Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
 Photo courtesy of CityBeat.
Among other questions, several people today have asked about my shirt in this week’s CityBeat—which featured this fantastic article by Kevin Osborne about problems with the Charter Party. Yes, that’s right—bursting forth from my official “Dean of Cincinnati” academic gowns is the slogan “Green Shirts Are for Pimps.” I thought I would give the choice of garb some explanation.
In an article entitled “Rap Music’s Focus on Pimps Does Not Harm Society” (Popular Culture. John Woodward, Ed. Opposing Viewpoints® Series. Greenhaven Press, 2005.), critic Mark Anthony Neal makes some pertinent observations:
...[T]his is another example of how much distance there is between the Civil Rights old guard and the hip hop generation. Whereas the old guard can only see literal pimps, many within the hip hop generation have redefined the word to suit the needs of the post-Civil Rights era world. While the word still alludes to the practice of exploitation, it is no longer solely rooted in some archaic notion of “pimps up, ho’s down.” Much like the word “nigger,” the word “pimp” is a “troublesome word” (as our resident niggerologist Randall Kennedy would suggest). As Nelly cogently described to Sylvester Brown, Jr. in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “What we have been able to do in hip hop is to take a negative and turn it into a positive ... if you pimp something, that means you’re getting the most out of the best of your ability.”
For those concerned about the potential objectification of women, Neal writes the following:
This sentiment was expressed exactly a year ago when organizers of the Pimp Harder fashion show at last year’s Homecoming celebration at Howard University, responded to accusations that they were normalizing pathological behavior. According to organizers Jessica Lima and Megan Moore, they hoped the show would inspire Howard students to “conquer what oppresses them and become pimps in their own right.” For these women the word “pimp” can even be applied to feminist sensibilities. As Moore asserts, “pimping is a state of mind ... a movement about no longer being the victim, a movement where women do not have to take some of the crap that men dish out.”
All of this, in a matter of speaking, is just my way of explaining the philosophy of my wardrobe choice for a story about the little guy taking on some big guys on the Cincinnati political stage.
So, yes, that is my message to the Charter Party: You have officially been pimped. (Insert footage of me lifting up the fabric on Jeff Cramerding’s shoulder, and letting it slap back into him.)
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