domiguy
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quote:
ORIGINAL: anthrosub
I'm not familiar with the history of Imus other than what I've read in the past few days. I have watched his morning show on TV occasionally in the past year or so while getting dressed for work in the morning. What I've seen is nothing compared to Howard Stern or how African Americans behave towards each other and other people on the streets and subways of DC.
Personally I have nothing against him or anybody else. To me, this is essentially a keystone event that parties on all sides are trying to capitalize on to further their own agenda. And of course, there's the ever present issue of the big dollars.
As a child, I grew up in the late fifties through the sixties on air bases all over the country. I had several friends who today call themselves African Americans (the term was unheard of back then...they simply called themselves black and nobody thought anything of it). When I was 10 years old, my father was sent to Vietnam and we had to move off base. I went to my first public school that year (1966).
One day during that year's summer vacation, my oldest sister and I went for a bike ride and took our bikes up to the elementary school. As we were heading back, we encountered three black girls who turned out to be sisters. They complimented me on my bicycle and asked if they could take it for a ride. I said sure.
They rode it back to the school, around the front drive where the buses unloaded kids and returned. One of them handed it back me saying how nice it was...and then two of them proceeded to rip the bike apart with their bare hands and tossed it down an embankment. They then turned on my sister's bike. We ran home and told my mother what had happened and she quickly got us in the car and we returned to where our bikes were.
We retrieved the bikes and as we were doing so, the girls returned and started calling us names like "White Trash." At that point and for the first time, I used the "N" word. It was a strange feeling but it felt justified. Oddly enough, the one who did not attack our bikes came up to the window of the car and calmly told me I should not say things like that. I was struck by her apparent sincerity.
Years later, after we had moved away and eventually returned to settle in the same city, we had further encounters with these girls in high school. By that time, their sybling numbers had grown to 12. They were commonly known as the Mayos (their last name). They called dozens of bomb scares to the school forcing us to extend classes an extra month into the summer, they would walk down the halls with their arms linked together and block everyone from getting to their classes on time, and many other things.
Later on, the oldest of the family who by now was a young man, got involved in robberies, drugs, and eventually a rape and murder. Most of the others also developed a violent crime filled history except the one daughter who years ago had spoken so calmly to me at the car. She went on to college and I lost track of her.
Even later still, the entire family (and by now their extended families) converted to Islam, built a twelve foot fence around their property and began holding ritual ceremonies and huge bonfires in the backyard. This created an eyesore for the community. Then one night, a fire broke out in their home while everyone was sleeping and roughly one third of the family died in the fire. They sued the city fire department claiming they took their time responding to the fire (they lost). Three of the children who died were the offspring of the oldest son who was now serving time for murder. He never got to see his kids.
Many times since then I have been assaulted by African Americans. I watch them here in DC use terms worse then what Imus said all the time. I could go on an recount stories of how they would criticize each other when one of them acts decently to a white person claiming they are "sucking up to the white man." That happened to me twice. In DC, there's also such thing as, "reverse discrimination." White people have difficulty getting jobs or apartments where the area is largely African American.
Last week at an all women's college in Georgia, the question was asked of how many had had the same phrase Imus used applied to them. They all raised their hands. Then they were asked how many had used it themselves. Again, they all raised their hands. Oh by the way, where I currently work the population of employees is 80% African American. We get along just fine.
The world of humanity is weird. That's been my experience.
anthrosub
What a nice touching story...I grew up in Wisconsin, my high school had about 1700 kids all but two were white....Everyone who pulled the fire alarms was white...The person that stole my bike was white...A girl I went to school with was murdered by a white guy....Almost every robbery, arson and murder were committed by whitey...Yet to this day they (whitey) don't seem to bother me much....So what's your point?
The reason that Imus was fired was not about whether people have heard worse on the street..We all have. It's about sponsors pulling their funding and also about the President of NBC looking at his employees and hearing them say, "he could have been talking about anyone of our daughters."
These were not celebrities or people in the public eye...They were young woman enjoying what should have been an event that "was the time of their lives." College students...And he ruined the moment...
I thing he got what he deserved...And hopefully others will learn from his mistake or way of thinking.
< Message edited by domiguy -- 4/12/2007 3:45:27 PM >
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