Ellis Henican: Is ban on bad words the answer?

Is ban on bad words the answer?

As a white guy who grew up in the South, here's one thing I know: The first time I heard the N-word, it wasn't off the lips of some young Or the second time. Or the third time.

Back then, white people used the word a whole lot more freely than black people did - and with sinister intent. It was never a term of endearment, I can So it's a little strange, honestly, how the outrage over Don Imus' How did this happen? What does it mean?

Russell Simmons, down from his Def Jam perch, spent the weekend with top executives from the music industry, trying to craft an agreement that would play. You don't want nasty? Buy rap-lite!

What we got instead of an "extreme curse words" - "bitches," "hos" and the N-word. But will Simmons' demands ever be taken seriously? And what if they are?

Turns out Michael Eric Dyson had the same questions I did yesterday. Dyson is often described as America's leading hip-hop intellectual. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania, he has written books including Women.

" His next one, "Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip-Hop," confronts The problem goes a whole lot deeper than a few offensive words, he said. "We think when we get rid of 'bitch' and 'ho' the words, we get rid of bitch and ho the ideas.

If only this were that easy." He'd like the words to be avoided, he said, especially the sexist ones. "Don't get me wrong," he said.

"But we have to take a longer, deeper look at a "They romanticize their mothers and revile their baby-mothers. That's a big part of what this phenomenon is about, a lingering crisis for black men about the image and vision of the women in their lives. It's 'Oh, my mama, things about the women who brought their children into the world.

" Some of hip-hop's harshest critics, Dyson said, would do well to look inside themselves. That includes whites, older blacks, even the civil-rights "All our hands are dirty and bloody," Dyson said. "I applaud the honesty of hip-hop at least to confront its own boundaries.

But we shouldn't be smug about this. I challenge Reverend Sharpton and Reverend Jackson and our black churches, many of whom will not even entertain the idea of a woman in their pulpit. Will our next step be to challenge the sexist practices in churches that, quite frankly, have a much broader impact on the masses of black people Women still earn 69 cents on the dollar, he said.

"They don't have choice over their bodies. They are assaulted from every point of the culture." This isn't exactly new, Dyson said.

For generations, adults have had complaints about young people and their threatening music. "Every argument about hip-hop has been made about bebop," he said. "And rhythm and blues.

Rock and roll itself is a reference to doing the nasty. Now we look back and we wish we had Elvis." It's good, he said, that this conversation is finally happening, even if the first big proposal is narrow and hopelessly naive.

"But in the scapegoating and stigmatizing, we shouldn't miss an opportunity culture. Or, with the exception of Don Imus, is this just another ancient problem that ends up being hung on the backs of young black men?