From Death Row, This Is Mumia Abu-Jamal

Of Nappy Heads and Hard Hearts

The recent flap over the whimsical words of radio’s Don Imus have reminded us how raw are the feelings of people in an age we like to think of as that of a “new” century.

With one deft line, Imus was able to lob a verbal depth charge into the oceans of the heart, spreading wreckage for miles.

It spoke volumes of the tender tissues of which the nation’s illusion of civility is composed; and the continuing power of racial and sexual stereotypes to send shock waves of pain far and wide.

Three words: “nappy-headed hos,” did the damage; but it did damage precisely because our wounds are so raw, so close to the surface, with a thin scab of coverage.

It also worked because what society has become, has turned a throwaway joke into a searing reality. For within that poisonous epithet is an ancient antipathy toward Africans, merged with a long and deep history of misogyny (or hatred of women).

In America, who can debate whether Black women are the most disfavored of all the nation’s women? What did we learn from the horrors of Katrina, if not this?

Seen in this light, we see all too clearly, how easy it was, how available it was, for Imus to point at the most isolated sector of American life, and let it go. It was a freebie.

And what of Imus, a man approaching his 67th summer of life, who’s still billed as a ‘bad boy’ of radio?

His radio-TV show is a monster of a moneymaker, with tens of millions of dollars spent on ads to reach his vast audience. And he has (had?) that audience because he aims his shtick at the lowest common denominator—racist, sexist, slur and ridicule—which warms the cockles of the White, Male, American heart. It plays because he hits a nerve, early and often, which resonates within the psyche of millions.

It was this national nerve which twitched with snickers when the I-Man pointed his tongue at the mostly Black women who carried Rutgers University to the brink of a national championship; who, by coming in second place, exceeded every expectation of them, and assured them a kind of immortality in the evanescent pages of the sports record books. Until, that is, someone looked at them, and noticed that there was something not quite right (or was it white?) about them.

Dark, athletic, talented women—scholar-athletes—with their hair twisted into braids, and in their moment of near triumph, a public snicker, to remind them of who they really are in the good ole’ U.S. of A.

Imus struck, goaded on by one of the boys….

His name, split in two—is I’m US—and, in a perverse way, he is (or maybe was).

For while Imus mouthed the words, the country lives the reality—daily.

In education, housing, health care, jobs, the legal system, on TV, in the papers—every day—this silent curse is launched at Black female life, screaming their view of their lack of worth.

Imus just gave this affirmation.

By so doing, he made millions.

And ain’t that the American way?

11 April 2007

©2007 Mumia Abu-Jamal

Send urgently needed contributions for Mumia’s legal defense, made payable to “National Lawyers Guild Foundation” and earmarked for “Mumia,” to: Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, P.O. Box 2012, New York, NY 10159.

If you wish to correspond with Mumia, you can write to: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, SCI Greene, 175 Progress Drive, Waynesburg, PA 15370.