May 2007 Issue: "Imus in Us"

Don Imus got himself in deep trouble. I don’t know if he should have been fired. I don’t know if he is racist or sexist or just a man prone to putting his foot in his mouth. What I do know is that, there but for the grace of God, go each of us.

There is, you see, a bit of Imus in us all. Maybe we are smart enough or nice enough or just plain careful enough not to say something as vile as his utterance, but each of us, at one time or another, has said something demeaning to or about some group of people. I know I have.

It is odd how our own hurtful acts stay with us despite our fervent desire to bury them as deeply as possible. Sometimes we don’t even bother bury these painful memories, we, instead, rationalize the act out of existence by saying to ourselves things like, “It wasn’t that big a deal,” or “I was only kidding and I’ll bet the other person knew that all along,” or “I spoke so softly, they probably didn’t hear me anyway.”

I have one of those memories – one that I can’t seem to bury and is way beyond being minimized in my mind by even the most well-honed rationalization. It took place when my children were teenagers—some 20 years ago--and I still remember the moment and the discomfort it created. I was standing at my kitchen counter next to one of my daughter’s best friends – a young man who by heritage was part Japanese. As odd as it may sound to those of you who know of my lack of culinary skills, I have the vague impression that he and I were cooking together. Well, maybe that “cooking” was more likely along the lines of unwrapping some take-out food or maybe as sophisticated as slicing a pizza.

Anyway, for a reason that I can’t recall, I had occasion to refer to Asian food. Somewhere in there I uttered the phrase, “Ching Chong food.” Now, an aside: As I typed those words, I actually had a knot in my stomach and I’ll confess, I am at this point very tempted to madly back space and delete every syllable. I realize, though, that an electronic erasure will have no impact whatsoever on the reality of what happened.

You might think that my emotion is a bit strong. After all, it was hardly the worst of racist slurs. It was, however, stupid and insensitive, and certainly a phrase that wreaks with disrespect for Chinese culture. To make it worse, this young man wasn’t even Chinese so had the effect of disrespecting his specific heritage even more.

As soon as the phrase left my mouth, I regretted it. He didn’t say anything, but there was this nanosecond of silence that screamed embarrassment and hurt feelings and discomfort. You might have expected that I would take advantage of that gap in the banter to apologize, but I didn’t--no excuse for that, just too buried in my own regret to do the right thing. Funny, just this morning when I decided to write this e-zine, I thought of contacting that young man and saying something now.

You know what…. I just might do it.

Sondra Thiederman is a speaker and author on bias-free leadership, diversity, bias-reduction, and cross-cultural issues. She is the author of Making Diversity Work: Seven Steps for Reducing Bias in the Workplace (Chicago: Kaplan Publishing/Dearborn Press, 2003) which is available at her web site or at www.Amazon.com. She can be contacted at:
Sondra Thiederman, Ph.D.
Cross-Cultural Communications
4585 48th Street
San Diego, CA 92115
Phones: 619-583-4478 / 800-858-4478
Fax: 619-583-0304
www.Thiederman.com / STPhD@Thiederman.com

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