I was hoping it wouldn't happen, but somebody at my job ... somebody white ... asked me yesterday what I thought about syndicated radio host Don Imus' racist "nappy headed hoes" comments directed at the Rutgers University women's basketball team. 

I was hoping it didn't happen, because ever since I heard about it there's been this raging forest fire burning in my stomach that the only way I knew how to control was to say nothing.

Unlike the day Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis, when black guys in my high school roamed campus looking for anybody white  to beat up, I'm not upset at all white people for the actions of one asshole.
But, I still ain't happy.

And, like I told the woman who asked me what I thought, I grew in the south during a time when Birmingham Alabama Police Chief Eugene "Bull" Conner routinely called for German Shepherds and fireman's water hoses to be turned on black people.
And, for what?
All because they were protesting their very public and racist treatment by Birmingham city officials and white business owners in the town. 

That was the 60's.
THIS is the year 2007 and you've still got folks like Imus who think its funny to use not only words that demean, but hurt black people to our core.

I got into this argument with my wife about the whole situation because I believe the flippant use of the words "hoes," "bitches" and "niggas" commonly thrown around by gangsta rappers ... demeaning women and men of their own race ... has made fools like Imus think its acceptable for anybody to say 'em.

My wife thought I was making excuses for what he did, when I was merely pointing out the fact that if those words weren't so widely used in hip-hop music, they wouldn't be so widely used by jackasses like Imus ... both black and white.

There's a guy at my job ... a white guy ... who used to think it was cool to always act and speak with a semi-black dialect.
He'd always act like he was trying to be ... for lack of a better term ... a blue-eyed, soul brother.
I'd always ask him why he talked like that when speaking to me, but he always blew it off.

One day, though, he went too far and ... in what I'm sure he thought was a funny thing to do ... called one of the only four black men in this building a derogatory, racist name.
Us four complained to management, and the guy was immediately called on the carpet by human resources, put on probation for an extended period of time, reprimanded and written up for the entire episode.

He still has his job, but he has drastically changed.
He rarely ... if ever ... speaks to any of us black men anymore.
He also speaks like a regular person and not some jive street hustler trying to be cool.

He learned his lesson.

Imus still has his job, although Monday he begins a two-week suspension imposed by MSNBC, and says he's learned his, too.
One of the problems I have with him still being employed is if the network thought what he did was ethically wrong, as they've said it was, how come he wasn't fired?
If the company I work for thought what the guy here did was ethically wrong, how come he's still employed?

Just today, two of the Imus' biggest advertisers ... Staples and Proctor & Gamble ... jumped overboard and dropped their affiliation with the show, a move that might be just the tip of the iceberg as MSNBC tries to put out the fire his mouth started.

And NBC's Al Roker, one of the country's most well-recognized African American morning show personalities, has called for Imus' resignation (http://allday.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/04/10/116906.aspx).

Going on Rev. Al Sharpton's show to say I'm sorry was a good move.
But not the answer.
Meeting with the Rutgers basketball team is going to be a good move.
But not the answer.

America needs people like Don Imus to keep sticking their foot in their mouth's until it understands that racism is still and will always be a problem.
I've long advocated that a class on racism be taught in schools, from elementary to college, to get everybody on the same page as to what its all about, how it started and how to deal with it.

And deal with it we must, because it's not going away.
In the end, Imus might be the best thing that's happened to race relations in America in a long time.

He might just be the dose of medicine we need to start healing anew.

(Darron Patterson is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Detroit)