[Vision2020] Double Standard

[Art Deco]

Rutgers coach has history of standing firm

By Kelly Whiteside, USA TODAY
PISCATAWAY, N.J. - It was the first story that rushed to mind when she heard the hurtful words. In an instant, she was 16 all over again.
When Rutgers women's basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer was told radio host Don Imus called her team "nappy-headed hos" after its national title game with Tennessee, her thoughts rushed back to high school when she was cut from the cheerleading squad because of her race.

In the mid-1960s, there were no girls sports teams at German Township (Pa.) High, so Stringer tried out for the cheerleading squad. She was the best at back flips and roundabouts, but that wasn't good enough. 

That night, a local NAACP leader stopped by her house in Edenborn, Pa., and persuaded her parents to let their daughter go before the school board. She was embarrassed and scared. Then her father, Buddy Stoner, a coal miner, told her something that is just as powerful today.

He said, "It might not be about you but about future generations of young women. If you don't stand up for something, you'll fall for anything."

And his daughter became the first black cheerleader at her high school.

When Stringer's Rutgers players gathered in her office Monday, she shared the story with them. "The moral of Coach Stringer's story is that don't let anyone stop you," said junior guard Matee Ajavon, who emigrated from Liberia and was raised in Newark.

"It was life-altering," Stringer said Tuesday of that incident more than 40 years ago. The same could be said of the news conference in which Stringer and her players talked publicly for the first time about the controversy.

They said they would meet with Imus privately next Tuesday. 

One by one, behind a curtained area a few feet from the court where they just completed their finest season, the Scarlet Knights introduced - and defined - themselves. 

"What hurts the most about this situation is Mr. Imus knows not one of us personally," sophomore guard Heather Zurich said. "These are my teammates, my family. We were insulted, and, yes, we are angry."

When junior captain Essence Carson said in her opening statement that Imus has "stolen a moment of pure grace for us," she captured the essence of the hour-plus long news conference. 

"Less than 24 hours after they had accomplished so much . we had to experience racist and sexist remarks that are deplorable, despicable and abominable and unconscionable," Stringer said. 

Stringer has endured much during her Hall of Fame career and 36 years as a head coach. She was the first coach in men's or women's basketball to take three schools to the Final Four. 

During her first trip to the Final Four in 1982 with Cheyney, she learned her infant daughter, Nina, had spinal meningitis. "My heart has never been light in going to a Final Four," she said Tuesday. 

In her second trip with Iowa at the 1993 Final Four, she was grieving after the death of her husband, Bill, to a heart attack. Her two trips to the Final Four with Rutgers in 2000 and 2007 have not been easy, either. 

Few expected this season's team to contend for the title. With five freshmen and no seniors, the Scarlet Knights started the season 2-4. They were a No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament, forced to beat Michigan State on its home court in the second round and then upset No. 1 Duke, a team they had lost to by 40 points in early December. They got past loaded LSU in the national semifinal before losing to No. 1 Tennessee 59-46 last Tuesday.

Then came Imus' comments as they were unpacking their bags.

Tuesday, hours after the news conference ended, after the national TV networks finished their interviews, after Hillary Clinton called to lend her support, Stringer stood outside the locker room and talked about being 16 and her first public battle with racism.

"My father said to me, 'Vivian, you have to take a stand,' " Stringer said. "That's why I told my team that story." Then, she smiled. Her team had done just that. They stood up.






Rutgers women block Imus' shot with classy stand

By Christine Brennan, USA TODAY
Most women can't dunk, so how do we explain what happened Tuesday to Don Imus at Rutgers?
How do we explain how 10 college women, none of them particularly well-known nor even remotely as recognizable as the now-radioactively infamous "I-Man," completely outclassed and outsmarted a man who has spent nearly 40 years in the public eye?

How do we explain what these women did for themselves, for their team, for their school, for their sport and for the nation's perception of female athletes in the face of one of the most withering media firestorms any athlete, male or female, pro or amateur, will ever have to face?

As the Rutgers Scarlet Knights stepped to the microphone at their nationally televised news conference, one by one, to introduce themselves, say a polite hello or answer a question - in complete, comprehensible sentences, we might add, hardly typical jockspeak - Don Imus looked worse by the minute, didn't he?

Just how out of touch is this man, to say the disgusting things he said about this group of young women, of all people - the young women we as a nation saw and were so impressed with on our TV screens all day? 

"These young ladies who sit before you are valedictorians of their classes, future doctors, musical prodigies and, yes, even Girl Scouts," Rutgers Coach C. Vivian Stringer said at the news conference, and she wasn't kidding. One of them, team captain Essence Carson, is a music major who plays four instruments, which would be a news flash to Imus, who last week called Carson and her nine teammates "nappy-headed hos."

"These young ladies are the best the nation has to offer," Stringer said, "and we are so very fortunate to have them here at Rutgers. They are ladies of class and distinction; they are articulate, they are brilliant. They are God's representatives in every sense of the word."

If Imus doesn't lose his job over his reprehensible comments, he should be fired for being so clueless that he apparently has no idea what kind of women we as a nation are producing through competitive sports. 

"They are 18-, 19-, 20-year-old women who came here to get an education and reach their gifts for all to see," Stringer said. "These are young women little girls look up to. . There is a bigger issue here, more than the basketball team. It's all women athletes, it's all women."

When an issue like this explodes in our culture, the first outrage usually is racial, the second, gender-related. And so it is in this case. First came Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, weighing in loudly, metaphorically shutting down the factory. Then came the women's voices, not quite so full of force. Their reaction appeared more muted because the mainstream sports media rarely pay as much attention to women's issues as they do to African-American issues, at least in part because equality in women's sports has been a national topic only since the passage of Title IX in June 1972.

