Don’t spend any time mourning for Don Imus.

He is a crotchety blow-hard who allowed his cantankerous grousings to venture into hurtful racist and sexist remarks. And on Monday, he will begin serving his two-week suspension from hosting his radio show, “Imus in the Morning.”

Nevertheless, the ugly spectacle of Mr. Imus groveling before racial huckster, the Reverend Al Sharpton, obscures a real issue with deadly consequences in America.

Mr. Imus uttered the indefensible when he made a snarling remark about the Rutger’s women’s basketball team, “that’s some nappy-headed hos there,” on the 39th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination.

The WFAN and MSNBC morning man cannot be excused for his rant even though there is much of that language in the African-American community. With that said, the furor over the Imus episode brings attention to how little is being said about the debasing cultural presence of these profane words both in embattled inner-city neighborhoods and society at large.

The content of much of today’s hiphop is extreme, but sadly no longer surprising. The lyrics of rapper 50 Cent’s “Straight to the Bank” celebrate gangsterism: “Now crip walk to this, now throw it up for that gangsta s—-.” The popular “This is Why I’m Hot” by Mims uses the N-word five times. The highly-downloaded “Laffy Taffy,” by D4L boasts explicit sexual language where a rapper boasts his nickname, “Jolly Rancher,” for a key male part of his anatomy.

The promotional materials for a critically-acclaimed documentary, “Hip Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes,” describes the genre’s treatment of women: “For women of color, misogyny and (mis)representation is two-fold, playing on stereotypes of both gender and race. … Communities of color must also begin to value fighting misogyny and violence against women as a crucial issue.”

The first amendment in America is sacrosanct and nobody is suggesting altering that. But those in the front line of the battle against urban crime are fighting an uphill war against culture. With the exception of New York City, where the rate of homicide has been on the decline, many American cities are experiencing an increase in the murder rate.

One obstacle advocates, religious leaders, and police face is an omnipresent culture of what some label “gangsterism.” Just as the controversy around Mr. Imus has become a civil rights issue, a concerned leadership should see the degrading influence of hip-hop as a civil rights issue. The problem, according to those with an ear to the streets, is the difficulty of raising the volume of the positive messages over the negative content in pop culture.

The lyrics bombard young people with a single-minded ideology that suggests to women they are ‘b——’ and ‘hos’ and to men their role models are gun-wielding thugs.

Four years ago, in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, a group of young women from one of the most crime-riddled streets in the area determined they had had enough with the epidemic of explicit language. I remember them filing into the mayor’s office, where I was the press secretary at the time, for a sit-down about their predicament. Their idea was simple: they would create a community radio station that would broadcast music and positive messages to a community barraged with hateful language.

“It’s gone beyond the limits,” one of the station’s founders, Stephanie Alves, told the Boston Herald in 2003. “Even women are disrespecting themselves. I hear girls calling themselves ‘b——s’ or ‘h’s.’ I just look at them and ask, ‘how can you belittle yourself like that?'”

Since they founded that station, GRLZ, it can be thought of as a healthy alternative to both Mr. Imus and the prevailing wind of the hip-hop culture. Songs listed on their “phat list,” at grlzradio.org, include Whitney Houston’s “You Light Up My Life,” Nas’s “I Can,” and Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.”

The gangster ethos promoted in much of the commercial and mainstream hiphop has grown and mutated. It, for instance, underlies the “Stop Snitchin'” movement, a grassroots campaign of videos and t-shirts that encourages young people not to cooperate with authorities, has become an impediment to law enforcement and contributes to unsafe streets.

There’s no question that one aging morning talk show host is rightly being sanctioned for his hateful comments. But right-minded efforts could be more helpful if directed at a scourge hurting young men and women all across America right now.

Mr. Gitell (gitell.com) is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.