The Imus Incident

I have another take on that brouhaha about Imus. It is a waste of good, valuable and scarce Black energy. Our "leadership" marshals all of the mighty forces and prestige of Black America to take on a seedy cracker who uses a colloquial expression we use all of the time while racist America is still sticking it to us up the economic butt.

Before and after the civil rights movement we earned and still earn one-half what whites earn for the same work; we are unemployed at twice, and in the case of young Black men 5 times the rate. We are unemployed on average 4 times as long before we get another job, wrecking our saving, our credit and our marital relationships. Our death rate from stress related disorders is 3 times the national average. Our suicide rate is triple that average. We live in stinking ghettos with bars on our windows, while the white guy sitting in the next cubicle, doing the same work makes more money and lives on a beautiful, tree-lined street and sends his kids to schools that care about his kid's performance.

Our "leadership" makes noise about the minuscule things that impact Black-American lives like the N word and pants that sag a little too much while neglecting those issues that keep us in second-class environments, unable to fully enjoy life as our counterparts do no matter how loyal Americans we are. "All men are created equal" still does not include us 231 years later and our "leaders" just hit around the fringes: white's who still call us nappy-headed. We are not where we are in the heirarchy of citizenship because of the way we talk and act. There are other forces at work to accomplish that; institutional American racism.

Maybe our "leaders" are not our leaders. Maybe they are just nigga whisperers in "our leader" clothing. These "leaders" have always been the ones the white power structure runs to when the Blacks get riled up about this injustice or that. When an unarmed Black man is shot 51 times in the vestibule of a building, or when Black men in a car are shot at 41 times coming from a bachelor party on the eve of one of their number's wedding, or a young man named Emmett Till is massacred; or when a white man says that you cannot drink out of the same fountain as I do; and Black get pissed off and erupt in a violent confrontation, whitey rolls out his "nigga whisperers" (usually the Black ministry) to calm the Black multitudes down and to confine the outrage to the Black community, with the result that no retribution is ever inflicted upon the culture that breeds, if not encourages this unjust behavior. Unfortunately, when the matter de jour cools down, these "nigga whisperers" retreat to their ghetto caves and await the next injustice; like fire engines waiting for the bell to clang.

What we need from our leaders is fire prevention as well as fire dousing, i.e., economic disparity prevention and remediation. America is a capitalist society. Power comes from the ability to amass or manipulate the Benjamins. If you have no Benjamins, you have little power unless you manipulate your dollars to affect the behavior of those holding their hands out. We have always had fewer dollars than whites and therefore less power to affect our environment.

We started off working 300 years for nothing. When we finally got paid for what we do, we still got less than the next white guy. We still do. This is what should be important to our "leaders".

We have untapped power that is not being used to better our predicament. Our ability to affect white America's behavior was demonstrated in this incident. We are great consumers. If we become selective consumers, we could direct the policies of most if not all of the Fortune 500 companies that allow this economic disparity to prevail. When the sponsors of this cracker's radio show thought for a minute that Blacks might stop buying their products, they and the media he speaks through said this cracker has got to go.

Remember, if Black earned the same as whites, ghettoes as we know them would disappear, and the ghetto attitudes along with them. Moreover, crackers like Imus would be terrified about saying what he did about those charming Black women for fear of economic if not social ruin.

Someone needs to pull the coats of our "leaders" and tell them that the fire bell is clanging for a more important cause, our economic well-being.