Burying Don Imus Michael Awkward by Michael Awkward 9780816667413, 0816667411 instant download after payment.

“That’s some nappy-headed hos.” With these now-infamous words,
uttered in 2007 to describe the supposed appearance of the Rutgers
women’s basketball team, the radio talk show host Don Imus became the
improbable focus of a heated national discussion on race, gender, and
the power of language. Excoriated in the media as racist and sexist,
Imus quickly lost the corporate sponsorships that had made his show so
lucrative and, despite a public meeting with the Rutgers athletes and
their coach to apologize for his comments, was fired by CBS two weeks
later. In Burying Don Imus, Michael Awkward provides the first balanced, critical analysis of Imus’s comments and the public outrage they provoked.

Written
from the singular perspective of a black intellectual with both a
long-standing commitment to feminism and a deep familiarity with—and
appreciation of—Imus in the Morning, this book contends that
the reaction to the insult ignored the nature of Imus’s contributions to
popular culture and political debate while eliding the real and very
complicated issues within contemporary racial politics. Awkward’s
probing account analyzes the responses within the African-American
community as reflective of deep-seated anxieties rooted in the
collective trauma resulting from centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, and
racial violence. Placing the controversy in multiple contexts, he
addresses Imus’s public persona and the satirical intent of his show,
and delves into such charged topics as the perception of women athletes
in American culture, the tradition of racist humor, the sexist language
of hip-hop, and the politics of black hairstyles. Awkward also
juxtaposes the Imus incident with other recent controversies, including
the rape accusations leveled against white players on Duke University’s
lacrosse team in 2006, in order to demonstrate how sensational
spectacles of racism play out in the media again and again.