Blackguards and Nappy Headed Hos

I have included Bob Herbert's NY Times editorial "Words as Weapons"(4/23/07) below. Herbert shows that the press coverage of Don Imus's ill fated "nappy headed ho's" comment has been transmogrified. The events that transpire--as effects of the public consciousness of Imus's comments-- demonstrate the need for media constraints on this kind of racially charged language. But other issues are raised implicitly in this article and not addressed. I wish to address one particular issue, namely, the role of the speaker's intention that is ignored in both the original media circus regarding the Imus event but also its conspicuous absence in Herbert's portrayal of the events. First, however, you must read:

Words as Weapons

By BOB HERBERT
Published: April 23, 2007 NY Times
Just days after Don Imus was taken off the air for a slur hurled at members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, a police sergeant conducting a roll call at a precinct in Brooklyn is reported to have called the three female officers in the room “hos” as he gave them an order to stand up. The women, two of whom are black and one a Latina, refused to stand.
Another officer, unable to resist the great “fun” of mocking his female colleagues, is reported to have called out, “No, sergeant, not just hos, but nappy-headed hos.” The women said they were stunned almost to the point of disbelief by the comments. They were the only women in the gathering of 17 police officers in the room, including the supervising sergeant. There was a sickening quality to the moment. The women said they felt violated, hurt and humiliated.
The incident occurred on April 15, a Sunday, at the 70th Precinct, which gained national notoriety in 1997 as the precinct in which Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant, was sodomized by police officers with a broken broomstick. The three women, Tronnette Jackson, 36, Karen Nelson, 31, and Maria Gomez, 29, said they were attending a routine roll call session when Sgt. Carlos Mateo, referring to them, said, “Stand up, hos.” The Imus controversy, in which Mr. Imus had referred to the Rutgers players as “nappy-headed hos,” was still big news and on everyone’s mind. The three women remained seated.
They said another police officer, Ralph Montanez, then chimed in: “No, sergeant, not just hos, but nappy-headed hos.”
The women remained silent, and seated.
Sergeant Mateo is reported to have said, “Jackson and Gomez, why aren’t you standing?”
Another police officer said to the sergeant, “They are offended and they are protesting that you called them hos.”
This is just one example of the myriad ways in which racist and sexist comments like Mr. Imus’s help to poison the atmosphere all around us. Another example occurred two days prior to this incident when a narcotics sergeant in Queens is alleged to have “jokingly” said to a black female officer, “Don’t give me no lip or I’ll have to call you a nappy-headed ho.”
One of the toughest points to get across in this society is that racism and sexism are always contemptible, and are never harmless. The targets of racist and sexist comments should not just swallow the insults. They should react as if they’d been slapped in the face. The three women in the 70th Precinct case have decided to fight back. Their initial complaint to Sergeant Mateo, immediately after the roll call, was brushed aside, they said. They then complained to the precinct’s integrity control officer and hired a lawyer, Bonita Zelman. This morning they will file a complaint in federal court, asserting that the degrading comments at the roll call amounted to illegal discrimination against them based on their gender and ethnic background. This is not a small matter. It’s fair to wonder, for example, how eager a supervisor might be to recommend a major promotion for an employee he refers to as a “ho.”
“We have tremendous concern about the effect of language like this on women police officers,” said Ms. Zelman, “particularly women of color trying to make their way in the largely white male bureaucracy of a police department.” Also concerned about the effect of language like this is the police commissioner, Ray Kelly. Discussing the 70th Precinct case, he told me yesterday that he found the comments “despicable.” He declined to go into much detail because the matter is being investigated by the department’s Equal Employment Opportunity division.
But the department let it be known that Sergeant Mateo had been transferred out of the 70th Precinct and would no longer be serving in a supervisory position. Both he and Officer Montanez could be subject to disciplinary charges.
Commissioner Kelly said he found the entire matter “very, very disturbing” because the city had worked hard over the past few years to make the Police Department a place where women and minorities “could feel at home.”
The Queens narcotics sergeant is also likely to face disciplinary action by the department, which has been infected, like other organizations around the country, with what Ms. Zelman calls the “Imus virus.”
End of Herbert's op ed piece.


Now I would like to focus on the centerpiece of this exquisite article. I quote: "The Imus controversy, in which Mr. Imus had referred to the Rutgers players as “nappy-headed hos,” was still big news and on everyone’s mind. The three women remained seated.
They said another police officer, Ralph Montanez, then chimed in: “No, sergeant, not just hos, but nappy-headed hos.”
The women remained silent, and seated.
Sergeant Mateo is reported to have said, “Jackson and Gomez, why aren’t you standing?”
Another police officer said to the sergeant, “They are offended and they are protesting that you called them hos.”
This is just one example of the myriad ways in which racist and sexist comments like Mr. Imus’s help to poison the atmosphere all around us. (emphasis added)Another example occurred two days prior to this incident when a narcotics sergeant in Queens is alleged to have “jokingly” said to a black female officer, “Don’t give me no lip or I’ll have to call you a nappy-headed ho.”" (Herbert) Here Herbert places (as he should) great emphasis on the effects of the utterance and not on the speaker's intention while making the speech act. With that emphasis, that is, in emphasizing the effects these words have in just these kind of situations, we understand the power relationship of Sergeant Mateo to the female officers to be one of unequals (a supervisor and a worker) and therefore an inappropriate manner of speech for such an occasion. Here, the force of that utterance under these conditions (say, a whole history of inequality of race and gender) cannot but be construed as antagonistic and poisonous.

But--and this is the point I have been trying to make all along--if we focus on the speaker's intention (the illocutionary force) we may get a different picture than the one the victim's proclaim. Here we may (plausibly) see a good natured effort, perhaps clumsily executed, at humor and good will. To be able to joke with somebody about sensitive matters is almost universally taken as a sign of friendship and comraderie. Now and again friends err in their expressions of affection, of course, and it is not hard to imagine that Imus was trying to convey a sense of familiarity and acceptance of these magnificent female athletes, equally beautiful and horrible to behold all at once. Sergeant Mateo's reference to the female sergeants was a breach of professional conduct, no doubt, but we should have some sympathy for him because his erring attempt to make friends with the females in his department (if that is what he had meant) may be a sign of social progress and not (as in Herbert) taken exclusively to be a threat to equality. Perhaps Sergeant Mateo had tried to express a familarity and acceptance for the ladies, akin to referring to the two "Blackguards" (pronounced "blaggards") O'shaughnessy and O'riley. Mateo can therefore rightly plead poverty of language. We do not yet have a language of joking familiarity with each other. How far we have come, though.