The Cosby Collection

Bill Cosby didn't really start the conversation, but he sure brought it to the fore. There was much discussion inspired by his comments and other people's discussion of it. Here's my part.

Cosby

Cosby, Part One

You know those topics you really don't want to get into, but so many people have so many ideas that are so wrong that if you don't speak up you feel guilty about not challenging the error? Well, Dr. Cosby's speech falls right in the middle of that pile for me.

Black folks' reactions seem to be along the lines of

Ho Hum, my daddy said that
He's right, we need to do something
What a traitor for insulting the culture from which I draw elements to construct my self-image
Stunned silence

The reaction of mainstream types (among whom I include, with their approval, Black Conservatives®), has been either stunned silence from the left or from the right something that sounds disturbingly like

though without the admirable brevity Brainy Smurf usually displays,
Of course there were some specific things that put me over the limit today. Fooling around on Technorati I stumbled on a post at Stop the Bleating that was just wrong on several levels.

Which levels?

Mr. Shaw, like any good lawyer, tries a little misdirection and equivocation to avoid having to admit the uncomfortable truth. Of course most people on welfare are not African-American; blacks are still a relatively small minority in this country, so it'd be really surprising if they made up the majority of welfare recipients. But it seems to me that the proportions of blacks and whites on welfare is a much more meaningful piece of information, if one's honestly attempting to refute Cosby's statement.

Although persons of color, particularly African Americans, have historically comprised a disproportionately high percentage of the AFDC/TANF population, this difference has become even more pronounced since the mid-1990s. National statistics reveal that the proportion of white recipients dropped from 37.4% in 1994 to 30.5% in 1999, while, during the same period, African Americans went from 36.4% to 38% of the welfare population and the proportion of Latinos increased from 19.9% to 24.5%.*

Now, according to my calculations (based on this 2002 Census Bureau estimate), blacks and part-black Americans make up about 13% of the population. But they account for 38% of the "welfare population." Draw your own conclusions.

Now, a comparison of the fractions of the Black and white populations on welfare would be meaningful if groups had the same starting conditions or if an adjustment factor can be calculated that would offset the difference in starting conditions. Neither condition obtains.

Then there's this:

Total means-tested welfare expenditures by federal and state governments amounted to roughly $384 billion in 1998. Of that sum, $212 billion--55 percent--went to white recipients. Some $105 billion--28 percent--went to black recipients, and $69 billion--17 percent--went to Hispanic recipients.

Aid to black and Hispanic welfare recipients is greater in proportion to the size of their populations than is aid to white recipients. This can be seen by determining the average welfare expenditure per person for each ethnic group.

As a group, the 207 million white residents in the U.S. population receive $212 billion in benefits. As a group, then, they receive some $1,022 per person in welfare aid.

There are some 30 million Hispanic residents in the U.S., and Hispanics as a group receive $69 billion in welfare, or roughly $2,210 per person. As a group, the 33 million black residents in the U.S. receive $105 billion in welfare aid, or roughly $3,230 per person. *

…which demonstrates such a lack of mathematical understanding as to render anything else unnecessary to consider. [LATER: Just in case: since not all 207 million white people are on welfare, and average across the entire population has no analytical value. Lather, rinse, repeat with the Black and Latino figures.] But he links to Clayton Cramer who says:

See if you can find re-runs of the mid-1960s television series I Spy. It starred Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, as two American spies running around the world undercover as professional tennis players. Ask yourself how far blacks would have advanced in America if the hip-hop black man had been the image that white Americans saw every week.

My immediate reaction was, oh no, he did not just suggest the civil rights movement hinged on I Spy. A couple of minutes later I ran through the Black images from the mid-60s that white Americans saw every week. Lou Rawls. Black children attacked by dogs. Martin Luther King, Jr. Malcolm X. Rochester. Black folks getting firehosed. The Temptations.

It was a couple of hours before I had the frightening thought that I Spy could conceivably have had more impact on white folks than Bull Connor.

Cosby, Part Three

Subtitled, "Why Conservatives, Black and Otherwise, Are Still Wrong," and brought on by Gregory Kane's Black leaders must choose between criminals and victims.

Look, we know Black folks got grief. What makes me write all y'all off is your insistence on attaching "Stop Blaming White People" to "Take Personal Responsibility." See, I personally am tired of hearing "we know there's racism, but…" And I'm SERIOUSLY tired of "Blaming White People" being caste as the opposite of "Take Personal Responsibility."

The reason I'm tired of it goes back to what I've said about the word racism actually meaning different problems to Black folks and white folks. I have come to the conclusion that the major problem white folks have with racism is that they get blamed for it. So when I hear "Stop blaming white people and take personal responsibility" as though white folks have nothing to do with racism (whichever meaning you want to work with), it becomes clear that the major issue at hand is whose fault it all is. All the while admitting racism is still a problem.

Here's a fact: the racial problems in this country get their input from everyone who has racial problems.

And here's a speculation: when white folks start taking personal responsibility for racism, they will find Black folks willing to meet them half way.

Cosby, Part Two

Some folks, mostly middle class folks who've built their identity in the hip-hop milieu,have taken Dr. Cosby's speech personally. I wanted to hold off for a while until I could read what he said for myself. The closest I got was an interview on The Tavis Smiley Show. Mike let me know it was coming but it's on at midnight around these parts. PBS has posted the interview in text and RealSomething. Coming from Dr. Cosby's own mouth, it's close enough to the speech for me. NPR has commentary from Cornel West and Eric Michael Dyson.

My own reaction is that he did a piss poor job of selling his idea. And I think he thinks he delineated the problem.

Let me explain really briefly, a really high level overview, of how a section of hip-hop metastasized into commercial rap.
Step 1: MCs keeping the party jumping
Step 2: Rapper's Delight made money
Step 3: Things like P.E. and The Message drew a genuine folk-music type following
Step 4: Corporation Sound started backing production in order to get their standard cut
Step 5: Marketing types applied the standard American attention grabbers: money, sex and violence
Step 6: Americans liked that shit

Seriously, the difference between commercial rap and old school hip-hop is they be flossing all the time now.

