The CEA Forum - Winter/Spring 2007 - SPECIAL SECTION: EMPATHY AND ETHICS - AUTOETHNOGRAPHIES AND ETHICS: STORIES FROM THE "OTHER" SIDE

Oct 15, 2026

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An academic autoethnography and ethics discussion examines racist public discourse through the 2007 Don Imus controversy involving Rutgers women’s basketball. It analyzes how degrading media comments framed black women as demeaning stereotypes, how the team’s response disrupted that norm, and how racism persists as a systemic cultural matrix. The piece links contact-zone theory and autoethnographic representation to student writing pedagogy, arguing that personal storytelling can reposition “others” as moral subjects and shift power relations.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages7

Reading Time18 min

AccessFree to download

SPECIAL SECTION: EMPATHY AND ETHICS

AUTOETHNOGRAPHIES AND ETHICS: STORIES FROM THE "OTHER" SIDE

Don Imus controversy and lessons about racism

Autoethnography, contact zone, and ethical dialogue

First-year writing pedagogy and racial justice

The CEA Forum Winter/Spring 2007: 36.1 SPECIAL SECTION: EMPATHY AND ETHICS AUTOETHNOGRAPHIES AND ETHICS: STORIES FROM THE "OTHER" SIDE Anne Bratach Matthews “That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos That's some nappy-headed hos there.” —Don Imus, former radio show host (Poniewozik) “I'm a woman, and I'm someone's child. I achieve a lot. And unless they've given this name, a ‘ho,' a new definition, then that is not what I am.” —Kia Vaughn, Scarlet Knight (“April 10, 2007 Press Conference Transcribe”) “[A]ll of our accomplishments were lost Our moment was taken away—our moment to celebrate our success, our moment to realize how far we came on and off the court as young women; we were stripped of this moment by the degrading comments by Mr. Imus last Wednesday.” —Heather Zurich, Scarlet Knight (“April 10, 2007”) “[Imus] has flourished in a culture that permits a certain level of objectionable expression that hurts and demeans a wide range of people.” —Leslie Moonves, CBS Corporation Chief Executive (“Rutgers Team Accepts Imus' Apology”)“[Imus's] comments are indicative of greater ills in our culture. It is not just Mr. Imus, and we hope that this will be and serve as a catalyst for change. Let us continue to work hard together to make this world a better place.” —C. Vivian Stringer, Scarlet Knight Coach (“Rutgers Team”) In the spring of 2007, more than 40 years after the advances made by the civil rights movement, and more than 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education decision, white radio talk-show host Don Imus taught us a lesson about racism—but it was not the lesson he thought he was teaching us. His“lesson”—that black women better mind their place—backfired. It told us in no uncertain terms that racism is still business as usual in the United States. While most of my white students would argue passionately that racism is a thing of the past, that it's time to move on, Imus reminded us that just the opposite is true; that he could represent the Scarlet Knights, the Rutgers women's basketball team, as “nappy-headed hos”; that his listeners expected him to say things like that; that—until the young women spoke out against it—advertisers and radio stations paid him to say things like that. At their press conference these young women looked as if they were ata funeral, and in a way they were, for their jubilation over their NCAA tournament performance had died. When Heather Zurich said that she and her teammates had been “stripped of this moment,” she could not have chosen a better word to convey the defilement that no doubt titillated a good part of Imus's audience. Indeed, the hate mail that the team received would suggest that that audience was outraged that it could no longer laugh at jokes about young black women (“Rutgers Team”) . But there is more to the lesson. It is not often that television executives, scholar-athletes, sociologists, and composition theorists agree about the systemic nature of American racism, but such is the case with the “imess”(“Out of the Mouths of Blackness” 73) . Perhaps neither CBS Chief Executive Moonves nor Scarlet Knight Coach Stringer would be surprised to find themselves in the company of sociologist Allan G. Johnson, who points out that we “cling to the idea that racism is just a problem with a few bad whites, rather than seeing how it is connected to a much larger matrix of privilege and oppression”(138) . Moonves and Stringer might also agree with composition theorist Carmen Kynard, who argues that racism is not the problem of certain intractable individuals but of an entire social system (377; Omi and Winant 10) . Imus's remarks were made in the context of a racism so normative that it could have gone unnoticed, had not the Scarlet Knights responded. As Scarlet Knight Essence Carson put it,“You don't get too many opportunities to stand up for what you know is right”(“April 10, 2007”) . Wit

FAQs

What event does the article use to discuss racism and ethics?

It centers on Don Imus’s 2007 racist remarks about Rutgers women’s basketball and the public response that followed.

How does the article interpret the Rutgers team’s response?

It frames the team’s press-conference speech as a disruption of normalized racial discourse, enabling the “others” to speak for themselves rather than be defined by someone else’s story.

How does the author connect autoethnography to teaching and racial justice?

The author assigns autoethnography in first-year writing to help students position themselves as subjects and challenge normative racial narratives, aiming to shift power relations and act ethically.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by SANS