In the Imus case, the racial component has helped give voice to the gender issue: The fact that the nation's No. 2 basketball team has been treated with such utter disregard by a national media powerhouse. Imus thrives in a male-dominated, trash-talking world, where it's often open season on women. While Imus uttered repulsive words that others certainly would not use, let's not kid ourselves. On every college campus, there's a male athlete or coach who under his breath has made fun of a female athlete in the last week or two, guaranteed.

So how important was that appearance by the Rutgers team on all those cable channels during the day, then leading the network news at night? 

"They spoke with such dignity, as the decent, respectable, upstanding student-athletes they are," said Women's Sports Foundation President Aimee Mullins. "They showed the ability to be bigger than their attacker. That was so uplifting."

There are steppingstones that link the short history of women's sports after Title IX. There's Billie Jean King, the U.S. women stars of the Olympics, the 1999 U.S. World Cup soccer team, the Williams sisters - and now this. A group of 10 female athletes, standing tall and proud, as the nation turns its head to look.

A slam-dunk? On second thought, it was even better than that.





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bev Bafus" <bevbafus at verizon.net>
To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 5:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Double Standard


>J and others...
> 
> Ok, I'll bite on this one, and no, I'm not angry.  :)
> 
> There is a double standard, but not necessarily just with blacks.
> 
> What difference is there in name calling if someone of Asian decent is
> called a "gook" or "chink", or a black is called "nigger"?
> 
> We had a serious problem with this when my son was in school - he was
> constantly called a "gook" with no consequences, but woe unto him if he
> called someone a "redneck", or used the word "retard".
> 
> I have my prejudices...  which I must say are mostly cultural rather than
> racial, since we have a rainbow of skin colors in our family.
> 
> However, the problem with labels and name calling is the intent behind them.
> It is just as hurtful to call someone "four eyes" or "lard butt" as it is to
> call attention negatively to their skin color.
> 
> I think the double standard is perceived when a group uses a negative label
> within their group as a bonding label.  However, we should be concerned with
> any demeaning language - no matter what image or group of people is being
> attacked.  (Short people of the world - unite!!!)  :)
> 
> Thanks
> Bev Bafus
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com
> [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]On Behalf Of J Ford
> Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 12:42 PM
> To: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: [Vision2020] Double Standard
> 
> 
> 
> Ok, so I am acknowledging ahead of time that I KNOW I AM GOING TO MAKE
> PEOPLE ANGRY, but I really think this is something that needs to be
> explored; the following story makes me angry.  Not because of what the radio
> personality said, but because of the fire that got lited up because of what
> he said.  QUESTION:  Why is it ok for blacks/negros/"African Americans" to
> use the word (yep! gonna say it) "nigger" when talking or singing or acting
> to/about/for/with other blacks/negros/"African Americans" and not ok for the
> rest of the world to?  And why is it ok for them to degrade, harass, and
> otherwise demean their women folk, but if someone else says anything even
> remotely disparaging or something that is taken as such, they are to be
> fired/killed/hurt, etc?  When do you draw the line and where is it drawn up
> that the blacks/negros/"African Americans" can mistreat their people, call
> them names, kill them, etc. and we (as a community of man) do nothing about
> them?  Such as ask for them to be fired from whatever job they are in (be it
> their music, acting, radio, CEO, positions?)  Why is any comment made, one
> of  a "racially charged" genre?
> 
> Why is there two rather obvious and distinct rules that govern what the
> blacks/negros/"African Americans" can/are allowed/will do and what the rest
> of us are allowed to do or forced not to do?
> 
> Just when did the term nigger become one of endearment for the
> blacks/negros/"African American" community?  I hear them using this word in
> anger, jest, as a greeting - you name it, they say it.  BUT, let a white
> person do so and BAM!!! Literally - BAM!!!
> 
> And, finally, since when is it ok or when did it become ok for the
> blacks/negros/"African Americans" to call a white person a nigger and they
> not get bashed for it?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> NEW YORK - Even if talk show host Don Imus survives the storm of protest
> swirling around him, his employers are already feeling the effects of his
> racially charged comments last week as advertisers pull out of his
> nationally distributed radio show.
> 
> General Motors Corp., a significant advertiser on the show, said on
> Wednesday that it was suspending its advertising but could resume it at a
> later date. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that American Express
> and GlaxoSmithKline also were pulling their ads.
> 
> This is a very fluid situation, and well just continue to monitor it as it
> goes forward when he returns to the air, GM spokeswoman Ryndee Carney said,
> adding that GM would continue to support Imus charitable efforts for
> children dealing with cancer and autism.
> 
> Imus show originates on the New York radio station WFAN, owned by CBS
> Corp., and is distributed nationally on radio by Westwood One. It is
> simulcast on the MSNBC cable network, which is owned by General Electric
> Co.s NBC Universal unit. CBS owns an 18 percent stake in Westwood One and
> also manages the company (MSNBC TV is wholly owned by NBC Universal.
> MSNBC.com is a joint venture between NBC Universal and Microsoft).
> 
> Procter & Gamble Co. and the office supply chain Staples Inc. have also said
> they would pull out, and Bigelow Tea said it was considering doing so. How
> many other advertisers follow suit could depend largely on how Imus handles
> the fallout from the controversy.
> 
> 
> J  :]
> 
> _________________________________________________________________
> Interest Rates Fall Again! $430,000 Mortgage for $1,399/mo - Calculate new
> payment
> http://www.lowermybills.com/lre/index.jsp?sourceid=lmb-9632-18679&moid=7581
> 
> 
> =======================================================
> List services made available by First Step Internet, 
> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.   
>               http://www.fsr.net                       
>          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> =======================================================
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20070411/fb26b38d/attachment-0001.html