Our kids see these guys with all the symbols everyone respects and it really looks like the shortest path to success to many. And it will continue to look that way as long as mainstream folks keep buying it up the way they do. It's almost like those superhero comics where a guy is imprisoned in a machine powered by his own strength.

Keep in mind, this is what Mainstream America likes to see, as predicted by the demographic dudes and verified by unit sales. And the result of that-which-sells and that-which-is-sold is bonded to a genuine Black creation and fired back at us…at our kids. Black culture is marketed, comes at you like water from the business end of a fire hose, but it ain't Black people's hands controlling the nozzle and directing the flow.

And this can be overcome, if you know that's what you're fighting. But you can't convince people of it by blaming them for not putting forth a superhuman effort. You can ask that effort of us, but you can't pretend it's the norm to be strong enough to withstand that fire hose force. It not only takes a lot of personal power it takes courage to stand in front of the stream.

The Cosby Effect

The Cosby Effect: Subliminal side effects

AlphaPatriot has a long post reacting to Dr Cosby and his overhearing a conversation at McDonalds. In the process he has the very reaction warned about at Get In Where Ya Fit In

Here's the AlphaPatriot:

So if "nigger" is not the derogatory term that it once was, then everyone should be able to use it. I should have been able to turn to the kids and say, "He's right. If you're going to be a nigger you should be a straight up nigger!" and they would laugh and I would smile and wave. But I can't. Had I done so there may have been bloodshed. Because had I done so I would now be in jail for shooting one or two people as they would almost certainly have turned on me with hate-filled eyes, animus in their hearts and malice in their souls.

And rightly so, for it is a word filled with hate that should never be used.

People, if you don't want me to say it then don't use the word. More importantly, if you don't want your peers of other races to say it, then don't use it. You can't be mad if they do. You mustn't.

Why "mustn't" we? And why is it "more important" to make sure our peers of other races don't use the term?

Because it's so frustrating to white folks not to be able to do something Black folks can, that for other minorities to do so would simply compound the frustration?

This is a typical case of speaking to "issues with minorities to be dealt with" as opposed to "issues minorities must deal with."

A-P isn't the first to insist that Black folks deal with racism as defined by white folks rather than as experienced by us. Won't be the last. And I won't even go into the curiosity of a self-identified middle aged white man hanging at BET looking for Black folk's reaction to being yelled at. But you should think about it when you get the time.

Anyway, so no one has to go searching, here's the PREsponse from Get In Where Ya Fit In::

So I get a lot of hesitant, and probing questions like; "Ummm... Mark, I was just wondering .... Umm.... Why do uh ..... black people you know...... call each other.... ummm.... Nigger?". Well first of all, no black person I've ever heard of calls anybody a Nigger. We use the term nigga. It's taking a word and re-branding it. Second, I'm assuming the majority of white people know the answer but I'll explain it to the one's who don't since I still occasionally get the question. Since blacks were treated so awfully in this country for so long, that word was a potent symbol of all that discrimination and oppression. When the time came for a lot of lifting of the most heinous of these forms of racism, the word was turned back in on itself and used as a badge of honor and repudiation. Basically saying, I've taken your worst and survived it. You can't use that word as a weapon to bludgeon us anymore. Kinda noble in a way. Let's call that the "old school nigga" but I'll get back to that. I occasionally use the term in the "old school" way by which I simply mean a person who lived through the hard times of racism and overcame it and what that communal experience entailed.

Now once that is answered, (inexplicably in my mind) the next question is always well since you guys say it, why can't I? The sentence is never phrased that way of course. It's always asked in another context, but that's what is really meant. Why are you able to say something I can't?

And AlphaPatriot isn't all bad. Actually demonstrated some reasonableness by linking in a Boston Globe editorial before I got to it. Here's his reference:

Update: The Boston Globe has an excellent take on why this is not just black America's problem:

From a white perspective, it is easy to cheer on Cosby then smugly write off his words as a long-overdue wake-up call for black America. It's their problem, not ours, right?

Their problem it may be, but the big issue -- declining values and standards -- isn't limited to one ethnicity or neighborhood.

Today the American minivan is hip-hopping along the way to soccer games and baseball practice. The beat is a better pickup than caffeine, but listen to the lyrics and the message is a real downer. Not to sound like Tipper Gore, but after a while you realize you are singing about shaking your "tailfeather," "milking the cow," and "double-Ds," with the n-word thrown around as generously as the Beatles used "yeah, yeah, yeah." White boys can't jump, but many of them want to be Kobe Bryant or, short of that, Ja Rule. They want the money, the cars, and the bootylicious babes, and they see no connection between those goals and reading "A Separate Peace." (Incidentally, it is difficult to explain why a certain ethnic slur is unacceptable when they hear their rap idols singing it on their favorite CDs.)...

The hip-hop generation is not all black. White America just likes to believe it is.

Read it all.

I believe AlphaPatriot's understanding of the Black communities to be flawed. But it's obviously not evil…if you get all the way to the bottom of the page.

The Cosby Effect: The Controversy

James of Hobson's Choice jumped the gun a bit with this interesting comment. I didn't really address it in the comments because it was my intent to bring it up anyway.

I'm sorry, I must be an idiot. I cannot figure out what he said that's so controversial. African American leaders are constantly saying things like that, because that's what leaders do. Moreover, affluent African Americans have a surprisingly conservative outlook because they aren't embarrassed about telling others to "snap out of it."

European Americans make much of it because many of us are relatively thin-skinned; we hear frequent references to racism or discrimination, police brutality and sharp critique of US treatment of African Americans, and we flinch. So when someone like Mr. Cosby says things like what he did, we jump all over it because we think it takes the onus off Whites to shape up. But I'm certain that was well known to you.

Yes, very well known.

