[Antiracism] Fw: To the Editor

[Marty Nathan]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Marty Nathan 
To: letters at msnbc.com 
Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2007 1:33 PM
Subject: To the Editor


April 8, 2007

 

I demand the immediate firing of Don Imus and Bernard McGuirk from MSNBC and WFAN-AM and the cancellation of Imus in the Morning by WFAN-AM and MSNBC.

 

The words used by Imus and McGuirk were not just painful insults to young women who have worked their lives to become the best in their sport. They contain the combined racist and sexist attitudes that formed the ideology underlying forced labor, rape and murder of African American women as slaves and then under Jim Crow throughout most of the history of this country. That brutality has been justified by white men denying personhood and womanhood to black women. "Ho's" are Black women objectified, chattel, owned and abused by men. And according to Imus, "nappy-headed" women who accept and like their African hair, are an inferior subset, reflecting his and a racist society's rejection of anything African as beautiful.   

 

Imus' comments are vicious and debilitating not just to those wonderful young Rutgers women whose accomplishments should be and are celebrated by people around the world. They hurt all women and all non-"white" people. They are an offense and embarrassment to me as a white woman, sharing the same skin color as this arrogant troglodyte.

 

Enough is enough. 



1. Imus and McGuirk must be fired without further ado. 

2. MSNBC and WFAN should carry out serious institutional-based investigations into the kind of attitudes that allowed this to happen and then did not lead to immediate firing. 

3. Restitution should be made to the women of Rutgers and other Black women's institutions. 

 

I expect a response.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

 

 

Martha A. Nathan MD

Northampton, MA

 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.hampshire.edu/pipermail/antiracism/attachments/20070408/114c6015/attachment.htm>