By Chauncey Bailey

Bay Area black women are responding to degrading verbal attacks against women punctuated by the Don Imus controversy that swept the country last week.

  Imus, a radio and TV personality, has been fired for calling members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos.” In San Francisco, Amos Brown, president of the NAACP chapter, urged the public to boycott rappers or music that degrade women.

    Now, women are speaking out, too.
   “In light of the innumerable incidents of such verbal assaults from comedians, radio personalities, rap music artists and music industry types who perpetuate these insults, the community’s outcry for enough has reached a boiling point,” said Sandra Varner, a local publicist.
    A call to action to eliminate negative images of all women in the community and larger society was launched during a press conference and forum at the Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland. Organizers want to do away with racist, sexist and misogynistic attacks against women in any form. They said latent expressions of protest and the “quick fix” attitude adopted when “a measure” of progress is achieved are no longer acceptable.
    “For too long, we have settled for placing a bandage on a much deeper social ill. If ‘we’ think we will not find ourselves at this critical juncture in the future, we are mistaken, unless we launch and maintain a concerted effort to restore decency and self-respect among those who threaten to take it away,” said Varner, a forum organizer.
    “In meeting with Don Imus and as a believer in the power of transformation, I hope [Rutgers] Coach [Vivian] Stringer and the members of the Scarlet Knights will come away with an endowed chair in the name of a woman they select, full tuition, book, travel and living expenses scholarships for the members of the team and a letter stating that [Imus] will in fact spend the next two years working with the networks in tandem with a strong team of media diversity consultants to develop and implement a strategic plan to remove hate from radio and other media,” said Daphne Muse, a local writer and activist. “Like so many other things in this society, hate — racism, misogyny, classism, homophobia — has become commodified, and it all needs to be flushed down the commode.”
    “If we want to make a difference and change what we do not like, we need to know that our dollars have a real voice and a real impact,” said Gloria Cox Crowell.
    Rev. Valerie Brown-Troutt said, “Black women in America historically have been disfigured images and in popular mind are disfigured images. … These images have been forwarded by slavery, writers of fiction, history and drama, not hip-hop. Most of the sources ... sit on the shelves of our libraries, quite ready to convey the most grotesque impressions to future generations. … We must become teachers of our truth.
   “The young women at Rutgers … belong to two groups historically labeled as intellectually inferior: women and black. They will continue to find their intellectual capabilities discredited,” she said.
    Women at the forum issued a 10-point action plan for the community, including:
• Monitor your favorite radio station, TVstation and newspaper for the next 30 days for negative comments and advertising regarding women. Document your findings.
• Dedicate one day each month to sending a letter or email message to your favorite radio station, TV station and newspaper commenting on what you have noticed as negative or positive media coverage. Do not only address offenses; also compliment and support journalism that is noteworthy.
• Monitor DVDs, videos and music lyrics for offensive images and language. Document your findings. Write letters to entertainment artists and executives.
• Sit down with a person 18 years old or younger in your community to ask them how they feel about themselves and what their goals and aspirations are for the future.
• If you have children in your family circle who listen to or watch derogatory and inflammatory entertainment, ask them to take one day a week to read a book intead.