There's no dispute here over the pathologies the Black communities need to address (you'll note I'm saying "communities" rather than "constituencies" here. Quite intentional; I'm discussing people rather than politics). But let me tell you how things look to me. Let me explain what I see as the issue raised. Conservatives will find my conclusion a mixed bag—they'll love much of my conclusion but hate how I got there and what the conclusion actually means.
Think. Why was the first executive order directing the government to act affirmatively to bring Black Americans into the economy issued? What was the order intended to accomplish?

It was intended to change the behavior of white Americans.

You see, at the time there were plenty of educated Black folks, college degreed janitors, because of racism. It certainly wasn't because Black folks didn't want the work. The order was intended to override white racism.

The response to the order was along the lines of, "I'd love to hire a niggra if I could find a qualified one." And when the underemployed college graduates stepped up, it because, "Oh, but he didn't got to THAT college like HE did. HE is more qualified that the niggra." And the niggra takes a lesser position because he's more qualified than any white person willing to take a job on that level.

Or the response was to just hire a colored person and show him as proof they were integrated.

Or the response was to drop someone into a slot totally unprepared and shake your head sadly when he fails.

Or a lawsuit, almost all of which were settled out of court, all such settlements saying there's no admission of guilt it's cheaper to buy you off.

And to set aside record numbers of civil rights complaints, so you can be rewarded with a federal judgeship…and who knows where that could take you…

And scapegoating.

And every time a Black person mentions there's still racism to be dealt with, he's reminded of how many Blacks are in the middle class, how much closer we've gotten to equal pay for equal work, like white people had a damn thing to do with it. Collectively, I mean. Some of y'all individually are da bomb. Most of you ain't bad and I really feel most of you mean no harm. But collectively "White People" have fought tooth and nail against leveling the playing field and everyone has been too fucking polite to just say it like that, to put the pattern together under everyone's nose.

I had to do it to explain that the controversy in the Black communities is, do white people get off scott-free for racism?

That is the question underneath the discussion. It's beneath the discussion in the white communities too.

And in my opinion, the answer is yes. White people get off scott-free, It actually comes down to a question of "what the fuck are you gonna do about it?" I mean, check this out, from Tacitus:

Seeing Slate's take on the morally abominable Jude Wanniski reminds me of our late efforts to secure a paleocon voice for redstate. Now, I could personally care less about paleocon representation, but my partners argued, and justly so, that they're conservatives too (if increasingly not Republicans), and certainly not all bad. Though a lot of them are bad -- see Domenech do battle with them, as "evilcons," here and here. As part of this ideological quota effort, we considered asking Steve Sailer to contribute, until I came across this squirm-inducing essay on football and race (note, please, that blacks have a biological advantage in "trash talking"). The problem was that so many of the prominent paleocon essayists have this racist junk, if not up front in their ouevres, then somewhere buried not terribly deep in their archives. It and bizarre revisionist history constitute a pretty disturbing propensity within that demographic. I'm actually not sure if we ended up getting a paleocon for redstate. If we did, I'm not aware of it, but I trust my partners to do the proper vetting. But if we didn't, that's all the same to me: I'm happy to consign most of them to the company of Raimondo, Rockwell, and the assorted odd corners that the American fringe retreats to.

Tacitus, of course, has the ~~right~~ correct reaction:

Braying fools barking about the rational basis of their hate aren't worth engaging beyond a certain point, and that point has passed. I'll doubtless write in the future about the conservatives who do too little to oppose and eject this crowd from our movement and our party. I definitely won't be further engaging those who think that conservatism is a form of identity politics for white people. One might as well try to reason with a mad dog.

A conservative friend put it best in an e-mail about Sailer:

I realized maybe a year ago that when the paleocons talk about America being "under attack," they don’t mean by radical Islamic terrorists or by postmodern anti-family cultural values. They mean you and me. The people with ethnic surnames. The Mexicans and the Puerto Ricans. We’re the ones attacking this nation, just by being here.

And if we were to tell them face to face that we felt accused, they’d disagree; they’d say it isn’t people like you and me that they’re talking about. Our skin isn’t brown enough, and we speak English.

Disingenous bastards.

But it's way too many of these suckers in too many influential places. Like Tacitus' partners said, they're conservatives too.

Myself, I hold to Derrick Bell position on the permanence of racism. I honestly don't expect the mainstream to come clean. I expect Black folks to have to deal with racism for the foreseeable future of the foreseeable generations to come, both personal and structural. Because there's no knobs on society, we can't just dial back our human reactions.

But we can learn the environment, learn to navigate and negotiate it, manipulate it as selfishly as every other affinity group out there.

What did Justice O'Connor say, twenty five years? Better get on it.

The Cosby Effect: The Early Edition

Let's see if I have it all:

Non-mainstream dress
Non-mainstream speech to the exclusion of standard TV English
Vulgar speech
Participating in the production of media that lionizes violence, misogyny and a destructive, dysfunctional capitalism
High teenage pregnancy rate
Overvaluation of sports
Undervaluation of education
Physically abusing women in reaction to poverty

Am I missing anything? Seriously.

The Cosby Effect: The understanding that was missing

Just around the turn of the century, The Ballantine Publishing Group put out a series of books called The Library of Contemporary Thought. One of the first in the series, and apparently the only one that's not out of print, was, Workin' The Chain Gang: Shaking Off The Dead Hand of History by Walter Mosley (yes, the Walter Mosley of "Easy Rawlins" fame).

This is not a book I suggest to a lot of folks because I don't think many are ready for it.

Sections are crystaline, though, and this is one. This is Cosby's message, but it's descriptive of everyone. Somewhat lyric, but some messages are best delivered in that mode.

There's a difference between the person we see in the mirror and those we see in the street. My eyes are mine, as is my stomacheache, my broken heart, my slow descent into old age.

What does this have to do with the new millenium?

Just this: We must recognize the volume and quantity of baggage that we all carry; the years of experience, the quirks of our genes. We're like tiny three-leaf weeds that have beneath us a root system larger than a peacock's fan. What we show, what we see, is nothing compared to what we are. This is why change, real change, is so difficult.

Maybe you should shed a leaf, one three-leaf weed suggests to another.

