By jimi izrael
Africana.com
Dr. Bill Cosby has caught a lot of ink over comments he made during a May 17 dinner at Constitution Hall in Washington commemorating the Brown vs. Board of Education decision desegregating the nation's public educational system. Coz used the podium to lambaste black youth and the underclass. Nobody is as entitled to read the people of America like America's Favorite Father. But I gotta tell you, Cosby was out of pocket. I wasn't there, but according to the Washington Post's transcript, he sounded like one of those drunken dinner guests who, apropos of nothing, gets up and starts telling tales out of school, as everyone sits around bemused and mortified. Bill Cosby talked down his nose at people who love and revere him, having obviously forgotten the trials and tribulations attached to poverty.
Tenderness and compassion can go a long way.
In his comments, Coz went on about the poor English many poor blacks use: "They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English," he said, according to the Washington Post. "I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you aint,' 'Where you is' . . . And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. . . . Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. . . . You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"
Somehow, Dr. Cosby, you managed.
Clearly, the man has forgotten his comedy records from the '70s and the three movies he did with Sidney Poitier — not to mention Mother, Juggs and Speed — all of which included often blue-ish dialogue liberally seasoned in the vernacular and jive-talk of the day. Cosby went on in his speech talking about all the fatherless children and irresponsible black men, but let's not forget that he, like so many of the poor people he's calling to task, has had some baby-mama drama of his own. I've had mine too, Jesse's had his — in this day and age, that isn't uncommon. But I take umbrage at cats like Coz, who get it in their minds to lay down black agendas from a position of moral authority, as if they do no wrong. The best role models are flawed role models — people just like you and me who rise above their own human frailty — and Cosby would do good to remember that. Like so many of his generation, he wags his finger at the young'uns, ostensibly in the name of love, while failing to see the broken legacy he and his have left behind.
He also went on to talk about the culture of conspicuous consumption so many of us — poor and middle-class — fall into:
"Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal," he declared. "These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids — $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics'..."
Poor people want things just like rich people do, and we could argue that the middle class fuels the cult of conspicuous consumption as some realization of the American Dream. Cosby also used his speech to talk about young people wearing their clothes backwards(?) and the crazy names they sometimes have. But he wasn't done.
"There are no 'political prisoners' ...These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, [saying] 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"
Okay
I'm all for keeping it gulley. But, while I don't believe in "political prisoners" post-1960s either, Cosby is a fool for suggesting that getting shot in the head for stealing pound cake had it coming. That comment is outrageously irresponsible — it's like saying Timothy Thomas deserved to be shot for having too many traffic warrants. Cosby is clearly disconnected, walking around his brownstone in $500 sweaters ranting incredulously about young folk and poor blacks to no one in particular.
To read the rest of this article, please click here
Click here to listen to audio excerpts of Cosby's May 17th invictive.
Sometimes the truth hurts (as it clearly does Mr. Izrael.)
To compare Cosby's records and movies to modern society is asinine. Today's youth are not acting, not performing a stand-up comedy routine. They are REAL LIFE examples of an actual problem.
Jimi derisively refers to Mr. Cosby's insight (gleaned from learning from experience,) as a "position of moral authority." In other cultures & other times, the wisdom of the aged is respected & sought out. In this instance, Jimi (like a spoiled child,) choses to point fingers at Mr. Cosby's past. Mr. Izrael's glass house is hardly as stone-proof as he expects Mr. Cosby's to be (by his own admission to also having had "baby mama drama.")
As for the pound cake/shooting, Jimi obviously can't see the forest for the trees &/or takes the comment completely out of context. The point is not about getting shot in the head over pound cake. The point is that those who go looking for trouble will surely find it.
Sad that Mr. Izrael would rather lash out from the hurt caused by Mr. Cosby's truth than address the real issue.
Kudos to Barbara Williams! Let me commend for your comments!
Posted by: Lana | Tuesday, March 06, 2007 at 02:59 PM
Black people are not the only ones who get over looked. White people do to.Maybe not as much as black people but we do get over looked. Iwould love to buy the education things like hooked on phonics for my children 2 and almost 5. We are beyond poor. My husband doesn't even bring home $300 a week home. We can't afford to pay a house payment sofor no we are living in his grandfathers house who passed away in Aug.He has be searching for a better paying job but no luck.We can't get help from the state and I'm sure there is alot more people in worse shape than us. I think the govermant needs to help the poor people. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer
Posted by: brooke | Friday, April 15, 2005 at 01:07 PM
I agree with Dr. Cosby who is simply echoing the concerns that were voiced earlier in an issue of the Crisis, the NAACP magazine, and those of us who struggle for ways to bring economic and social parity to Black communities. The number of Black children born to Black children is having a disastrous effect on Black communities. These fragile families cannot compete economically or socially in the community at large. The statistics are there: Black teen mothers (many as young as 13 and 14), for example, are less likely to return to high school and finish their education. The so-called Personal Responsibility Act (welfare reform) assures most of them that they will be locked into low paying, low status jobs, assuring in return that their children will be locked into the lower economic rungs of the culture. Meanwhile, the fastest growing rates of HIV infection are among Black women. If we are to survive as an ethnic group, we must openly discuss taboo subjects like responsible parenting to avoid out of wedlock births, HIV, smoking, and rap music that denigrates and devalues women as "bitches" and "whores", and glorifies men as "players" and "pimps", and other media that glorify those behaviors that we know are detrimental to the values that have sustained us as a people since Slavery.
