by Flash 211 Replies latest jw friends
Both he and his wife are VERYcommitted to education---they both have doctorates ,etc and have always placed a great deal of emphasis on GETTING an education, as well as contributing to many funds and agencies that provide scholarships and the like.
It ain't enough to throw money at the problem. I don't think Bill got his doctorate the old-fashioned way.
Whatever. Dude is entitled to his opinion. What he's saying has been said before it's nothing new.
Gitas, fat albert totally rocked. they dont make cool cartoons like that anymore :(
You could learn a lot of good stuff from it too. I hope his new cartoon is going to be good.
matriarcal society? Dont they live in OUR society which is patriacal? You so talk out of your ass an awful lot. Do you even KNOW any african american people?
Nothing new..yet still so true. ;)
Well I was just informed that Bill C. probably has earned an advance degree or two.
I just wish he had been more eloquent in his denunciations. Nah, not really, I don't understand how another Black man can take a national stage and denigrate his people, no matter how "factual" he thinks he's being..
What Bill Cosby Should Be Talking About It's fine to be critical. But blacks should be working together, not against each other
By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY 
Thursday, Jun. 03, 2004There are still certain things some black people won?t talk about in front of some white people. American culture may be seemingly more integrated than, say, 50 years ago, but cultural walls remain. Racial issues, in multiracial company, are often circled until they are impossible to ignore and have to be discussed; blacks, when there are only other blacks around, often cut to the chase. But private black discourse, in my experience, is not focused on pinning things on skin color. The main difference between multiracial conversations and ones solely among blacks is that in private, African Americans are often more critical of themselves than outsiders would ever dare to be.
Last month, Bill Cosby broke the unwritten rule of keeping black dirty laundry in black washing machines. While at a multiracial gala dinner in Washington, D.C. commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Cosby targeted under-educated lower-income blacks as the source of various social problems. Among his comments: ?People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we?ve got these knuckleheads walking around...the lower economic people are not holding up their end of the deal. These people are not parenting.? And he mocked the way some blacks name their children: ?With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all that crap, and all of them are in jail....They are standing on the corner and they can?t speak English.? Let?s hope Fantasia Barrino, Shaquille O?Neal and Muhammad Ali never see a transcript of Cosby?s comments.
After Cosby?s speech, a number of my friends and relatives, some of whom were in attendance some of whom heard about the furor afterwards, expressed dismay at the statements ? but several were more horrified that he had gone public, not at the opinions themselves. Cosby?s comments did not contain any new arguments. As far back as 1942, the writer Zora Neale Hurston lamented the attacks of those who would scapegoat the black underclass: ?My people! My people! From the earliest rocking of my cradle days, I have heard this cry go up from Negro lips. It is forced outward by pity, scorn and hopeless resignation. It is called forth by the observations of one class of Negro on the doings of another branch of the brother in black.?
Cosby?s commentary is also strikingly similar to the words of a younger, hipper cultural critic: comedian Chris Rock. In Rock?s ?Niggas vs. Black people? routine from his breakthrough 1996 ?Bring the Pain? tour, Rock contrasted the values of middle class blacks with lower-income blacks who had succumbed to a kind of gangsta despair. Among Rock?s observations: some blacks liked watching movies in cinemas, other liked shooting them up; some blacks tried to be responsible, others thought if they merely took care of their babies they were doing something special. ?There's like a civil war going on with black people,? Rock announced. ?There are two sides: there's black people, and there's niggas. And niggas have got to go.?
Cosby was trying to get at some of the same ideas as Rock. But Rock made his his serious point with humor; Cosby made his serious point using seriousness. Comics who get all grave can be a drag. Nobody really wants to hear Seinfeld?s take on Halliburton unless it?s accompanied by a laughtrack. Also, Cosby?s comments deriding non-standard English seemed particularly off-base. Without non-traditional language, we wouldn?t have Public Enemy rapping ?Don?t Believe The Hype,? Diana Ross singing ?Ain?t No Mountain High Enough,? or Bob Marley declaring he had ?So Much Things to Say.? Without slang, we wouldn?t have the blues poems of Langston Hughes, or some of the patois-infused verse of Derek Walcott.