I've been thinking of moving out from under the shade of that big oak, yet another weed declares.

Anything is possible, but not without the knowledge of our true situation. The three-leaf weed cannot simply move out from under the shade of the all-encompassing oak. She will have to alter the excruciatingly slow process of growth to drag her leaves to a brighter sun. Failing that, she will have to scatter her seed toward the light.

The Cosby Effect: What Did They Hear?

I posted a link to a streaming video of a news report on Dr. Cosby's presentation last week because after the buzz the first speech caused (and I still can't find a transcript) I thought it would be good if folks are going to talk about it, they should know what he said.

The snippets that made it into the press last time were pretty brutal…and they were just what folks wanted to hear. I know it's sort of against the Cosby spirit to talk about how non-Black folks are responding to all this. Oh well. It's just for one installment anyway, and it's necessary because that reaction is part of the environment we have to deal with. So I searched for "Cosby" in Google News early this morning. I wanted the first reactions.

I found a lot of that AP release with a word changed here and there. Basically I grabbed that and the first few that, judging from the excerpt, looked like they were trying to write something.

Sometimes I was wrong.

Anyway, here's a bag of headlines and the first paragraph of each article. When you think about it, it's interesting they're all writing about the same event.
Education tops sports, Cosby tells parents
He strutted across the stage and gripped the hand of his fraternity brother, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, then Dr. William H. Cosby Jr. held the entire room in his hands as he preached the tough love that has gained headlines -- and for which he offered no apologies.

Bill Cosby has harsh words for black men
CHICAGO -- Bill Cosby went off on another tirade involving the black community yesterday, telling activists that too many black men are beating their wives while their children run around not knowing how to read or write.

Actor Cosby hits out at language
Black actor Bill Cosby has criticised young African-Americans for the use of "profane" language.

Locals sound off on Cosby comments
Bill Cosby grabbed attention, and drew more criticism, yesterday for comments criticizing some members of the black community. But some people said he struck just the right chord.

Cosby's rage at wife-beaters
ACTOR Bill Cosby has again hit out at members of America’s black community, telling men to "stop beating your women".

Bill Cosby defends criticism of blacks
ATLANTA -- A day after publicly criticizing shortcomings in the black community a second time, Bill Cosby said he wanted to make it clear he meant it.

This Cosby show will tolerate no funny business
Let's get this out of the way: Bill Cosby is not interested in sitting down and talking to a reporter about his recent critiques of the black community. But he's certainly not keeping his controversial views quiet.

Debate Continues as Cosby Again Criticizes Black Youths
As Dr. Cliff Huxtable, TV's quintessential sitcom dad, Bill Cosby offered gentle, homespun advice to his young family each week. But in real life, Cosby lately has been delivering a much harsher message: African Americans, particularly the young, have only themselves to blame for a variety of social ills.

'It's about our minds,' Cosby tells conference
The cardboard sign said it all: “Bill Cosby, You Don’t Need to Apologize.”

Cosby Calls On PUSH, Black Parents To Make Changes
Actor-Comedian To Black Community: 'Turn Mirror Around"
In a passionate and controversial lecture before the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition & Citizenship Education Fund's annual conference Thursday, Bill Cosby challenged black parents to insist that their children perform better in all avenues of life.

The Cosby Effect: What's wrong with the approach

Steve Gilliard

Cosby's whole rant is this internalized feeling that black people should somehow achieve perfection. That we all need to "stick together" like the Jews. Which is insane. Jewish social life is riven with debate. There is nothing like the ideological conformity common in black political life. What's the old joke, if you have two Jews, you have three arguments? So this demand for perfection seems to arise from time to time, driven by myth and unrealistic expectations.

…What most disturbs me is the way Cosby is SO eager to cut the black middle class slack for abandoning it's brothers and sisters, building gated communities, and still lagging behind in test scores. There is still a gap in achievement even when economics is not a factor. And it isn't because blacks are stupid, we know they aren't. Racism might play a role. The black middle class got their money and they ran to suburbia, even when racism limited their options. Look at Long Island. The most racially segregated place in America. You can tell if someone is black by the town they live in, Hempstead, Wyandanch, Freeport, Roosevelt. The same crappy school districts, same poverty you get in the Bronx, except people are far more hostile to change. Before he lectures the poor on their shortcomings, he might want to lecture his peers and the middle class on theirs.

The Cosby Effect: Why did he say it?

Obviously, Dr. Cosby was addressing Black folks last week.

Washington Post:

In an interview yesterday, Cosby said he is speaking out because dropout, illiteracy and teen pregnancy rates are at "epidemic" levels among less-affluent African Americans. "You can't get me to soften my message," he said. "If I had said [it] nicely, then people wouldn't have listened."

But I believe he intended a slightly more subversive impact for the media.

Vanessa Jones at the Boston Globe:

In a pause-laden nine-minute conversation yesterday, Cosby eluded attempts to schedule a face-to-face interview to speak more in depth about these matters. One reason why? "I have other things to do," he said brusquely.

He was willing to entertain a few questions, such as: Why are you talking about these issues at this moment?

Cosby: "I'm not being combative; I'm trying to understand something. When you say `at this moment,' what do you mean?"

The reporter said that "at this moment" means now, as opposed to last year or two years ago. "What I'm talking about specifically is the dropout rate in these areas," he said. "And, um, why now? Because I feel that it has reached epidemic proportions."

Cosby said newspapers should go into neighborhoods and do stories about the problems he's talking about. "There are many, many wonderful, educated people in the [black] community," he says, "who will be willing to talk to you and tell you their first-hand experience -- teachers -- their first-hand experience, and if they want to withhold their names, etc., etc, whatever. But it's not just a matter of Bill Cosby."

And, no, a last-ditch appeal to Cosby to use his celebrity status to explore these issues doesn't change his mind.

"I don't accept that I have to be the fulcrum of this," he said. If "the things that are tied into helping this thing grow and get worse are not addressed, then so be it.

"Maybe it's more interesting [for newspapers] to talk about [these problems] or write about them when [people] are incarcerated or when a parent is beating a child to death."

Another request elicits the comment: "I gotta go."

Really interesting because he had to know the attention his statements would attract. By giving no in-depth follow-up at the height of the interest I think he hoped to drive the media to those "many, many wonderful, educated people in the [black] community."

The problem is, the only thing new about what Dr. Cosby said is that Dr. Cosby said it. The actual issues at hand are not very interesting to the mainstream because they think them specific to Black folks. So, the news becomes "Bill Cosby said this!" That, specifically, is what the media is following up on.

A Dissenter Speaks

Rhetoric and Race
i've been stewing over the Cosby speech (now speeches) for a while now. in my inarticulate rage, i've been trying to figure out just why the Cos' words irk my last nerve so badly. some of it rests upon the definition my friends and i came up with to define the axis of black culture: we decided that the one trait all blacks had in common was a shared experience of oppression. that trait encompasses liberals, conservatives, da black bougeoisie, da ghetto fabulosi, the niggerati and the skreet kids - a multiplicity of worldviews shaped by the one experience.

if so, where does the Cos stand? Ta-Nehisi Coates hit on it back in May. there is a core of black elitism; one that is ashamed of and hyper-aware of their "country cousins". they exemplify a tried-and-true method immigrants have used to enter mainstream society. let's call it the 'American Way'; assimilate supremacist attitudes towards blacks and black culture in order to gain acceptance.

so what, if any, difference is there between Cos and a white supremacist? Cos is allowed - nay, encouraged - to air his views on the paucity of black culture at every chance. in a society where trent lott was pillaged for hinting that he might have been in favor of segregation, why has the Cos not been urinated upon by the media? instead, he's been lauded by celebrities and pundits, columnists and 'people-on-the-street'.

what makes it worse is that his statistics are off and his distate for his brethren blares from every sentence. p6 spoke on it, as did Earl Ofari Hutchinson. Pinko Feminist Hellcat also addresses the problems inherent in Cosby's words.

Coates noted that Cos' show, set in crack-era NYC, never once had an episode where the kids had their 'pockets were run' (good turn of phrase, mr. coates). a blindness to sociopolitical conditions then; a blindness to socialpolitical conditions now.

A little ahead of schedule

Yeah, I'm going to do my own thoughts on the issues raised by The Cosby Effect. But I saw this in the middle of jimi izrael's latest and found it kinda real:

And you know what else? Where the fuck is Coz living where the eight-year old boys with funny names walk down the street with their clothes on backwards raping little girls while their parents smoke crack and beat each other up on the stoop? Bill needs to step up his game. The truth is that Bill ---just like the rest of his ilk and 99.9 percent of white suburbia---watch just enough BET to be scared shitless.

Perspective, people. Perspective.

A little foreshadowing: There's more than one problem here, and we're pretty much talking about them as the result of some single thing. Well, that's all very Socratic but it's also bullshit.

A twofer from Time

Deja Vu At The Florida Polls?
Scrubbing felons from voters rolls raises fresh concerns
By TIM PADGETT

After the 2000 presidential-election debacle in Florida, state and county election officials there agreed to examine whether the names of more than 19,000 people should be restored to the voter rolls because most of them may have been mistakenly identified as convicted felons and thus ineligible to vote. (In Florida, convicted felons must apply to get back their voting rights after their sentences are complete, though few manage to do so.) Those disenfranchised voters took on increased significance when Bush won the state by just 537 votes. Have the snafus been fixed? Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood has now told county supervisors that 47,000 more names are likely to be purged from the voter rolls this year, and election watchdogs fear that Florida is poised to repeat the mistakes of 2000 on a much larger scale.

What Bill Cosby Should Be Talking About

…What’s really needed isn’t a black civil war or more uncivil speech. The real problem may not be that blacks and whites are having separate conversations — that’s been true for 400 years — it’s that comments such as the ones Cosby made could be used as bricks for different groups of blacks to wall themselves off from each other. That would be a shame. Right now, on Broadway, Cosby’s erstwhile sitcom wife, Phylicia Rashad, is co-starring in A Raisin in the Sun alongside one of the most successful current purveyors of hip-hop slang, rapper/would-be actor Sean “P. Diddy” Combs. When I saw the show, I thought there was something profoundly appealing about seeing two different generations of black entertainers performing together in a classic play. Cosby, in his speech, declared that blacks should hold each other to a higher standard. Working together, and not just getting each other worked up, may be a good start.

And we still don't have a transcript

The Washington Post has a recording, though.

We're talking the first Cosby statement on parenting, by the way.

[LATER:George was good enough to leave the transcription of the recording in the comments. This is cool because the link to the recording will eventually rot, as all links do]

Another reason Dr. Cosby could have been more polite

At Negrophile, George spotted a St. Louis Post Dispatch article with statistics that show Dr. Cosby doesn't have quite the grasp on what the lower classes among us are up to as he thinks he does.

Which means neither do all the gloating conservatives. But we knew that.

Clinton bats .600

The Center for American Progress posted an interview President Clinton on race issues today in three flavors: text, streaming Windows Media and downloadable MP3.

Let's be clear: one way to really annoy me is to call President Clinton "the first Black President." But also be clear his racial perspectives are in pretty close accord with those of the Black communities.

Patrick Berry emailed me the link with the subject "Clinton weighs in on Cosby Comments," so:

Q: The comedian Bill Cosby's recent remarks about personal responsibility in the African-American community have caused some controversy. Do you think such a discussion helps or hurts the broader discussion of race in America in its various complexities?

Silly question; indefinite question, actually. What controversy are we talking about? I only see one, and the conversation isn't addressing it directly. But I guess the question had to be asked.

President Clinton: Absolutely helps. It helps because it helps for two reasons. First of all because I think that whenever you're blaming other people for your problems - I know I've been there - whenever you're blaming other people for your problems, even if you're right, and in this case, non-blacks are responsible, or at least the history for a lot of the problems of the black community, you still have to be careful because it diverts your attention from what you can do to improve things. So what Cosby did was really good for the black community, because whether you agree with exactly how he said it or not, he said, okay, suppose we got a lot of problems that are other peoples' fault, what about what we can do to fulfill our responsibilities, so it was a big plus.

The second reason it was a plus is it is good politics because it removes an excuse from the members of the white community, who might not want to do more for black children, or for black economic development, who say, well they're not trying to help themselves. Cosby takes the excuse away. So it was good in two ways. Cosby did a service to black America and to all Americans by doing that, by focusing black Americans on what they can do for their future and reminding white Americans that most black people are doing the very best they can to do everything they can and therefore we all ought to be working to overcome these disparities.

This is so very much the right thing to say. But.

Dr. Cosby did shock a bunch of people, but the surprise wasn't that he thought it, it's that he said it. He's added nothing to the discussion on the Black side of the veil; that's why the responses to his second speech was so much more timely and precise. They were ready this time.

Meanwhile, on the white side of the veil, folks are watching to see Black people's reactions and THAT'S a problem…what was it President Clinton said:

I think that whenever you're blaming other people for your problems…it diverts your attention from what you can do to improve things.

This is a precise description of the attitude of each side of the veil from the perspective of the other side.

You want to know when we start making progress? When white people take George Carlin as seriously as Black people take Bill Cosby.

Cosby was a lot more on the record this time

Here's a news report out of NBC5 in Chicago on the latest discussion Dr. Cosby had at Rainbow/PUSH. It's video, so you can get much of it out of his own mouth.

Dr. Cosby explains himself further

Dr. Cosby appeared on NPR's Talk of the Nation recently. They also interview several teachers on the subjects Dr. Cosby's issues.

Dr. Cosby is late

If you don't want to wait for famous folks to come clean, read the comments here.

Hey, credit where due.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the conservative folks that leaped all over that 70% number to recant. And the fact that Dr. Cosby HAS cleaned it up shows the separation between him yelling at us and them yelling at us. It's not a race thing as much as an honor thing—honoring his own integrity as well as those he's talking about.

COSBY ON TEEN PREGNANCY: 'Fatherhood' author clarifies stats on African American girls getting knocked up.

(Jul. 13, 2004) Comedian Bill Cosby wants to rectify a few of the data he cited in recent rants about the crisis of African American teen pregnancy.
He had previously said that 70% of all teen pregnancies are to African American girls. According to 1997 stats, African Americans make up about 27% of teen moms.

But considering that African Americans make up a smaller percentage of the US population, the rate of black teenage pregnancy is still through the roof.

Zeroing in on African-American teens aged 15-19, the pregnancy rate is almost double that of the white population. However, the data also points out that African Americans had the largest decline since 1991 of birth rates for this same group, falling 42% compared to the previous data. Cosby, however, doesn’t feel the decline translates to optimism.

Even more reactions to Cosby

If I had realized so many folks would respond to it, I'd have kept better track of both sides of the discussion My own reaction was posted in three parts (four, actually). And I suppose I could search the various blog services to see everyone else that spoke out.

But I like responses that deal in empirical facts. That's why I appreciated the article George linked to yesterday, and why I like the two articles Pinko Feminist Hellcat linked to Friday.

I found it today because she commented at S-Train and T-Steel's joint and signed "Sheelzebub." I was like, that handle rocks, and I had to see the blog it was attached to. Good first impression, of both her stuff and the comments I read.

I guess Dr. Cosby has found his calling

The Rainbow/PUSH coalition just wrapped their annual conference, and Dr. Cosby was a presenter at the sessions on parenting.

The Chicago Sun-Times had a staff reporter there and gave a much more nuanced report than the AP story you will see everywhere today. For instance, Ms. Jackson of the Sun-Times adds this bit at the end:

In his NAACP remarks in May, Cosby had spoken of the high percentage of black males in low-income households who drop out of school, the high numbers of black men in prison and the large numbers of black teenagers who become pregnant.

"I was not talking about 'all,' " Cosby said. "I just took for granted that it would be understood that, if you talk about 50 percent, you can't be talking about all."

which information exactly none of the reports with titles like "Bill Cosby has more harsh words for black community" includes. No, they's rather go here:

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Bill Cosby went off on another tirade against the black community Thursday, telling a room full of activists that black children are running around not knowing how to read or write and "going nowhere."

I felt the need to juxtapose the two approaches to the exact same event. AP knows what its audience want and so spins accordingly and nationwide newspapers suck it down and regurgitate it with a snappy headline.

I have to admit I'm amused

The New Cosby Kids
By BARBARA EHRENREICH

…But it's just so 1985 to beat up on the black poor. During the buildup to welfare "reform" in 1996, the comfortable denizens of think spas like the Heritage Foundation routinely excoriated poor black women for being lazy, promiscuous, government-dependent baby machines, not to mention overweight (that poundcake again). As for poor black youth, they were targeted in the 90's as a generation of "superpredators," gang-bangers and thugs.

It's time to start picking on a more up-to-date pariah group for the 21st century, and I'd like to nominate the elderly whites. Filial restraint has so far kept the would-be Social Security privatizers on the right from going after them, but the grounds for doing so are clear. For one thing, there's a startling new wave of "grandpa bandits" terrorizing rural banks. And occasionally some old duffer works himself into a frenzy listening to Cole Porter tunes and drives straight into a crowd of younger folks.

The law-abiding old whites are no prize either. Overwhelmingly, they choose indolence over employment — lounging on park benches, playing canasta — when we all know there are plenty of people-greeter jobs out there. Since it's government money that allows them to live in this degenerate state, we can expect the Heritage Foundation to reveal any day now that some seniors are cashing in their Social Security checks for vodka and Viagra. Just as welfare was said to "cause poverty," the experts may soon announce that Medicare causes baldness and that Social Security is a risk factor for osteoporosis: the correlations are undeniable.

And the menace posed by the elderly can only get worse, as ever more of them sink into debt. What's eating up their nest eggs? In many cases, drugs. How long before the streets are ruled by geezer gangs mugging us to support their insulin and beta-blocker habits?

