To a degree, who you choose to love is a reflection of who you are. For Mrs. Imus to step in and take her husbands place, I think is wrong. While his fans and sponsors supported him, she married him. One could argue that the public Imus and the private Imus are two different people.
Well, in love and marriage, you also marry an image. You get the private person but the world sees the image. You are responsible for that also. If you choose to marry controversy (and money ), then you need to be willing to take the hits also.
That being said I think it's time to get off the Imus thing. Let us turn our energy toward solution and building. There are enough people analyzing and not enough doing. This site, as I wrote in my first column is also about personal development. OK, we got Imus. But millions of women and people of color will be discriminated against this week. Some will be shot to death by police officers. Many will be framed by over-zealous District Attorneys. What are we going to do about it?
To begin, let us look at this whole notion of "racism." What is it really? Is it something tangible? Does it have weight or mass? Is it's color white?
The way we define racism and react to it needs to be redefined. I think that we, Black people, give it it's power. Now this is not the same as blaming the victim. That is a game I don't tolerate. However, I think we have fell into a social-political trap.
In the context of personal development, one universal tenent is taking full responsibility for your life and your life condition. So to say this or that is caused by racism is to disempower yourself, it is to give power over your life to someone else. Big no-no when you are trying to create wealth!
Certainly racism as we define it today is a factor in the living conditions of people of color, but I think a shift in thinking presents a better, more practical solution. A simplified example is in order.
If I go into a store to order a soda and am told "We don't serve darkies here," what action do we historically take? We boycott, march and picket for the right to get a soda. Talk about the law of diminishing returns! We are fighting racism! We win and get to drink a soda someone probable spit in.
Or we can pool our resources. We can practice better saving skills. We can plan for the long term. We can open our own soda shop. Not only can we now enjoy a soda without saliva in it, but we can even help increase the buying power of the community by hiring another person to work there.
So my point in this simplified examples this. The degree to which we build our own wealth and political power, equals the degree that racism as we know it, shrinks. I don't think "racism" is the problem. I think lack of power, money, group unity is.
