We read:
"Syndicated talk-radio personality Don Imus apologized Friday for calling members of the Rutgers University women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos" during a segment yesterday in his "Imus in the Morning" show.
Imus and his producer and on-air sidekick, Bernard McGuirk, went on to further attack the black members of the team, calling them "jigaboos and wannabees."
In his apology, Imus called his comments "insensitive and ill-conceived."
Source
Some black males of course commonly refer to almost all women as "hos" (whores) and "nappy" is the way blacks commonly describe their hair (tightly curled hair). So if Imus had been black, he would have simply have been expressing black "culture".
The term "jigaboo" presumably originates as a reference to black talent at dancing but does appear to be derogatory -- though it was not Imus who used it. But calling Christians derogatory names ("Theocrats", "Ayatollahs", "Taliban" etc.) is OK of course. No apology would have been needed for that. You can only speak ill of SOME people. If some, why not all?
I think the interesting thing about the episode is that if Imus had said "Curly-headed women" instead of "nappy-headed hos", no offence would have been taken. Yet "Curly-headed women" is a literal translation into standard English of "nappy-headed hos" in black English. So it is the aggressiveness implicit in black speech that was upsetting, not the literal meaning of what was said. So should EVERYBODY (blacks included) be stopped from calling women "hos"? I think that is where politically correct logic leads. But who expects the politically correct brigade to be logical?
