Bill Cosby should suck Jello through a straw.
That’s my short answer to every person who stops me in my tracks in order to ask the question, “Do you know what Bill Cosby said?”
“Well, it’s the truth,” one replied, his euphoria fading as quickly as his presence, a brandishment of his uttermost disappointment in me. Not only is he a staunch Democrat but he wears his tolerance with pride. Undoubtedly he found solace with another workmate who claims to be a Libertarian and in his delineation of that vein often shares his contempt of “those blacks” who “wear too many chains”, “walk that way”, and speak the dialect Mr. Cosby finds so offensive. That’s not to say this person would marry a black woman even if she passed his white-friendly test. When I inquired, he reacted as if I were crazy, saying he’d never consider it. He worried that if the DNA of his spouse were dominant it would ruin the family profile.
Justin Felux reasons why opinions like Cosby’s are disseminated so widely by the conservative media and is disturbed they’re not significantly decried by the rest. I’m disturbed as well and what follows are observations gleaned from a lifetime of experience. Racism is pandemic amongst Caucasians who are covetous of an inherently supremacist role. Pale faced underachievers are held in higher esteem than the most accomplished of darker contemporaries; it’s not their abilities that get them hired it’s affirmative action; humble gratitude is required on demand and performance must be above and beyond the call of duty in order to waylay comeuppance they are less deserving of the job than the white they cheated out of it; whites may have bad days but if you’re black and late a few minutes it’s because you’re born lazy and getting over. Posit this. When someone of the Jewish persuasion criticises Israel they are labelled self-haters and Anti-Semitic yet blacks are praised only when they join in a melee determined to wipe out any trace of ethnicity that offends the white man. Jews are discriminated against so deserve their own state. Blacks are discriminated against but bring it on themselves by not adopting the behaviour of their oppressor. Cosby made the gross analogy that blacks deserve to be shot for running off with the pound cake. What Cosby doesn’t admit is that no matter how “white” blacks become dessert is still the crumbs.
Howard University has not released the speech, or I can’t find it, which is a disappointment. Clarence Page supports Cosby in his assertion on the Tavis Smiley show that his remarks were taken out of context. He really meant to say that “some” not all poor folks are failing to hold up their end in this deal. According to Cosby, the “50% dropout in school. Very, very important because with that, that means 50% of our African American males, from grade 9 through 12, in certain parts of the city, have no education.”
I finally found one page that includes references to both of Mr. Cosby’s points that the national dropout rate for African Americans is around 50% (unlike the National Center for Educational Statistics which puts it much lower, not surprisingly, since the system self-reports in its own favour) and that the problem “ is most severe in several hundred big-city schools“. Females if not included in his number would mean the total dropout rate is nearly 100% but he didn’t ignore the sex entirely. They’re the language manglers who are buying expensive shoes instead of phonics programmes.
I believe this situation pains Mr. Cosby on some level and in a tough love, authoritative way he wants people to get his message. Since this talkathon precedes the June 20th premier of his latest TV offering, “Fatherhood”, it’ll be interesting to see how this message is incorporated into that cartoon. He’s had 6 years to hone it since he last delivered it at Howard University. I bet a lot of white folks will be tuning in.
I hope in this continuing dialogue he draws upon the findings of studies such as Brown at 50: The Unfulfilled Promise and Brown at 50: King’s Dream or Plessy’s Nightmare?. The 50th anniversary of Brown was not cause for celebration and faulting parenting or lack of it targets one facet of an intricate picture. The neglected areas of decaying infrastructure where the most severe dropout rates occur are not sitting on oil deposits so will never be reconstructed. The diversity that Brown hoped to herald was shunned by the whites Cosby says should be placated by mirroring their manner and speech. They’ve used their racial advantage to flee to better neighborhoods and more adequately funded schools locking gates and doors behind them. Mr. Cosby says that passing tests is an incomparable high. On material contrived to keep these genuises in the superior frame of mind to which they’ve grown accustomed? Pavlov’s dog was conditioned, not joyfull.
Take your neighborhood back, Bill Cosby says. Incentives to treasure it seem a logical place to start. Let’s try a little social experiment in a city that shall remain nameless since for these purposes statistics and logistics are not necessary. Draw a circle around the worst neighbourhood in it and take a head count. How many of their relatives are serving time for a drug-related or non-violent offense? Release those people from prison and invite them to join in the tearing down and rebuilding of the neighbourhood. For every family their own home with room for a garden. Every person that needs a job gets the skills, or the production facilities, or the small business, or the transportation to make that happen. Build enough schools that classrooms are brimming only with textbooks that reflect an honest world view. Alongside the library why not a place for the old folks to congregate. Parks are lovely places for family get togethers but hard on the joints in the winter.
“When we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, children in our schools often recite the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech as if it were a reality,” says a draft version of the report by the Harvard Civil Rights Project. “Students are rarely told that Dr. King also had a nightmare, … King saw the ghetto and its schools as a nightmare for black society.”