During the furor that led to Imus' fall last week from his talk-radio perch, many of his critics carped as well about offensive language in rap music.
The meeting, called by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons' Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, was held at the New York home of Lyor Cohen, chairman and chief executive of U.S. music at Warner Music Group. The summit, which lasted several hours, did not result in any specific initiative.
Organizers billed the gathering as a forum to "discuss issues challenging the industry in the wake of controversy surrounding hip-hop and the First Amendment." Afterward, they planned to hold a news conference at a Manhattan hotel to discuss "initiatives agreed upon at the meeting." But by early afternoon, the news conference was postponed, because the meeting was still going on.
After the meeting ended, it was unclear whether there would be another one. Simmons' publicist released a short statement that described the topic as a "complex issue that involves gender, race, culture and artistic expression. Everyone assembled today takes this issue very seriously."
Although no recommendations emerged, the gathering was significant for its who's-who list of powerful music executives.
According to a roster released by Simmons on Wednesday, attendees included: Kevin Liles, executive vice president, Warner Music; L.A. Reid, chairman of Island Def Jam Music Group; Sylvia Rhone, president of Motown Records and executive vice president of Universal Music Group; Mitch Bainwol, chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America; and Damon Dash, Jay-Z's former Roc-A-Fella Records partner. Top-selling rapper T.I. also attended, organizers said.
Simmons declined to comment through a spokeswoman. But he appeared this week with others at a two-day town hall meeting on The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss the issue. While Simmons, Liles and the rapper Common agreed "there is a problem," Simmons cautioned against trying to limit rappers' free-speech rights.
He said that "poets" always come under fire for their unsanitized descriptions of the world.
"We're talking about a lot of these artists who come from the most extreme cases of poverty and ignorance ... And when they write a song, and they write it from their heart, and they're not educated, and they don't believe there's opportunity, they have a right, they have a right to say what's on their mind," he said.
"Whether it's our sexism, our racism, our homophobia or our violence, the hip-hop community sometimes can be a good mirror of our dirt and sometimes the dirt that we try to cover up," Simmons said. "Pointing at the conditions that create these words from the rappers ... should be our No. 1 concern."
Common said criticism of rappers and their music should come with love. "When I talk to the cats, regardless of rap, when I talk to cats on the street, they don't wanna be in that situation," the rapper said. "We don't wanna be in this painful situation. We want it to heal. And we are apologizing for ... the disrespect that does come from the mouths of men to women whatever color."
Meanwhile, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who said he planned to challenge the recording industry on denigrating lyrics, announced he had suspended plans to honor Def Jam's L.A. Reid during this week's convention of his National Action Network in New York. Sharpton was among Imus' most vocal critics and demanded his firing.
Several rappers under Reid's label frequently use racial and sexual epithets.
Imus was fired last week by CBS, which owned his radio show, and MSNBC, which produced the TV simulcast, for having referred to the Rutgers players as "nappy-headed hos."
Outrage over Imus shows societal shift
Not a chance, say plenty of people watching the Imus mess.
Way before Imus stepped into it 10 days ago with his casual trashing of the acclaimed Rutgers University women's basketball team, black Americans were among the loudest voices protesting the spread of demeaning language in public. Indeed, the Rev. Al Sharpton, leader of the "fire Imus" movement and a talk-radio jock who has been criticized for his past words and actions, in recent years has denounced slurs and violence in music and movies.
Imus' defenders and critics alike point out that his transgression occurs at a time when black entertainers have helped make otherwise offensive words — the n-word, the b-word and now the h-word — routine and unremarkable in mainstream culture.
"The chickens have come home to roost," sighs Trisha Thomas, author of Nappily Ever After and the forthcoming Nappily Married. "People have been talking about the rap thing for 20 years, no one has done anything about it, and it's finally bled over."
Thomas likes the word "nappy." But never with "ho," the shorthand for "whore" that dates to the '50s but was adopted by rappers and hip-hop artists in the 1980s.
Thomas says she cringes when she hears young white boys in her grocery store casually using the n-word. "I hope this shames others. I hope it makes people think twice."
The shaming of Imus was especially intense in part because his targets — winning teen athletes — are the antithesis of what he called them. Rap mogul Snoop Dogg made a similar point, denouncing the comparison to rappers' language in obscene terms.
"It's acompletely different scenario," he told MTV. Rappers aim their lyrics at "hos in the 'hood," not at achieving collegiate athletes, he declared.
Could the Imus fallout bolster fledgling efforts to make racist, ethnic, sexist and homophobic slurs taboo again? After Michael Richards' racist rant in 2006, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has been criticized for his remarks about Jews, called on all entertainers to refrain from using the n-word.
Jabari Asim, author of The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't and Why, says he opposes government censorship. But he hopes this episode will teach people to be sensitive — or at least remember what their mothers told them about being respectful.
"It is no longer clear what the lines of propriety are," Asim says. " 'Don't speak ill of others' used to be a conventional notion, but that value is not being conveyed with the vigor it once was."
Official attempts to control language, no matter how well meaning, are probably doomed.
"You can't contain language any more than you can contain air," says lexicographer Grant Barrett, co-host of the PBS radio show A Way With Words. He says conflicts such as this happen every day all over America, unnoticed by the media.
Maybe that's better, he says, because words sting less if you don't make a big deal of them. "When you make something taboo, that makes it all the more delicious on the lips of people who like to shock."
Behavior experts analyze Imus impact
Jeff Greenberg, a psychologist at University of Arizona, did studies on how race affected people's judgments about debaters. Overhearing racist slurs made people in the studies judge the performance of blacks more harshly, unless they did an outstanding job. "Most people were outraged at the slurs, but it still affected their judgment of blacks," Greenberg says.
That's because slurs bring negative stereotypes closer to consciousness, he adds. "Someone with the outreach of Imus can make a big impact."
But people come to the media with their personal stereotypes, and that can affect how slurs influence them, says Sandra Calvert, chairwoman of the psychology department at Georgetown University. Imus' degrading "jokes" would be most likely to reinforce bigotry in listeners who already tend to be sexist and/or racist, Calvert says.
"And if you're kind of ambivalent, it would tip you whichever way you lean," she says.
But Imus' remarks weren't a one-time event. Widespread public outrage followed, including a press conference by the Rutgers women, who expressed their anger and told of their academic achievements.
When bigoted remarks are made, even jokingly, "usually, it's just a hand grenade thrown out there. We don't get to see the faces of the people slurred," says Atlanta media psychologist Robert Simmermon. "Seeing these incredibly articulate, classy women made Imus and his views look really stupid.
"Racism and sexism have been humanized by us seeing their faces. It has the opposite effect to stereotyping because a lot of people are going to think, 'How dare he say what he did about these girls he doesn't even know?' "
Imus' remark is unlikely to shatter the self-esteem of black kids, says psychologist Alice Eagly of Northwestern University. "It's not true that black children have lower self-esteem than white children. If anything, it goes the other way, which suggests that black parents and teachers are doing a lot to ward off this threat."
Says Eagly: "The reaction against (Imus' remark) has been so vigorous and stunning. That's a message, too. It makes very clear people will pay a cost for holding such views."
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