from the Files of Bakari Kitwana

from New York Newsday

Imus returning, and war against hip-hop sexism grows
BY BAKARI KITWANA

Bakari Kitwana is artist-in-residence at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago and the executive director of Rap Sessions: Community Dialogues on Hip-Hop.

October 14, 2007

It's been six months since Don Imus' hateful comments about Rutgers University's black female basketball players caused a national backlash against the shock jock and against hip-hop's representation of women. What has been the result?

Imus lost his job, scored a huge settlement with his former employer and is soon to begin another cushy job behind the microphone (at ABC Radio). No love lost for Imus.

Black community leaders and grassroots activists who felt he was out of line continue to wage a moral civil war against the entertainment industry's demeaning representations of black women. It is a battle that began long before Imus helped shine a spotlight on hip-hop's gender problem.

The first salvos were fired in the early 1990s by the National Political Congress of Black Women's C. Delores Tucker and the Abyssinian Baptist Church's Rev. Calvin Butts. Former U.S. Education secretary William Bennett joined arms with Tucker, and in 1994 congressional hearings followed on the impact of so-called "gangsta rap" music.

Also pre-Imus was the 2005 Essence magazine "Take Back the Music" campaign and the months-earlier protests by women at Sarah Lawrence and Spelman colleges. Grassroots efforts like these, as well as those from groups like Hip-Hop Congress and the Hip-Hop Association, never wavered from the call for media reform and balance within the mainstream hip-hop industry: more radio play, video rotation and recording contracts for artists who don't peddle in one-dimensional representation of black women and men.

Imus' idiotic and hateful comments helped raised the level of ire, leading many within the hip-hop community and beyond to conclude that enough is enough. Master P started a profanity-free label called Take a Stand Records. Houston-based rapper Chamillionaire said he'd stop using profanity and racial slurs in his rhymes. The Wonda Women Project, headed by Chicago-based Ang13 and Unmuvabo Vendetta, toured 20 Midwest cities last spring, challenging hip-hop spaces to give way to female MCs.

In the mainstream limelight, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton met pressure from supporters and detractors to return $800,000 raised for her campaign by hip-hop producer Timbaland. The Oprah Winfrey Show devoted two days to town hall meetings on misogyny and hip-hop, but let corporate bigwigs off the hook - instead circling the wagons around the usual suspects. Russell Simmons' Hip-Hop Summit Action Network called on corporate record labels to ban three offensive words. The Rev. Al Sharpton led a March for Decency. The Rev. Delman Coates and his Enough is Enough campaign protested outside the home of BET executive Debra Lee. And in the past few weeks, BET broadcast a town hall meeting, "Hip-Hop vs. America," which aired days after congressional hearings, titled "From Imus to Industry: The Business of Stereotypes and Degradation," convened on hip-hop's representation of black women.

When the smoke clears, Imus may be remembered as nothing more than the catalyst that any good movement needs. But grandstanding, posturing and hot air aside, what substantial improvements have the latest volleys in the hip-hop gender wars produced? I believe that Master P's comments during last week's congressional hearings point us in the right direction.

"Just like the NBA ... we have to form a union that we can control ... that can hit these [rap artists] in their pockets, by saying if you put out this type of music and don't change or think about what you say, we are going to hurt you in your pockets. Then people are going to change because most of these guys are in it for the money."

Though this is a great start, we must go a step further and put gender training at the forefront. Of course, as the revelations of the sexual harassment lawsuit against Madison Square Garden and Knicks' coach Isiah Thomas revealed, this is bigger than hip-hop and than the hip-hop generation. Much like our culture as a whole, the NBA needs gender training as badly as hip-hop does - from the playing court to the boardrooms.

Almost a decade ago, to the chagrin of feminists, pioneering hip-hop journalist Joan Morgan said of her book "When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost": "Hip-Hop made me a better feminist." If hip-hop artists and the fans who emulate them can ever begin to understand what she meant, there still will be hope.

Copyright © 2007, Newsday Inc.