Disrespect doesn't end with Imus

MICHAEL PAUL WILLIAMS
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST

Apr 11, 2007


Besides starring in basketball at the University of Virginia, Wendy Palmer majored in history. And her father once headed the NAACP in Roxboro, N.C.

So Palmer, an assistant basketball coach at Virginia Commonwealth University, knows the painful past behind such words as "nappy-headed hos," and how shock jock Don Imus' slur must have wounded the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

"It's not even OK to say jokingly," Palmer said yesterday. "They're young women. You just insulted tomorrow's future."

But Palmer, 32, is unwilling to let black Americans off the hook for using the same sorts of words.

"I was just in the gym the other day, and I heard a young man use some words he shouldn't have been using -- the n-word," she recalled. She gave the clueless adolescent a stern lecture.

"So even though the struggle is no longer physical, the struggle continues. And that's what this generation doesn't understand."

Thanks, Don Imus, for the reminder.

The struggle for racial and gender equality took a hit last week when Imus took a look at the young ladies on the predominantly black Rutgers team, the second best in the nation, and saw only the crudest of punch lines.

"Female athletes already have a bad stereotypical image that people associate us with," said ShaWanda Geter, who played basketball at Virginia Union University. "And him saying that only made it worse. Just because we play basketball doesn't mean we aren't ladies."

Gary L. Flowers said, "Don Imus needs not a slap on the hand but a pink slip in his hand." Flowers is executive director and CEO of the Washington-based Black Leadership Forum.

"His language was a form of hate speech and as such it should be [punished]," said Flowers, a Richmond native. He added if the Federal Communications Commission gives Imus a pass, "that then speaks to other television and radio personalities that his sort of racial and ethnic and gender discrimination language is permissible."

Palmer, who plays for the WNBA's Seattle Storm, agrees that Imus should be fired. "I think we need to set a standard."

Good luck, there. Don't be fooled: Imus' crudity has the sort of corporate stamp of approval you'd expect of such a lucrative trade.

But while the Imus insult has played in heavy rotation, rappers and other black male entertainers have been allowed to slander black women with relative impunity.

"The n-word, h-word, b-word -- all of 'em. I can't stand them," Palmer said. "It's just very upsetting, because as hard as our ancestors and parents fought to give us equality, we use some of the words that tore away our hearts."

Geter, a native of Augusta, Ga., and an intern with the Virginia State Conference NAACP, said Imus' slur should be a wakeup call to black entertainers.

"How can you let someone refer to your women as something like that?" she said. "Hopefully, it will turn around and they'll say we can't refer to them that way, either. And it will generate the respect that we deserve."

She's right. It's time we stopped accepting this sort of abuse of women by anyone anymore.

Contact staff writer Michael Paul Williams at mwilliams@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6815.