In the mid-eighties, actor/comedian/writer/director Robert Townsend found
that there were few good acting jobs for black performers. Instead of
crawling up in a fetal position or laying waste to the color bias that
permeated the industry, Townsend decided that this could be a most
opportune moment to take advantage of what others might have thought a
dead end. He charged his credit cards to the hilt and created,not only
an acting job for himself, but for many other black actors. "Hollywood
Shuffle," a comedy commentary on the conditions facing minority actors,
became more than a "cult" hit. It gave Townsend his first directing job
- the first of many. It made him a hot commodity, as a writer, actor,
director; something that may have never happened if not for the lack of
jobs that faced the black actor back then.
Albert Einstein said that "hidden within every problem, lies an
opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem."
Einstein could have easily been talking about Don Imus.
Imus's failings provide us with a great possibility, for if necessity is
the mother of invention, failure must be its father.
The Imus-Rutgers event is a reminder of a problem far larger and of more
consequence than a abhorrent three-word hyphenate, an undeserved insult
to a group of seemingly upstanding young women or the loss of one man's
income and his capacity to help those young cancer victims. But while
tidings prodding us to acknowledge that racism - subtle,
institutionalized or blatant - continues to plague society, is important,
until we actually make something positive out of it, the lesson withers
away under the weight of our own inaction.
Who grasps the opportunity and what actions are taken to turn the problem
into another invention to benefit mankind is anyone's guess. It could
very well be Imus who grabs the ring. But if we never move past the
righteous indignation and begin to use that passion along with our
God-given ingenuity to make the necessary changes to our imperfect world,
the mistakes and failures that are available to provide positive stepping
stones, crucial to our societal growth, will just provide an inevitable
repeat of another, and perhaps even more insidious, Imus.
And that would be a waste of a damn good failure.
Steve Young is the author of "Great Failures of the Extremely
Successful." www.greatfailure.com
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