So Don Imus is in trouble again.
This time, he was talking about Adam “Pacman” Jones, the Dallas Cowboys player who has been arrested six times since being drafted by the Tennessee Titans in 2005. One of Imus’s co-hosts reported that Jones now wants to drop the nickname in order to disassociate himself from his crime-ridden past. Imus asked, “What color is he?”
“He’s African-American,” responded the co-host.
“Well there you go,” Imus said. “Now we know.”
Now we know what? Imus says (in hindsight) that he was merely attempting to point out that police make more arrests of young African-American men than they do white men. It’s hard to say if that’s the case, since this excerpt of the conversation has been taken out of context. Perhaps the two hosts were in fact discussing this topic of racial profiling by police, when Adam Jones’ record came up and the co-host threw out “Oh, BTW, did you hear…he wants to drop the ‘Pacman’ now.”
Or maybe the guy was doing the sports and Imus asked the question out of the blue. Or maybe Imus was THINKING about racial profiling and is just too damn old to be doing radio because his mouth isn’t keeping up with his brain. Or maybe Imus just needs to steer clear of talking about sports altogether, since that’s always where his troubles seem to start.
The way it reads, I can’t see why the question would come up at all. Because being racist isn’t always about using racial slurs. It’s a way of thinking that separates people based on their skin color. “Well of course he gets arrested a lot…he’s black.” “Some of my best friends are African-American.”
When is race an appropriate description of someone, and how do we learn to see past it otherwise?
When my friend Shelley was a little girl in the early 70s, growing up in southern Mississippi, she was watching Sesame Street on TV with her mom one day. Two little boys were on the screen - one was black and one was white. Shelley told her mom, “I like that little boy.” “Which one?” her mom asked. “The one in the red shirt,” the little girl said.