I'm confused

When Lester writes an Africana article on Reagan, do I link to it directly or to his blog entry pointing folks to it, which makes a different point?

And when jimi izrael writes about Reagan's impact on hip hop (seriously) should I skip it because I'd already planned to link to his blog entry on the reaction he got to his Cosby post (I didn't link the post itself because I've decided I'm not as interested in the controversy as I could be)?

On the road again

Gotta go for a minute and I'm not actually sure I'll be back in time to continue The Cosby Effect tonight. So I want to leave you a few more things to chew on.

First of all, in checking over what I've been doing here, I noted I lifted part of a post from Rhetoric and Race without a link or acknowledgement. Very unintentional. The blog looks kind of new, and I've been waiting to see if the ramp up before referring folks. Bemused, who wrote the post I accidentally stole, reads like an interesting sort from his first post.

George reminded me I ought to throw some stats at you. He's got links at Negrophile, to the Census Bureau and stats from Black Americans: A Statistical Sourcebook by way of the St Louis Post Dispatch:

In fact, his conclusion appeared to be accepted by many as truth.

"Cosby probably feels liberated today by a new intellectual honesty that bright young talents like Chris Rock have brought to black entertainment," wrote Clarence Page, a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune. "Here's hoping our new candor can lead us to new action."

Colbert I. King, a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, wrote. "Whether Cosby should have used the upscale D.C. event to share his observations about the state of black America may be open to question. That what he said needed saying, however, is not at issue."

And Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, wrote: "Much of black America, especially its middle class, is ready to have that conversation. In that sense, Cosby's speech was a watershed event - a sign that black America is now comfortable enough with its accomplishments to discuss its shortcomings."

But the truth is that education and economic indicators show that African-Americans are doing better than they've ever done, largely because of the gains made by those low-income blacks, according to data from "Black Americans: A Statistical Sourcebook."

And in some cases, the poorest African Americans do a better job than upscale African-Americans in outperforming their white counterparts, the book says.

Right interesting read.

Lester at Vision Circle commented yesterday about how the knuckleheads helped hone his skillz, an experience I shared. Now he has to listen to the audio of Bill's speechifying, which the Washington Post had hidden in the bowels of its site since the end of May.

That's the second link to it I've posted today…if you're going to talk about him, you might as well know what he said. You can check the video of his second assessment too.

There's some more conversation I'd like to tie into all this, but I gotta go.

Remember when I said every time I go by PBS I find something cool and unexpected?

Comedian Bill Cosby created controversy recently with pointed public criticism of parenting practices in certain African-American communities. Ray Suarez discusses Cosby's controversial comments with Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer for the Village Voice.

Still gathering evidence

Every self-respecting race guy on the planet is feeling called out by Dr. Cosby right about now. And some of y'all think I'm talking about what you might think of as the Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton types, but I'm also talking about what you might think of as your Rush Limbaugh or Jesse Paterson types.

Naturally I'll write something, but what would be more than beating the same drums as everyone else?

I'm working on it. And I want to share the occasional thing I find on the path, stuff I think will lay the groundwork at best and be interesting enough to read at worst. So when you check out the article below you'll find it's about Israel, not Black folks…yet I'm thinking about Black folks as I present it.

The Politics of Self-Criticism: Cosby Gets Cheers, Lerner Gets Threats
By DAVID SIEGEL (06-22-04)

As a Jew who is critical of Israeli policy, I am no stranger to confrontation. Despite the strain I’ve placed on my personal relationships, despite having to stand alone in political debates, I have always been vocal in my defense of the cause of Palestine. A few weeks ago, however, I began to feel as though I was fighting a losing battle. It began to seem natural that everyone sticks by their group, right or wrong, as a simple matter of survival. Who was I to defy this basic law of human relations? This feeling nagged me until June 2, when I picked up an article entitled “Hooray for Bill Cosby.”
Cosby’s comments at the May 17 commemoration of Brown vs. the Board of Education have received widespread attention. “The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal,” he said. Referring to a black youth shot to death by police for stealing a piece of pound cake, he remarked “what the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?”

Cosby’s statements implying that the ills of poor blacks are self-inflicted were met with virtually unanimous applause from the media. Dick Myer of CBSNews.com, in his May 26 piece praising Cosby, wrote that he expected to report on the controversy, but found that “there was no chorus of criticism.” DeWayne Wickham of USA Today wrote an article entitled “Cosby Isn’t Alone in Asking Blacks to Own Up to Problems.” Syndicated columnist Brent Bozell III wrote “An Ovation for Bill Cosby.”

What an amazing double standard! When blacks criticize other blacks, they are praised for their “tough love” and for their courage in telling hard truths about their race. When Jews criticize Israel, however, they are ridiculed, labeled “self-hating Jews,” and even threatened with death.

Though I find it disgraceful that successful writers should so unhesitatingly agree that institutional racism is dead, my purpose here is not to address that issue. Rather, I want to contrast media reaction when blacks and Jews, respectively, criticize other members of their race.

That's all anyone is trying to say

Except me, of course. But I've always been the difficult one.

Quote of note:

I agree that lower-income folks have to hold up their end of the deal. But those of us who are better off have to hold up our end of the deal too. We're talking about a lifeboat, not a seesaw. Both ends need to be lifted up. Anything less is a deal breaker.

Cosby's `deal' to quell poverty cuts both ways

Published July 11, 2004

WASHINGTON -- My 96-year-old grandma disagrees with me, but I think Bill Cosby was right when he recently complained--famously and emotionally, if not quite grammatically--that "the lower-economic people are not holding up their end of the deal."

Unfortunately, a lot of the people at the other end of the economic ladder are not holding up their end of the deal either. Some of them are running Congress.

The horse ain't dead yet

An AP article on The Cosby Furor (I think it's lasted long enough to get caps) is now making the rounds. So far I've seen it on BlackAmericaWeb, The San Francisco Chronicle and believe it or not, Xposed.com, an online men's magazine (and though I'm not one to frequent such sites, MUCH preferring a three dimensional tactile experience to a two dimensional visual…and ultimately tacky…experience, I must approve of Candace Smith).

