The I-Man and Me-Man

Don Imus has been fired. Yesterday, MSNBC ended its simulcast; today, CBS Radio and WFAN ended his radio program. If you don't know what Imus said, you haven't been in the country the last week.
This is a tough one to figure. Imus has done the same show for...decades. He has routinely characterized people by ethnic and gender stereotypes for as long as I have been aware of him. And still, over the last 15 to 20 years, the I-man turned into a player. The guests on his program have been a Who's Who of American politics (from Clinton to McCain and everyone in between) and journalism (from Jeff Greenfield to the Newsweek team to anyone else who had a book to sell). Because Imus has drawn listeners who vote and read and have money.
We have told ourselves that racism and sexism has become limited to the ignorant, illiterate and poor. But as Willie Shakespeare said long ago, "The truth will out." And now it has.
Imus' act hasn't changed. But he'd become accepted, and influential. While everybody knew what he is. But somehow when he said it about Gwen Ifill or William Rhoden, it didn't generate heat.
Then he attacked the Rutgers University women's basketball team. You know, the national runners-up to the University of Tennessee. Coached by one of the genuinely courageous women I have ever heard of. Imus used one of the crassest characterizations of that group of young women that he could have possibly found. One that had no connection to any reality those young women are living. Hey, I couldn't have gotten into Rutgers. I bet Imus couldn't have, either. So he crudely dismissed them as something less than acceptable, and became a pariah in the process.
I hate to admit it, but I have heard worse terms than Imus' used in regard to people of color in Fellowship Halls and Sanctuaries of churches I have pastored. Imus has protested that he is a good man who did a bad thing. I don't know if he is, or isn't. But I have heard people who lived exemplary lives in every other area use the crudest of terms in telling jokes or relating some perceived advantage that a member of a minority group had "unfairly" received because of some preference. And I have rarely done what I should have in those instances, preferring peace to justice. May be that old Don isn't the only one with issues to deal with.
We are still a racist society. That doesn't mean that white people schedule time each day to spew bigotry and hatred at the non-white. It does mean that there are still inherent advantages for the majority, and disadvantages for the minority, that are too blatant to be denied. And leaving all of the protesting of that fact to the minority evidences the majority's comfort with the way things are. In other words, I'm not bad because I'm white, but I sure am suspect if I willingly accept the benefits of being white in America, and don't raise my voice to speak truth to power on behalf of those who do not share my advantage.
It is fascinating to me that Imus' downfall came after attacking athletes. This Sunday, April 15,
is Jackie Robinson Day in Major League Baseball. 60 years ago, Jack Roosevelt Robinson broke baseball's unwritten Iron Curtain and played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Baseball was 7 years ahead of America (in the Brown v. Board of Education ruling) in doing the right thing. Sports led the way then, and may be doing so again.
It has been moving to hear the build up to Sunday's recognition of Mr. Robinson. Several significant players will be wearing his universally retired 42 in Sunday's games. The Dodgers have chosen to have all their players wear Jackie's number. So have the Houston Astros. The Dodgers' decision is obvious, but there were no Houston Astros when Robinson broke the color barrier. The Houston franchise wasn't awarded until after Robinson's career was over. Could their desire to dress up in Jackie's number have anything to do with the fact that the Houston Astros do not have any African-American players on their team? And that they probably would prefer that no one notice that on Jackie Robinson Day?
Jackie Roosevelt led. The Rutgers University women's basketball team is leading. But that still doesn't mean everyone will follow.
I come, proudly, from a liberal family. My father was one of those rabble-rousing pastors who marched to Mayor Loeb's office in 1968 to ask for justice for the sanitation workers. I love the famous picture, taken from behind the Mayor's left side, that reveals his shotgun at the ready under his desk should those rowdy preachers have gotten too far out of line. My grandfather received death threats when, as pastor of St. Luke's Methodist Church, he seated the group of black Memphians who were visiting the great white churches to see if their proclamation of the gospel had any real meaning. It did at St. Luke's! I love that heritage, and embrace it. I raised my children to believe that "in Christ there is no slave or free, Jew or Greek, male or female" and that, in America, "all [people] are created equal."
Then one day, my older daughter, then teen-aged, asked "Dad, would it bother you if I dated a black boy?" I guess that I could have lied and looked good. But I confessed. "Yeah, I know that it shouldn't, but it probably would."
The I-man isn't what he should be. And neither is the Me-man. Or most of those who have decried Imus this last week.
"But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep."