Posted on 4/25/2008, 4:33:14 AM 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.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.