More Imus Fallout

Now that Don Imus is gone, Al Sharpton has launched two new salvos at hip-hop.

First, Sharpton appeared on CNN and other news outlets to analyze what he categorizes as the "ugliness in hip-hop." However, he was careful to point out that hip-hop's misogyny and language don't give Imus and other older white men in radio a pass for racist remarks.

The "n-word", "b-word", and "h-word" became Anderson Cooper's new vocabulary as panelists debated the issue on CNN. Sharpton seemed to revel in the limelight, which poses new questions for members of the black and hip-hop communities. Can we separate issues from egos?

Second, Sharpton criticized the "stop snitching" campaign on several media outlets. Popularized by Jim Jones and other members of the Dip Set, "stop snitching" is an irritant to Sharpton who pointed out that such behavior may actually harbor felons in the black community.

Snitching to police is "dissed" in hip-hop and the history of police racism and brutality would seem to justify this perspective. However, rapper and activist Chuck D of Public Enemy also weighed in, noting that snitching has been taken out of context to defend the criminal element that victimizes law-abiding and hard working black folks. COINTELPRO and other government agencies used snitches and plants to destroy the Black Panthers, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam (NOI), and the United Negro Improvement Association under Marcus Garvey.

In each case, Russell Simmons, the Def Jam mogul and Ben Chavis, the former NAACP chairman and NOI spokesman for Farrakhan have declared that hip-hop should be censored for derogatory and self-hating language. However, the issue of snitching has yet to be resolved, as Chavis has worked with Jim Jones and Dip Set.