BAN 'EXTREME CURSE WORDS,' RAP GURU URGES Daniel Trotta – Reuters A prominent U.S. hip-hop executive wants to eliminate the words "bitch," "ho" and "nigger" from the recording industry, considering them "extreme curse words."
Yesterday's call by Russell Simmons comes less than two weeks after radio shock jock Don Imus lost his nationally syndicated and televised radio show after he called a women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos."
It also came the same day three women police officers in New York said a sergeant had called them "hos" during a recent roll call at a Brooklyn station house.
Tronnette Jackson and Karen Nelson, both black, and Maria Gomez, who is Hispanic, have filed complaints with the New York Police Department's Office of Equal Employment Opportunity.
In a separate incident, a fourth female narcotics officer said a sergeant had used similar language to her after Mr. Imus's outburst, The Associated Press reported.
Mr. Simmons, co-founder of the Def Jam label and a driving force behind hip-hop's huge commercial success, called for voluntary restrictions on the words and setting up an industry watchdog to recommend guidelines for lyrical and visual standards.
"We recommend that the recording and broadcast industries voluntarily remove/bleep/ delete the misogynistic words 'bitch' and 'ho' and the racially offensive word 'nigger,' " he said in a statement with Benjamin Chavis, his co-chairman of the advocacy group Hip-Hop Summit Action Network.
"These three words should be considered with the same objections to obscenity as 'extreme curse words.' "
Their latest remarks represent a sea change from the statement issued by the pair on April 13, a day after Mr. Imus' show was cancelled.
In it, they said offensive references in hip-hop "may be uncomfortable for some to hear, but our job is not to silence or censor that expression."
The Imus controversy stoked a debate in the United States about how to deal with inflammatory words that are widely considered offensive but at the same time commonly and casually used in youth culture.
Black leaders such as Reverend Al Sharpton and Reverend Jesse Jackson have led the charge to suppress offensive words while many artists have argued for freedom of expression. New York City declared a symbolic moratorium on the "n-word" in February.
"Our internal discussions with industry leaders are not about censorship. Our discussions are about the corporate social responsibility of the industry to voluntarily show respect to African Americans and other people of colour, African American women and to all women in lyrics and images," the statement from Mr. Simmons and Mr. Chavis said yesterday.
The network recommended the formation of a Coalition on Broadcast Standards that would consist of leading executives from music, radio and television. |