Posted on 04/24/2008 9:33:14 PM PDT by Lorianne
The audacity of Bill Cosby’s black conservatism ___ Last summer, in Detroit’s St. Paul Church of God in Christ, I watched Bill Cosby summon his inner Malcolm X. It was a hot July evening. Cosby was speaking to an audience of black men dressed in everything from Enyce T-shirts or polos to blazers and ties. Some were there with their sons. Some were there in wheelchairs. The audience was packed tight, rows of folding chairs extended beyond the wooden pews to capture the overflow. But the chairs were not enough, and late arrivals stood against the long shotgun walls, or out in the small lobby, where they hoped to catch a snatch of Cosby’s oratory. Clutching a cordless mic, Cosby paced the front of the church, shifting between prepared remarks and comic ad-libs. A row of old black men, community elders, sat behind him, nodding and grunting throaty affirmations. The rest of the church was in full call-and-response mode, punctuating Cosby’s punch lines with laughter, applause, or cries of “Teach, black man! Teach!”
He began with the story of a black girl who’d risen to become valedictorian of his old high school, despite having been abandoned by her father. “She spoke to the graduating class and her speech started like this,” Cosby said. “‘I was 5 years old. It was Saturday and I stood looking out the window, waiting for him.’ She never said what helped turn her around. She never mentioned her mother, grandmother, or great-grandmother.”
“Understand me,” Cosby said, his face contorted and clenched like a fist. “Men? Men? Men! Where are you, men?”
Audience: “Right here!”
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
” Instead of focusing on some abstract notion of equality, he argues, blacks need to cleanse their culture, embrace personal responsibility, and reclaim the traditions that fortified them in the past.”
Amen, Mr. Crosby.
I agree with most of what Cosby says however what does the white man have to do with it? All the blacks have to do is clean up their own act and good things will happen. Keep using the white man as a scapegoat or excuse will get them nowhere.
No Bill, your problem is that you consider people of different skin colors to be in some sort of competition.
i think bill cosby is a good guy. i think his opposition to the ‘world owes me a living’ attitude is great.
Bing!
VERY interesting article. I hope everyone clicks thru and reads the whole thing. Thanks for posting it.
Cosby should really consider joining a political party which accepts all colors of people uniting them under a common cause.
Then he can say, he's tired of his Communist, backward people enslaving party loosing to the Peoples party for independence, freedom, liberty and happiness.
His point is that black men will not go to school or do other things to achieve because they "know that the white man will keep him from graduating", he says quit being afraid of the 'white man' and even if what they used as an excuse were to be true it is still not a good reason to fail.
Obviously his black journalist followers aren’t getting his message then, because they keep injecting race baiter’s Jackson and Sharpton’s “white man keeps us down” message.
This poor deluded author.
This is one white guy who is with “Coz”, as we used to call him at Temple Un.
He came up the hard way, from the 9th & Ludlow St. ghetto, and used his talents to achieve a lot.
He’s better than Sharpton, Jackson, Obama, Wright, and those other leftist clowns all put together.
Let’s hope people are smart enough to at least listen to his message.
No, he is saying his race is not competing well. Generally, they aren’t and it is self inflicted.
I would think that if you want to consider yourself a "black journalist" you might feel a need to inject the "keeps us down" message. If you only wanted to be a "journalist", regardless of your race, such injection would not be necessary. I can see where, for many, it would come down to the race, or race politics, of the audience that writes your paycheck. Cosby, even in 1965 was always an "actor", not a "black actor". Maybe that's the source of the differences between Cosby and the author.
BTW, IMHO this statement in the article undermines the credibility of the author: "The series, which started in 1965, was the first weekly show to feature an African American in a lead role,...", is incorrect, and it surprises me that either the author does not know it, or more telling, omits the truth because it serves his argument and his agenda. This wikipedia passage explains -
"On November 5, 1956, The Nat King Cole Show debuted on NBC-TV. While commentators have often mistakenly hailed Cole as the first African-American to host a network television show — an honor belonging to jazz pianist and singer Hazel Scott in 1950 — the Cole program was the first of its kind hosted by a star of Nat Cole's magnitude."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_King_Cole
But in the end he still wants blacks to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps as some sort of triumph for black people. That's wrong.
Blacks will always be failures until they look in the mirror at what Martin Luther King said, and recognize that it's the content of their own character that matters, not the color of their skin.
When blacks can recognize themselves as individuals, rather than as a group of people with a particular skin color, then those individuals can finally have a chance at success. A group of people can always blame another group of people, but individuals don't have anyone to blame but themselves.
It is very interesting & it is good although long.
Nice, long read bump.
Cosby torpedoes his own message when he wraps it around being “proud to be black”.
Be proud of your accomplishments and skills. Don’t be proud of your DNA. That’s moronic.
The main message he sends is the black community is responsible to themselves....eliminate scapegoating “white people keeping us down” type positions and get your own act together. He is right.
Cosby torpedoes his own message when he wraps it around being “proud to be black”.
Be proud of your accomplishments and skills. Don’t be proud of your DNA. That’s moronic.
Nonsense.If you are in any part descended from slaves imported to America from sub-Sahara Africa, you will accept that as part of your heiritage. Mere self-respect would require it. And if that carries with it a glint of militancy it is only too understandable, considering what the history of racism has been.
That being said, trust Thomas Sowell to point out the larger context. Slavery - as an institution, not as something you would want yourself or anyone you cared about to undergo - was accepted worldwide, throughout history. All religions - and atheism - have accepted it. And yes (see the book of Philemon in the Bible), that includes Christianity.
Uniquely among religions, however, Christianity turned against slavery contemporaneously with our founding era. The British were creating their empire at the time, and the British accordingly exerted tremendous influence toward the abolition of slavery. The same attitude was of course predominant in the American North. The real problem was that the American South was uniquely situated to be in no position to accept that. They had a tiger by the tail, and did not consider letting go to be an option. And in reality the North understood that - which is why the Abolitionists were considered extremists before, and even during, the Civil War. Sowell's point is that although people have always, undoubtedly, had some pity for slaves, you look in vain for any Abolitionist movement anywhere in history except among modern Christians.
Rush Limbaugh has lately been raving about The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and it is instructive to read the lyrics of that 1861 poem. In the context of 1861, exactly what was Julia Ward Howe saying? Basically, "Jesus wants you to enlist in the Union Army." You cannot find a text exhorting people to risk their lives "to make men free" on the basis of any belief system other than Christianity. Nor, I think, any similar exhortations for Christians written any more than 200 years before that one, either.
The Battle Hymn of the Republic is therefore, IMHO, a proper, fully adequate, basis on which to exhort American blacks to patriotism. And (in consideration of how many died opposing the Confederacy) it is a rebuke to the demands for apologies for slavery, and reparations. Accordingly blacks should adopt The Battle Hymn as a rallying cry, not to separatism, but to judging whites by "the content of their character." That is true self respect, of the sort that would lead blacks to effectively move into the mainstream. Which would of course marginalize Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson - and Barak Obama.
It is interesting and very long for saying the same thing over and over again. The author is very confused. He recognizes common sense with great precision. He knows the history of common sense in the black community very well. And after each recounting of it he constructs an argument against it. The security blanket of being a victim has just too strong of a pull to give in to the common sense positions he sees quite clearly. His own father slaps him upside the head with reality but he can’t stay with that. The temptation of liberal excuse making is too strong.
“Bing!”
Belated chuckle.
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