<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16414" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV><SPAN class=inside-head><STRONG><FONT size=6>Rutgers coach has history of
standing firm</FONT></STRONG></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV class=byLine id=byLineTag>By <A class=linkedBylineName
href="http://www.usatoday.com/community/tags/reporter.aspx?id=353">Kelly
Whiteside</A>, USA TODAY</DIV>
<DIV class=inside-copy>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.</DIV>
<P class=inside-copy>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.</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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.
</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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.</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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."</P>
<P class=inside-copy>And his daughter became the first black cheerleader at her
high school.</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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.</P>
<P class=inside-copy>"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.</P>
<P class=inside-copy>They said they would meet with Imus privately next Tuesday.
</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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. </P>
<P class=inside-copy>"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."</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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. </P>
<P class=inside-copy>"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. </P>
<P class=inside-copy>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. </P>
<P class=inside-copy>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. </P>
<P class=inside-copy>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. </P>
<P class=inside-copy>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.</P>
<P class=inside-copy>Then came Imus' comments as they were unpacking their
bags.</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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.</P>
<P class=inside-copy>"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.</P></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=inside-head><FONT size=6><STRONG>Rutgers women block Imus' shot
with classy stand</STRONG></FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV class=byLine id=byLineTag>By <A class=linkedBylineName
href="http://www.usatoday.com/community/tags/reporter.aspx?id=950">Christine
Brennan</A>, USA TODAY</DIV>
<DIV class=inside-copy>Most women can't dunk, so how do we explain what happened
Tuesday to Don Imus at Rutgers?</DIV>
<P class=inside-copy>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?</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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?</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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?</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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? </P>
<P class=inside-copy>"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."</P>
<P class=inside-copy>"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."</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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.
</P>
<P class=inside-copy>"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."</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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.</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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.</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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?
</P>
<P class=inside-copy>"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."</P>
<P class=inside-copy>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.</P>
<P class=inside-copy>A slam-dunk? On second thought, it was even better than
that.</P>
<P class=inside-copy> </P></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>----- Original Message -----
<DIV>From: "Bev Bafus" <<A
href="mailto:bevbafus@verizon.net">bevbafus@verizon.net</A>></DIV>
<DIV>To: <<A
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A>></DIV>
<DIV>Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 5:40 PM</DIV>
<DIV>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Double Standard</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>>J and others...<BR>> <BR>> Ok, I'll bite on this one,
and no, I'm not angry. :)<BR>> <BR>> There is a double standard, but
not necessarily just with blacks.<BR>> <BR>> What difference is there in
name calling if someone of Asian decent is<BR>> called a "gook" or "chink",
or a black is called "nigger"?<BR>> <BR>> We had a serious problem with
this when my son was in school - he was<BR>> constantly called a "gook" with
no consequences, but woe unto him if he<BR>> called someone a "redneck", or
used the word "retard".<BR>> <BR>> I have my prejudices... which I
must say are mostly cultural rather than<BR>> racial, since we have a rainbow
of skin colors in our family.<BR>> <BR>> However, the problem with labels
