Don Imus and the Tibbs Threshold

"They call me Mister Tibbs!"
-- Sidney Poitier

One of the more difficult lessons to learn in internet writing is that you never really know who's reading, and you never know emotionally how what you write is affecting them unless and until they write back. After a while, you adjust your tone until you get the kind of feedback you want from the kind of audience you want. If you do it right, you'll generate a legion of followers. If you do it wrong, you'll get flamed, despised, ignored and ultimately dismissed.

Radio is the same.

Let me tell you what I think about this latest tempest in a teapot. Well, there are several things. The first thing I think about is 'Effective Resonance' when I think of racist events.  And the rule of Effective Resonance states that the public response to any act of racism should be inversely proportional to the power of the affected party. If there is a racially motivated killing, we should be much more responsive to the murder of an innocent child, than the death of a soldier in combat. The crime against Rosa Parks on that bus meant a great deal more in 1955 than if some redneck takes the front seat from a old black woman today.

With the Imus case it is clear that his comment, no matter how ill-intentioned will have no bearing on the Rutgers women's abilities to play basketball, graduate from college or move forward with their lives. It was an insult that none of them even heard directly, but second hand. It didn't and doesn't affect their power. Consequently, common sense dictates the response that Effective Resonance posits. Generally speaking, here at Cobb, I would dismiss this event as Class Three (the trivial class) Racism, have a Coke and a smile. Next. But there's something else going on here and it's not just Political Correctness.

Counter intutive to Effective Resonance is the Tibbs Threshold. This doesn't deal with power so much as it does with regard to respect. When I came up with the term in 1996 I described it thusly:

let's say that jimrutt got on my last nerve. (personally, i find jim a good adversary most of the time and would never bozo him out) and that his opinion on a subject tangential to black culture, i found not only wrong but downright insulting. to my sophisticated sensibility as a black man, i might find that he has crossed a line at which i am justified in smacking him. that line for me might make no sense whatsoever to many non-blacks. i call it the 'tibbs threshold' after the fictional character played by sidney poitier. in their own environment, the idea that a black man might be so offended that he would strike a white man is something reserved for a short list of offenses. use of the n-word, perhaps. however for mr. tibbs, of elevated bearing and stern stuff, potential offenders have much less breathing room and rightfully so.

Jim Rutt was a character from the Well, back in the day. He went public and 'scribbled' much of his online writing in anticipation of storms of PC backlash attributable to private conversations in a private forum possibly getting public. But the point is that across cultural divides, the signposts are not always clear. As a crusty character you can expect that your insults will be taken more outrageously than you make them when you.

Just as there are Americans who can't locate Iran on a map, yet still think their political opinion about war and peace matters, there are Americans who don't really know jack about black women's attitudes about their hair and sexuality, yet still think their opinion on race matters. Such people are not aware of the Tibbs Threshold.

The difficulty in 2007 is that African Americans have political and social clout. Much more than we did only 20 years ago. Consequently simply because Effective Resonance might work in the favor of the I-Man, crossing the Tibbs Threshold can knock his block off. That's because the Rutgers Women are champions. Yes it's true that even more than the average black woman, they can dish it out and take it, but they've got more dignity than a little, and because of that fact it's more dangerous to insult them. That is common sense too.

It just so happens that TV One, the new black owned and operated TV network (yeah I said it) is airing a 30 year anniversary commemorative edition of Roots, hosted by star LeVar Burton. The family and I watched the first three hours of the miniseries last night which include the tale of the Middle Passage and the Captain's taking, despite his professed Christianity, a black woman as a 'belly warmer'. My daughters have just an inkling of what's going on, but every grown black woman in America has such stories deeply ingrained. My brother Doc called me last night to tell me that a female friend of his told him in response to the Imus tale that black women believe that if they all went natural, black men would abandon them. She said no matter how powerful Condoleeza Rice is, that she would never wear her hair unpressed. For all her power and glory, if she were to wear a short nappy fro, Oprah would be completely undone. Never spit in the wind, never step on Superman's cape and never insult a black woman's hair.

Am I serious?  I don't have to be, black women will flood the zone and give you no uncertain terms.

I don't feel sorry for Imus. He's a big boy, and I'm sure he's stepped in bigger piles before in his life. I'm prepared to defend him from the perspective of Effective Resonance. But Cobb and the Old School is about the politics of social power, not so much the politics of human rights or civil rights. When it comes to black politics, there's no priority or necessity to go after Imus or anyone like him. (And please don't suggest that my defense of William Bennett is like Imus - Imus was straight wrong). So I don't really care what happens to Imus one way or another. However, I'm here to tell you that this is no aberration and it's not merely PC. You simply cannot insult champions, period. The shadow of Mister Tibbs is long here, and there will always be a price to be paid when you test the mettle of blackfolks with real dignity and not just 'self-esteem'. Remember Fuzzy Zoeller? Of course you do. He's more famous for what he did wrong than for whatever he did right. That's the blackness blackball, the new form of social power your parents didn't warn you about. Get used to it.

Many folks, including me, have made the point of the irony of hiphop's continual onslaught of vulgarities against black women. But, to put it bluntly, that's niggas and bitches calling each other niggas and bitches. In other words, every population everywhere on the planet has its lowlife characters and brain-dead subculture, African Americans are no different. It just so happens that in America's entertainment industry we are adept at raising such effluvia to an 'art form'. Only in America can you finance viral marketing campaigns, studio time and distribution deals for idiot savants with names like 'Slim Thug'. It's all part of the larger devolution of Western cultural backbone.

The point is not what idiot savants with airtime do... oops. I guess it is.