Imus made these racial and sexist remarks last Wednesday when the Rutgers Scarlet Knights team lost the national collegiate championship game to Tennessee. He called the Tennessee girls "cute." The players and coach of Rutgers team said they were "hurt, angry and disappointed" over Imus' comments.

Realizing that he had gone too far this time, Imus has issued innumerable public apologies. For those uninitiated, "hos" is slang for whores and "nappy-headed" is a racial comment viewed as disparaging by African Americans as it supposedly describes their hair.

In response, the Rutgers team gave a nationally televised news conference from the New Jersey campus this morning.

"We just hope to come to some type of understanding of what the remarks really entailed," said Rutgers team captain Essence Carson. "We [would] just like to express our great hurt … the sadness that [this] has brought to us. We need to get to the point where we don't call women hos; we don't classify African American women as 'nappy-headed hos."

The drama forced CBS Radio and MSNBC to suspend Imus for two weeks in what some feel is not enough for the Don. Imus agreed the suspension was called for. "I think it is appropriate and I'm going to try to serve it with dignity," he said in an interview with the "Today Show" on NBC. "This two-week suspension is not insignificant."

A statement released by the network said Imus was remorseful and embarrassed by the incident and was ready to listen to those who had "raised legitimate expressions of outrage."

Civil-rights leader Al Sharpton was clearly not assuaged by these expressions of humility, "I think it is not nearly enough. It is too little too late," he said.  The National Association of Black Journalists has said that Imus has made many such racist comments in the past and should face the consequences.

But for the Rutgers team, the hurt was palpable. Coach C. Vivian Stringer expressed it best when she said, "We also understood a long time ago that no one can make you feel inferior unless you allow them … that we can't let other people steal our joy."
 

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