As for Dr. Cosby's "baby's daddy" issue, I hope you'll recall that he challenged the woman and her daughter who claimed his parentage to a DNA/Blood test, which they declined.
When you have the opportunity, visit an inner city school where the demographic of the student body qualifies over 50% of the school for free and reduced lunch; observe the challenges the children, their parents and the school face daily because of the poverty of the children and the poverty of the neighborhoods that send children to the school. Research shows that where parents and the community are engaged in the schools, children achieve and the school improves. But if parents and the community are locked into low paying, low status jobs (or unemployment) because THEY are not educated or prepared, then it is a struggle for them to get the opportunity to be involved in the school, and they cannot be engaged in the education of the community's children. As a people, we will never escape poverty and reliance upon others until we empower our communities economically and socially. And we cannot empower our communities until we get control of our families: turn off the TV sets (Black kids watch many hours more of TV than White kids), go to school as a student and learn to read, do math, and think critically, go to the library and do home work, establish and volunteer in community projects (especially schools) that develop stocks of social capital for the community, give your kids a curfew and don't let them roam the streets at night, and don't have a baby until you can pay for him or her yourself and give him or her a stable, nurturing home.
As editor of this newsletter, you have an extraordinary power to help lead Black people into more productive, positive activities than beating on Bill Cosby or anybody else who broaches taboo subjects. Cosby is not the problem, YOU are unless you use your "bully pulpit" to guide our people to the light.
Posted by: Barbara Williams | Friday, May 28, 2004 at 10:41 AM
I agree with Dr. Cosby who is simply echoing the concerns that were voiced earlier in an issue of the Crisis, the NAACP magazine, and those of us who struggle for ways to bring economic and social parity to Black communities. The number of Black children born to Black children is having a disastrous effect on Black communities. These fragile families cannot compete economically or socially in the community at large. The statistics are there: Black teen mothers (many as young as 13 and 14), for example, are less likely to return to high school and finish their education. The so-called Personal Responsibility Act (welfare reform) assures most of them that they will be locked into low paying, low status jobs, assuring in return that their children will be locked into the lower economic rungs of the culture. Meanwhile, the fastest growing rates of HIV infection are among Black women. If we are to survive as an ethnic group, we must openly discuss taboo subjects like responsible parenting to avoid out of wedlock births, HIV, smoking, and rap music that denigrates and devalues women as "bitches" and "whores", and glorifies men as "players" and "pimps", and other media that glorify those behaviors that we know are detrimental to the values that have sustained us as a people since Slavery.
As for Dr. Cosby's "baby's daddy" issue, I hope you'll recall that he challenged the woman and her daughter who claimed his parentage to a DNA/Blood test, which they declined.
When you have the opportunity, visit an inner city school where the demographic of the student body qualifies over 50% of the school for free and reduced lunch; observe the challenges the children, their parents and the school face daily because of the poverty of the children and the poverty of the neighborhoods that send children to the school. Research shows that where parents and the community are engaged in the schools, children achieve and the school improves. But if parents and the community are locked into low paying, low status jobs (or unemployment) because THEY are not educated or prepared, then it is a struggle for them to get the opportunity to be involved in the school, and they cannot be engaged in the education of the community's children. As a people, we will never escape poverty and reliance upon others until we empower our communities economically and socially. And we cannot empower our communities until we get control of our families: turn off the TV sets (Black kids watch many hours more of TV than White kids), go to school as a student and learn to read, do math, and think critically, go to the library and do home work, establish and volunteer in community projects (especially schools) that develop stocks of social capital for the community, give your kids a curfew and don't let them roam the streets at night, and don't have a baby until you can pay for him or her yourself and give him or her a stable, nurturing home.
As editor of this newsletter, you have an extraordinary power to help lead Black people into more productive, positive activities than beating on Bill Cosby or anybody else who broaches taboo subjects. Cosby is not the problem, YOU are unless you use your "bully pulpit" to guide our people to the light.
Posted by: Barbara Williams | Friday, May 28, 2004 at 10:41 AM