problematic, just listen to a snippet of Chris Rock's satirical "Get Lower".) And from my listening of one of the highlighted songs, "Pop Lock and Drop It," I hear Huey and them distancing themselves from pimpin' but participating in their fair share of female objectification.

+The problem with bitch.

It is sexist when men use the term bitch to disparage one another just like its a mark of internalized racism when Black people refer to Black behaviors as 'niggerish', a mark of ableism when ablebodied people disparage each other as 'lame' or 'retarded'. To insult someone by equating them as feminine, Black or disabled is to equate womanhood, Blackness or disability with something bad.

+ What did the Imus debacle achieve?

This incident has smoked out the shameless and intentionally oblivious beneficiaries of white privilege, plenty apologists for hip hop's misogyny and quite a few opportunist pundits.

+ What's next?

A lot. One thing I know for sure is that those of us who have been educating our elders, peers and young people about the problem with purchasing and dancing to 'musick' to borrow from Chuck and 'dem and that other fringe stuff to borrow from Nancy Burgoyne must continue, those of us who listen to the musick must be open to new perspectives and correctives and those of us who are artists and executives must exercise a semblance of responsibility in our business practices. It's a lot to ask, at present I know, but it shouldn't be.