Why 'Ho' Is So Hurtful
KIPP's firm emphasis on encouraging achievement is an attempt to ease the powerful grip of peer culture on too many black children and fill the gap in their lives at home. The greatest single problem in American life is related, to a significant degree, to the one institution most inaccessible to social intervention-to wit, the family. One reason that impoverished Asian students at inferior city schools outperform their black and Hispanic classmates is the emphasis that Asian parents put on education.
The failure to complete high school is almost the equivalent of economic suicide. Those who drop out have lives that are marked by increased rates of crime, drug use, and gang membership. The street culture not only reflects a deeply dysfunctional society but perpetuates what it celebrates. So it is imperative that we address these issues that so often manifest themselves in the attempts by black males to demean striving black females. That is what we see in the language of the street, and that is what was regurgitated by Don Imus: When he had to call forth from his subconscious a way to react to the women of the Rutgers basketball team, he could only think of "nappy headed ho's."
Imus has helped reset the boundaries of acceptable speech. But we must go further, reawakening awareness of the unmet needs of our society.
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