and name calling is the intent behind them.<BR>> It is just as hurtful to
call someone "four eyes" or "lard butt" as it is to<BR>> call attention
negatively to their skin color.<BR>> <BR>> I think the double standard is
perceived when a group uses a negative label<BR>> within their group as a
bonding label. However, we should be concerned with<BR>> any demeaning
language - no matter what image or group of people is being<BR>>
attacked. (Short people of the world - unite!!!) :)<BR>> <BR>>
Thanks<BR>> Bev Bafus<BR>> <BR>> -----Original Message-----<BR>>
From: <A
href="mailto:vision2020-bounces@moscow.com">vision2020-bounces@moscow.com</A><BR>>
[mailto:vision2020-bounces@moscow.com]On Behalf Of J Ford<BR>> Sent:
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 12:42 PM<BR>> To: <A
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A><BR>> Subject:
[Vision2020] Double Standard<BR>> <BR>> <BR>> <BR>> Ok, so I am
acknowledging ahead of time that I KNOW I AM GOING TO MAKE<BR>> PEOPLE ANGRY,
but I really think this is something that needs to be<BR>> explored; the
following story makes me angry. Not because of what the radio<BR>>
personality said, but because of the fire that got lited up because of
what<BR>> he said. QUESTION: Why is it ok for
blacks/negros/"African Americans" to<BR>> use the word (yep! gonna say it)
"nigger" when talking or singing or acting<BR>> to/about/for/with other
blacks/negros/"African Americans" and not ok for the<BR>> rest of the world
to? And why is it ok for them to degrade, harass, and<BR>> otherwise
demean their women folk, but if someone else says anything even<BR>> remotely
disparaging or something that is taken as such, they are to be<BR>>
fired/killed/hurt, etc? When do you draw the line and where is it drawn
up<BR>> that the blacks/negros/"African Americans" can mistreat their people,
call<BR>> them names, kill them, etc. and we (as a community of man) do
nothing about<BR>> them? Such as ask for them to be fired from whatever
job they are in (be it<BR>> their music, acting, radio, CEO,
positions?) Why is any comment made, one<BR>> of a "racially
charged" genre?<BR>> <BR>> Why is there two rather obvious and distinct
rules that govern what the<BR>> blacks/negros/"African Americans" can/are
allowed/will do and what the rest<BR>> of us are allowed to do or forced not
to do?<BR>> <BR>> Just when did the term nigger become one of endearment
for the<BR>> blacks/negros/"African American" community? I hear them
using this word in<BR>> anger, jest, as a greeting - you name it, they say
it. BUT, let a white<BR>> person do so and BAM!!! Literally -
BAM!!!<BR>> <BR>> And, finally, since when is it ok or when did it become
ok for the<BR>> blacks/negros/"African Americans" to call a white person a
nigger and they<BR>> not get bashed for it?<BR>> <BR>> <BR>>
<BR>> <BR>> NEW YORK - Even if talk show host Don Imus survives the storm
of protest<BR>> swirling around him, his employers are already feeling the
effects of his<BR>> racially charged comments last week as advertisers pull
out of his<BR>> nationally distributed radio show.<BR>> <BR>> General
Motors Corp., a significant advertiser on the show, said on<BR>> Wednesday
that it was suspending its advertising but could resume it at a<BR>> later
date. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that American Express<BR>>
and GlaxoSmithKline also were pulling their ads.<BR>> <BR>> This is a
very fluid situation, and well just continue to monitor it as it<BR>> goes
forward when he returns to the air, GM spokeswoman Ryndee Carney said,<BR>>
adding that GM would continue to support Imus charitable efforts for<BR>>
children dealing with cancer and autism.<BR>> <BR>> Imus show originates
on the New York radio station WFAN, owned by CBS<BR>> Corp., and is
distributed nationally on radio by Westwood One. It is<BR>> simulcast on the
MSNBC cable network, which is owned by General Electric<BR>> Co.s NBC
Universal unit. CBS owns an 18 percent stake in Westwood One and<BR>> also
manages the company (MSNBC TV is wholly owned by NBC Universal.<BR>>
MSNBC.com is a joint venture between NBC Universal and Microsoft).<BR>>
<BR>> Procter & Gamble Co. and the office supply chain Staples Inc. have
also said<BR>> they would pull out, and Bigelow Tea said it was considering
doing so. How<BR>> many other advertisers follow suit could depend largely on
how Imus handles<BR>> the fallout from the controversy.<BR>> <BR>>
<BR>> J :]<BR>> <BR>>
_________________________________________________________________<BR>>
Interest Rates Fall Again! $430,000 Mortgage for $1,399/mo - Calculate
new<BR>> payment<BR>> <A
href="http://www.lowermybills.com/lre/index.jsp?sourceid=lmb-9632-18679&moid=7581">http://www.lowermybills.com/lre/index.jsp?sourceid=lmb-9632-18679&moid=7581</A><BR>>
<BR>> <BR>>
=======================================================<BR>> List
services made available by First Step Internet, <BR>> serving the
communities of the Palouse since 1994.
<BR>>
<A
href="http://www.fsr.net">http://www.fsr.net</A>
<BR>> <A
href="mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com">mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com</A><BR>>
=======================================================<BR>> </BODY></HTML>