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I guess Dr. Cosby has found his calling

by Prometheus 6
July 2, 2004 - 6:26am.
on Race and Identity

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.

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Submitted by mark safranski (not verified) on July 2, 2004 - 10:29am.

hi Earl,

I realize that this isn't an argument against your point in the post but it's a related tangent.

Speaking as an educator...Bravo, Bill Cosby !

My experience working with students from k-undergarduate, parents and teachers bears out the generalizations from research.

Students with highly engaged parents tend to do very well in school. The most engaged parents tend to be Asian-Americans, European immigrants and Jews. Most native-born American parents, white or black are disengaged from their children's education and a significant minority are indifferent or hostile to education though not to school athletics or other social fluff.

The crucial difference is that while the average white student is just as likely to embrace an empty, instant gratification, hip-hop/pop/video game/sports/Reality show/Jerry Springer value system mass culture - their Black fellow student is more likely to also be in poverty, have fewer positive adult role models and be further removed from the mainstream.

To a certain extent, the lifetime effect of the average white student spending school years wallowing in ignorance and self-absorbtion, is mitigated by being immersed in the traditional mainstream which they can understand or affect even when they do not actually practice those traditional values. That's part of the reason white students do not get the same criticism that Cosby has levelled - the aggregate effects are not as dire or at least as visible.

Many Black students can ill-afford the same kinds of self-imposed cultural handicaps in addition to systemic ones like racism or poverty. Anything Bill Cosby can do to shake up America's complacency is welcome in my view.

Submitted by P6 (not verified) on July 2, 2004 - 4:11pm.

I have no problem with the digression. I'm going to have to go there anyway. This post was written by way of gathering evidence.