Don Imus Slanders the Women of Rutgers

I feel that I should weigh in on Don Imus-Rutgers controversy. I went to Rutgers University and although I have no way of proving it, I was proud of those young ladies for making the finals before this scandal ever broke. I have followed the remarkable career of Coach Stringer and her Lady Knights for years. I was so proud to see once again the Empire State Building emblazoned with Rutgers Scarlet. College athletics is usually the purview of the Midwest and the Southeast-not the New York City area and certainly not New Jersey. I agree with captain Essence Carson that it is a tragedy that it took this despicable incident to focus New York and the nation's attention on the Lady Knights, rather than their exploits on the hardwood. I agree that Don Imus sullied the women of Rutgers' historic "moment of grace."

Ayn Rand once stated in the Virtue of Selfishness that racism is a psychological security blanket for people who have never achieved anything of their own. It makes sense when you think about it. The majority of men in the South before the Civil War did not own slaves and were in fact dirt poor. They were not educated and owned next to nothing. Yet they fought their hearts out for the South during the Civil War. Many joined the KKK after the war and approved of Jim Crowe segregation laws and violently fought all attempts to expunge such injustice during the Civil Rights movement. Did the lives of such rank and file white southerners improve because of their ill treatment of Black people? Absolutely not. The freedom and enfranchisement of African Americans did not enslave a single white person in the United States. So what would motivate such an intense hatred? The origin of such racism in the majority of white southerners was rooted in their poverty and ignorance. No matter how bad things ever got for a poor white farmer in Arkansas or North Carolina, they could always console themselves that "at least they weren't a n-----."