Yes, Cosby is right that education is important and kids should master English ? but they should also be taught that vernacular black culture has worth. Certainly Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote such vernacular classics as Their Eyes Were Watching God ? understood that. ?Zora chose to write in dialect because she thought the language of ordinary, rural, self-educated black folk was beautiful,? Valerie Boyd, author of the Hurston biography Wrapped in Rainbows told me. ?She thought this language ? the language of her youth, her primary language as a storyteller ? was poetic and rich and full of vivid imagery and worthy of being celebrated and immortalized in literature.?
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.
matriarcal society? Dont they live in OUR society which is patriacal? You so talk out of your ass an awful lot. Do you even KNOW any african american people?
Yeah, I know lots of African-American people, that's what led me to my opinion as stated previously. Look at how poor black women have child after child after child, often by different fathers who have no part in the upbringing. Based on my observation of many black males in relationship to their s/o's, it often seems to resemble a mother-child relationship more than one of equals. But hell a lot of white dudes are that way too, so this matriarchal-ness that I observe is likely more of a socioeconomic thing than a race thing, so I'll back off of my previous statement, in the sense of it being exclusively a black thing. That is an interesting article bigboi, and I think Chris Rock's approach to the problem is far better than grumpy-old-man Bill's.
bigboi, you be so smart...enden yer sentence in der preposiiion..
caveman
That is an interesting article bigboi, and I think Chris Rock's approach to the problem is far better than grumpy-old-man Bill's.
Thanks for taking time to read it Dan.
I think most of what Bill is saying is true. However, few people do the things they do "just cuz". Things aren't the way they are just because people aren't holding up their end of some bargain (which happens to be the way Cosby phrased it in his earlier rant in May). The civil rights of any American are not something to be bargained for. It's what society owes us as human beings. We don't have to earn them and that is what is so beautiful about the whole concept. However a tremendous amount of respect should be given for those rights and we should make the most of our opportunities. In life it just doesn't turn out that way, even in a society as liberated as ours.
About two weeks ago in New Orleans, a 90 year old lady and her 67 year old daughter were gunned down in her home in home, the house set ablaze in a brazen attempt to cover up the crime. The news reports used this event to illustrate the drastic change in what used to be a safe middle-class urban neighborhood. The lady was the matriach of well-respected, well-connected family and many of the neighborhoods former residents were doctors, lawyers, teachers, administrators and most notably the current Mayor of New Orleans. The crime was a horrible and while I don't blame the men and women of that community for the murders, the fact that they left that neighborhood is an indicator of many of the problems currently facing the Urban black community. Too many of the progressive left the "Black" neighborhoods during ensuing years after the Civil Rights Movement. Leaving behind in most cases poor people who could and would be manipulated by the city in the name of the aforementioned movement. That's what is so disappointing to me about Mr. Cosby's comments. They seem to put the blame on the people fof not being educated, yet fail to mention the crumbling schools that most of these kids have to attend. They mention the fact that a lot fothese people don't have jobs, but forget about the fact that economic developement in a lot of places is either poorly funded, but more often than not reserved for the use of rich minorities who quite simply have no need for such services.
bigboi, you be so smart...enden yer sentence in der preposiiion..
Dude. I'm Black not German.
**It ain't enough to throw money at the problem. I don't think Bill got his doctorate the old-fashioned way.
Geez, BigBoi, what IS your problem?
He saw the "need" and contributed to it---helping the underpriveledged black kids to get an education should they desire to have one. Do you consider years of dedication and contributions of both money and "giving" of himself-----throwing money to others? I just don't get it!
In the early 70's, a sister in my KH was a secretary at U of M, and Bill Cosby was in and out of her office every day. We had gone out there a few times to hang out and see if I could get to meet him....he was enrolled there at the time. He DID get his education through hard work and study.....and not only at U of M.
Why is it important to you to trash him?
I don't understand what this is all about. If he feels the need to speak out and MAKE these lazy kids THINK about their futures, and how the're blowing it away---then so be it. Maybe he feels like making them sit up and take notice taking the hard line rather than sweet-talking them, may cause them to re-think where they're headed, or NOT headed.
