All men are created equal? Hm...

Laureen Rikleen argues that that the controversial talkshow host Imus should be brought back on the air after his dismissal following racial comments. While I do not believe that Imus should go back on the air, I agree with Rikleen's point. Nothing has changed about the media since Imus went off-air. Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick held a funeral for the N word, and yet rap artists still freely use the word in their music. However, a white man uses that word, and the entire world stops to point fingers. In my opinion, no one should use the words used by Imus, white or black. If one race receives punishment for inappropriate words, every other race in America should receive the same punishment. Every race, religion, and gender demands equality, but the word's meaning got lost in all the conflict.

For this reason, I think the best example used by Laureen Rikleen was the story of New York Knicks Coach Isaiah Thomas. The basketball coach basically said that when a white man talks extremely disrespectfully to a woman, it is way worse than an African American talking to a woman in the same way. This argument perfectly captures Rikleen's opinion. If Imus were an African American, no one would have cared about his words, but he isn't. He's caucasian, and those disrespectful words came out of a white man's mouth. In our current society, Imus's race makes his words more offensive. That doesn't seem like equality to me.