Others said they were concerned not with the topic of Cosby's remarks but with his tone.

"If he was going to make such a strong point, he should have chosen his words very carefully," said Wendy Williams, host of the afternoon show on WBLS-FM in New York City. She said callers to her show were split fairly evenly in their opinions on Cosby's comments.

Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons also questioned Cosby's tone. "Judgment of the people in the situation is not helpful. How can you help them is the question," he said.

Izrael said he was appalled by Cosby's remarks about prisoners and police.

"That's irresponsible," he said. "In this day and age he ought not be giving license to anyone to shoot our kids in the street for petty crime. It negates everything he had to say. He's coming from this really classist perspective."

…Renee Jones, mother of three and grandmother of three, approved of Cosby speaking out.

"If there's a problem, it needs to be addressed," said Jones, 51, while waiting for a friend in Harlem. "He was right on for making people understand and see this is a problem."

But Otis Parker, 67, thought the need was for action, not talk. He questioned whether the speech patterns of black youth were really the concern.

"I was raised to say, 'Yes, Ma'am,' that didn't stop me from going to penitentiary," the retired building superintendent said. He turned his life around after a prison term for armed robbery.

Parker acknowledged that there are those who don't make good choices, but said criticizing instead of reaching out to encourage and help them isn't the way to go.

"You've got to help them all," he said. "You've got to step in."

Mr Parker and Mr. Simmons share my reaction for the most part. But once again it's time for a rectification of names. You've GOT to judge people or you won't even recognize someone needs help. The trick then is to do what you want in a way that works. In general, insulting people does little to get them to dispassionately consider one's views. Trust me, I speak from experience.

This Cosby thing still isn't over, you know

Past Imperfect: The Cosby Show

Cosby's recent remarks are nothing shocking: the afrostocracy has been criticizing its more ghetto cousins for decades.

By William Jelani Cobb

The old maxim warns us to beware of priests who lose their faith but keep their jobs. By that logic, a whole lot of alleged spokespersons for black people should've been unemployed a long time ago. In the wake of Bill Cosby's now-famous Pound Cake Speech at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's dinner commemorating the Brown v. Board of Education case, the comedian has been praised by white conservatives and black folk at large for essentially keeping it real. For airing dirty laundry. For saying in public what your uncle Bobby has been saying behind closed doors for years.

But hold on. Before you fix your mouth to sing Cosby's praises, consider this: the fact that some black people make similar comments in private does not make them any more accurate when they are spoken in public.

You can't just say stuff like that

Even if you're anonymous, I still have to bring this one up from the comments.

First, doing well in school is supposedly "acting white". That was not the case in any of the mostly white high school and college I went to and it was not the case in the all black elementary or junior high schools I went to.

Being a nerd is being a nerd, acting white is acting white. Two different things. It was real easy in the 80s and 90s and probably still. If you listened to hip-hop you acted black, otherwise you acted white.

More directly, if you hung out with other black kids you act black. If you hang out with white kids you act white. How complex can that be? The single smartest black person in the school in my experiences has always acted black. Maybe that's just luck.

I can imagine a circumstance where there are schools that are nearly all white in the "top classes" and nearly all black in the "bottom classes". In that situation, the smartest black kids mostly hang out with their white classmates, listen to rock and roll like their friends and are accused of "acting white". I've never seen this but I imagine that is the case in some places. In that case doing well in school happens to align well enough with acting white that there are black children complaining to adults that they are accused of "acting white" just because they do well. Those complaints seem to have reached Bill Cosby. But the fact is the kids accused of "acting white" really do "act white".

So enough of that. I think this stuff about doing well is acting white is a myth produced by distorted perceptions. Cosby and other critics of black people latched onto it just because it fits their theories that the culture of black children is to blame for everything.

The next issue is that supposedly moral standards have degraded since when Bill Cosby was a child.

How is this supposed to have happened? Did the culture fairy sprinkle dust on a whole generation of black children?

Cosby points to a school in Brooklyn with a 50% drop out rate. Seems to me that between older siblings and older friends, people who attend that school have a clear picture of what happens to the people who graduate and what happens to the people who do not graduate.

Do the 50% who graduate get better jobs than the 50% who do not graduate? It is possible that graduating is in some cases rationally not worth the aggravation.

Something has to have changed if drop out rates increased. It was not the culture fairy. Instead of blaming the children Cosby should be asking has the amount of stress involved in going to school increased for some people? Have the benefits of finishing decreased for some people? These are issues that can and should be addressed. When cultures change, they usually change for a reason.

Next. Black leaders. Bill Cosby is not one. You may not like Farrakhan or Sharpton or Jackson, but they have devoted their working lives to trying to improve the status of the Black community. Bill Cosby has spent his working life trying to make people laugh, and mostly white people at that. That does not mean its not possible that as a fluke, the comedian might have some insight that those who dedicate their lives have missed, but we don't expect that to happen. That sure hasn't happened here.

Whew. Let's get back to the work ethic for a second. My grandmother moved from Mississippi to New York City at the beginning of the 20th century to work. My grandfather moved from Barbados to New York City to work. My other grandparents moved from Georgia to Detroit to work.

Every black person in every major US city has the same story. At one point I believe the Black participation in the labor force was higher than the white participation. So what happened to the work ethic?

Its not the culture fairy. If employers are prejudiced against Black people, that lowers the expected return from a given amount of job seeking effort. The problem is not backwards pants. Any rational actor will expend less effort seeking a job if there is a lower expected reward. Instead of fixing the backwards pants, let's fix the expected reward from a given amount of effort looking for a job.

OK. I'm done. Thanks P6 for providing a forum where I can spit this out.

Does everyone know about Geoffrey Canada? I read his autobiography recently Fists Sticks Knives Guns. Its real good. Geoffrey runs a major program in Harlem to improve the outcomes of at-risk children. Bill Cosby should give him a call.