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I wasn't sure if I should put this here or in the Switchboard, but I figured this was the best place, because the speech was roughly a year ago, and I'm hoping the discussion will be better suited to this forum anyway.
So Bill Cosby makes a speech (at a dinner celebrating Brown v.s. The Board of Education), and the NAACP gets pissed. Why? Well, read it for yourself here:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/billcosbypoundcakespeech.htm
If you don't want to read the whole thing, let me make excerpts:
50 percent drop out rate, I’m telling you, and people in jail, and women having children by five, six different men. Under what excuse? I want somebody to love me. And as soon as you have it, you forget to parent. Grandmother, mother, and great grandmother in the same room, raising children, and the child knows nothing about love or respect of any one of the three of them. All this child knows is “gimme, gimme, gimme.” These people want to buy the friendship of a child, and the child couldn’t care less. Those of us sitting out here who have gone on to some college or whatever we’ve done, we still fear our parents. And these people are not parenting. They’re buying things for the kid -- $500 sneakers -- for what? They won’t buy or spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics.
Kenneth Clark, somewhere in his home in upstate New York -- just looking ahead. Thank God he doesn’t know what’s going on. Thank God. But these people -- the ones up here in the balcony fought so hard. Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged: “The cops shouldn’t have shot him.” What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else. And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said if you get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother." Not, "You’re going to get your butt kicked." No. "You’re going to embarrass your mother." "You’re going to embarrass your family." If you knock that girl up, you’re going to have to run away because it’s going to be too embarrassing for your family. In the old days, a girl getting pregnant had to go down South, and then her mother would go down to get her. But the mother had the baby. I said the mother had the baby. The girl didn’t have a baby. The mother had the baby in two weeks. We are not parenting.
Ladies and gentlemen, listen to these people. They are showing you what’s wrong. People putting their clothes on backwards. Isn’t that a sign of something going on wrong? Are you not paying attention? People with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn’t that a sign of something or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn’t it a sign of something when she’s got her dress all the way up to the crack -- and got all kinds of needles and things going through her body. What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don’t know a damned thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap and all of them are in jail. (When we give these kinds names to our children, we give them the strength and inspiration in the meaning of those names. What’s the point of giving them strong names if there is not parenting and values backing it up).
Lord knows how Bill Cosby can speak in parantheses, but I wish I could. I'd do it all the time. And you may notice the puncuation is pretty crappy, which is why you should listen to it at the address I posted. Here's more:
We’ve got to take the neighborhood back. We’ve got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It’s right around the corner. It’s standing on the corner. It can’t speak English. It doesn’t want to speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk. “Why you ain’t where you is go, ra.” I don’t know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t land a plane with, “Why you ain’t…” You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they’re moving ahead on this. Well, they know they’re not; they’re just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you’re just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.
Now, look, I’m telling you. It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing. 50 percent drop out. Look, we’re raising our own ingrown immigrants. These people are fighting hard to be ignorant. There’s no English being spoken, and they’re walking and they’re angry. Oh God, they’re angry and they have pistols and they shoot and they do stupid things. And after they kill somebody, they don’t have a plan. Just murder somebody. Boom. Over what? A pizza? And then run to the poor cousin’s house.
And more:
Five or six different children -- same woman, eight, ten different husbands or whatever. Pretty soon you’re going to have to have DNA cards so you can tell who you’re making love to. You don’t who this is. It might be your grandmother. I’m telling you, they’re young enough. Hey, you have a baby when you’re twelve. Your baby turns thirteen and has a baby, how old are you? Huh? Grandmother. By the time you’re twelve, you could have sex with your grandmother, you keep those numbers coming. I’m just predicting.
Damn, Bill. Calm down a bit.
What is it with young girls getting after some girl who wants to still remain a virgin. Who are these sick black people and where did they come from and why haven’t they been parented to shut up? To go up to girls and try to get a club where “you are nobody....” This is a sickness, ladies and gentlemen, and we are not paying attention to these children. These are children. They don’t know anything. They don’t have anything. They’re homeless people. All they know how to do is beg. And you give it to them, trying to win their friendship. And what are they good for? And then they stand there in an orange suit and you drop to your knees: “He didn’t do anything. He didn’t do anything.” Yes, he did do it. And you need to have an orange suit on, too.
Anyway. Bill Cosby is angry, and this speech angered a lot of other people, including the NAACP. Some say he is just holding people accountable to their deeds, others say he is placing too much blame on a portion of society that doesn't have much to begin with.
Others say that the idea of wealthy or well-off African Americans turning their backs on poor African Americans has been around for centuries, and that the only difference now is that white people are watching. I heard a fellow on NPR the other day make some good points about how maybe, just maybe, white politicians who have sat out on these debates are hearing Bill Cosby say these things
and are beginning to think that maybe he's right, maybe white politicians don't have an obligation to protect these poor when they are clearly not even making an effort. So maybe they don't need to fund A Step Ahead or any other program for poor blacks.
I don't know what to think. Maybe this is a debate that white people should just watch but stay out of. Although clearly, the bit about names is sorta stupid. Maybe someone named Shaniqwa doesn't have much of a chance getting a job in a mall located in a predominately white neighborhood, but stupid names didn't stop Oprah Winfrey, Shaquille O'Neil, or Condaleeza Rice (I apologize for any spelling errors).
Looking around where I live (Detroit) I see a lot of poor, desperate people who don't have much in the way of material goods, a chance at a decent education, or a way out of this cesspool of a city (to be brutally honest, the city is almost bankrupt and run by fools and crooks). But many of them do have guns, and they use them frequently for stupid reasons.
You know, I think Bill thinks that these people want no part of bettering themselves ("Bettering" according to Bill Cosby). He says, somewhere in the middle of his speech, "What good is Brown v.s. The Board of Education if nobody wants it?"
Do you agree? To quote the title of a recently published book, "Is Bill Cosby Right Or Have Middle Class African Americans Lost Their Minds?" |
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