It’s the Hair, Not the Ho
Not to belabor the point, but Barbara Ehrenreich doesn’t get it. Writing in the Nation (online edition), she declares, “Of course it’s the ho, not the hair, part of Imus’s comment that hurts.” Actually, it is the hair that hurts.
Once again, Barbara can’t see past her white, middle class nose to define an issue for what it is. In this case, it’s a blatant case of racism as Imus was contrasting the looks of the Rutgers players with the cute, blonde Lady Volunteers. You don’t have to be black to know how culturally sensitive hair is. Just look at the beauty products that are advertised to black women – the hair relaxers, the weaves, the weird blonde dye – all designed to satisfy white standards of beauty. Look at the handful of books and poems by black artists that we are assigned in high school (out of some token notion of diversity, so that we can look past our white noses). There’s Langston Hughes’ “high yaller” girl. There’s Lorraine Hansberry’s Beneatha Younger, whose brother scorns the afro that she grows. There’s Toni Morrison’s Soaphead Church, who prizes his mixed blood and “good hair” and takes pity on an “ugly” (and delusional) black girl who wants to look more white.
Hell, just take that term “good hair.” Google it and you will see the tortured relationship that black women have with their natural kinky hair. You’ll find salons and hair products to get rid of the nappiness. You’ll find African-American chick-lit about “moving on up.” You’ll find websites dedicated to empowering black women. Somewhere along the way, you’ll find a far more articulate essay on this subject by Malena Amusa on hair weaves and black women’s self image.
The fact that Imus could be so casually derogatory about something so sensitive to black people is what makes his remarks so offensive. It’s the racism that gave this controversy legs.
Pride of the Nappy-Headed Hoes
There was an enormous protest today on the traditional women’s college campus of Rutgers University over Don Imus. Imus, of course, disparaged the University’s second place NCAA women’s basketball team in crudely racist and demeaning terms about two weeks ago. The controversy, which has raged across the country and which threatens Imus’ career, started out with very little notice here: a “dart” to Imus in the Daily Targum newspaper’s traditional “Darts and Laurels” Friday editorial. Today’s rally, however, seemed to attract the majority of the student body of Cook and Douglas Colleges, and cleared out the staff from most of the offices.
The women’s basketball team’s success in the Final Four tournament united the women and the bleeding hearts of Rutgers University in a way that the comparable success of the school’s football team – which came at the expense of budget cuts to academic programs and less popular sports – never could. Such feminist support was underscored by the signs that protesters carried, which read “Rutgers Women R Strong Women” (Imus described the team as “rough-looking” tattooed women and “nappy-headed hoes” and expressed a preference for the “cute” Lady Volunteers of Tennessee). But Imus’ racism – no matter how much he insists he is a “good person” – is clear and unmistakable. Kinky hair and eurocentric standards of beauty are enormously sensitive topics and the rooting for “white” over “black” is the very definition of racism. And yet, this racism bubbled up and spilled forth so effortlessly, coming from the same dark pit (more like a shallow ditch) as Michael “Kramer” Richards’ “joke” about lynching niggers who dare to talk through his set, or as your crazy uncle’s “jokes” about black moms and velcro.
I’m inclined to agree with the protesters (most famously Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson) who complain that Imus’ apology rings hollow, and call for his termination. Our media and politics have coarsened to such a point that a great number of shock jocks and pundits profit by saying outrageously insulting and offensive things, and if any of them result in a controversy that proves dangerous to their careers, they quickly apologize and claim it was a joke. But what was the joke here? That Don Imus doesn’t really think the Lady Volunteers were cute? That the Rutgers Scarlet Knights are actually blonde, light-skinned and unmarked by tattoos?
There was no joke. Just mean-spirited taunting, the kind that is casually tossed around in talk media. Examples should be made. Don Imus made the poor choice to elect himself to serve as that example.
Comrades in the Library
The Times has an article on one of my favorite places in the world, the Tamiment Institute archives at NYU, which has recently acquired a huge chunk of the Communist Party USA’s files. The CP should really be applauded for its openness and willingness to view its past truly as history. I have seen some of the neato gems of these files – such as Seeger’s handwritten lyrics to “Turn! Turn! Turn!” – on display while doing my own research at the library.
It was there that I recently found Michael Obermeier’s letter to Jay Rubin. The letter would have provided much-needed pathos to the term paper that I ultimately wrote about the Communists who founded New York’s Hotel Employees union, who were ultimately thrown out early in the Cold War. The letter was meticulously misfiled away with Rubin’s correspondence from the 1970’s (he must have kept the letter close at hand until the end of his tenure). Most of the union’s files are archived at Tamiment, so I’ve spent much time there.
I’ve continued to write about the union in term papers on its organizing strategy, its health care politics and its collective bargaining. I will ultimately flesh out my earlier term paper on the Communist influence and betrayal in Local 6 in my Masters thesis, which I hope to have published (which is why I have hesitated to post that earlier paper on this site).
In the meantime, I gather as much material as I can. I FOIA FBI and INS files, seek out sister unions’ files and living relatives of the main players. The Communist Party’s archives are quite promising for my research, although the most explosive material was likely shipped over to the Soviet Union in the late 1940’s. It exists today at the Library of Congress and at Tamiment as a microfiche reproduction of the source material in Moscow. The files are indexed in Russian, so I will likely need some translation assistance, tovarich.
The Science of Blind Dating
I have a confession to make. I go on internet dates. And why not? It’s a perfectly reasonable way to meet people in this new century and have a reasonable expectation that you’ll at least have enough in common to sustain a dinner conversation. I’ve started a few good relationships this way. A few have lasted as friendships. What makes the whole endeavor truly sporting is the ever-present threat of a Really Bad Date. On more than one occasion, I’ve found myself trapped at a restaurant, puzzling over what crazy computer monkey thought we’d be a good match, only to leave wondering, “What did she think about that car wreck of a date?”
Rubbernecking is the main appeal of the Washington Post’s newish Sunday feature, Date Lab, wherein our favorite community newspaper sets up two complete strangers based upon some dubious shard trait or desire, and then documents all the gory details.
Take, as a deliciously typical example, the young woman who wanted to be set up with a Jewish doctor. Quickly, she finds, “he monopolized the conversation and totally excluded me. And he asked why I wasn’t showing any cleavage.” (“It was totally within context at the time, but I can’t remember how,” he defends.) Each column ends with the Date Lab Rats rating the experience (“I’d rate the evening a 3 [out of 5]. We’re not the best match, but I’m not entirely convinced that if I went out with him again, it’d be awful.”), and a post-script updating our potential couple’s follow-up. In this case, our young woman e-mailed the Jewish Doctor, “listing 14 things he’d done that ‘you should never ever do on a first date.'”
So it goes, week in and week out. It’s a comforting format, one which helps us imagine how to fill in the blanks from our own (non-major-media-sponsored) blind dates. The Date Lab Rats are interviewed a few days later, and the column is structured chronologically in a “he said / she said” format, which really brings out the venom. Take these (revisionist) first meetings:
Ultimately, there’s the wonderfully awkward parting of the ways:
And, best of all, what all dates need: A rating on a scale of one to five!
It’s enough to tempt me to move to D.C. just to participate in Date Lab. At the very least, I’ll continue to read every cringe-inducing moment every Sunday morning.