RECENTLY there has been media uproar about comments made by popular radio commentator/announcer Don Imus. He made comments referring to the members of the Rutgers women’s college basketball team as “nappy headed hos.” The team consists of both African American and Caucasian women. The remark refers to their hair and implies that they are prostitutes. These women are nothing of the sort. They are college-educated women who are bettering themselves. The remark is a derogatory reference to African American women and is appalling, unacceptable and repulsive.
Reverend Al Sharpton, a popular American spiritual and political leader, is calling for the termination of Mr. Imus and yet other African American leaders and popular rap stars have uttered racial slurs toward their own race and others and has not called for the same. This is a double standard.
What is it, should all races be accountable for racial slurs or a select few? All or none. When an African American calls another of the same race the n-word, it’s still a slur; or is it hypocrisy? When leaders call for the resignation of Mr. Imus (a confirmed slur jockey) who have themselves slurred against others (regardless of context) of another racial ethnicity, is that not of the same fabric? I believe the same rules apply to all.
Think about MTV which airs videos which depicts women as “hos,” and the major corporate record companies which market CD’s and license MP3 recordings that actively promote videos and songs depicting African American women as sex objects.
Where is the outrage?
Where is Reverend Al Sharpton’s outrage when African American rappers are glorifying sexual exploitation against African Americans?
Where is the call for censorship of all the stations (including the ones on Saipan) that play all the crap our youth listen to?
Where is our outrage for a record industry that promotes sexism and calls African-American women b——s and h-s?
Are we going to continue to allow record companies to glorify their money-making perpetrators?
Reverend Sharpton says he will go after these transgressors. I hope he succeeds.
The issue is not about the slurs but about societies acceptance of derogatory depiction of African Americans and women of all nationalities regardless of origin. Society condones and accepts these depictions of women as sex objects and the referral to them as b——s and h-s by popular recording artists by not calling for the end of these depictions and recordings.
The white and rich corporate American men who profit from the production of these records laugh at us all and will only stop producing their filth when we stop our kids from watching it, buying their immorality and boycotting their parent corporations and all their affiliates.
Are you listening MCV?

ALAN J. ELDER
Kagman, Saipan