In Brief: The Don Imus Controversy

Don Imus's (a.k.a. Leatherface) recent use of the phrase "nappy-headed hos" to describe the Rutgers University women's basketball team was offensive, juvenile, and pigheaded.

But, to me, it was far from surprising.

It's widely known that African-American culture is often co-opted, exploited, and exaggerated for highly dubious "comedic" value from the Hollywood backlot to the office water cooler. Judging from this incident, you'd think it was a big secret that non-blacks make huge fools of themselves on a daily basis trying to be funny by completely missing the point of several cultural tropes with which they are unfamiliar.

And to head off any more confusion and outrage, I'm going to let you in on another open secret: the biggest fools of all are white people. Perhaps this only manifests itself in groups where only Caucasians are present, but assuming an exaggerated "blackness" for comedic effect--juxtaposing the culturally cool with the decidedly wack--is rather common. Yet instead of being comedic or cool it's just, well, decidedly wack. You can't polish a turd, folks.

Quite simply, white people do this sort of thing all the time.

Unfortunately, it doesn't take much for this sort of cavalier attitude towards the appropriation of a different culture to turn into full-blown racism. Case in point: at one of the USC women's basketball games I attended this year (sitting in the front row, as is my custom), one of my fellow students encouraged chants of "Your weave is nappy!" at opposing black players. I was left to ponder where I, as a fan, should draw the line between the psychology of heckling/antagonism and the psychology of bigotry.

Therefore, I'm ashamed as a sports fan and a human being that Imus crossed that line.

But as a white person, I'm simply embarrassed that we are still thinking that we don't look stupid dropping words like "nappy" in public. Because it's not just the racism that makes us look foolish. Please, white folks, observe, learn, and never, ever repeat: