February 20, 2009 9:54 AM
Bill Cosby on personal responsibility
Speaking of Bill cosby - as I was this morning - this is from The Atlantic Monthly, May 2008:
The audacity of Bill Cosby's black conservatismby Ta-Nehisi Coates
'This Is How We Lost to the White Man'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!"
Cosby had come to Detroit aiming to grab the city's black men by their collars and shake them out of the torpor that has left so many of them--like so many of their peers across the country--undereducated, over-incarcerated, and underrepresented in the ranks of active fathers. No women were in the audience. No reporters were allowed, for fear that their presence might frighten off fathers behind on their child-support payments. But I was there, trading on race, gender, and a promise not to interview any of the allegedly skittish participants.
"Men, if you want to win, we can win," Cosby said. "We are not a pitiful race of people. We are a bright race, who can move with the best. But we are in a new time, where people are behaving in abnormal ways and calling it normal ... When they used to come into our neighborhoods, we put the kids in the basement, grabbed a rifle, and said, 'By any means necessary.'
"I don't want to talk about hatred of these people," he continued. "I'm talking about a time when we protected our women and protected our children. Now I got people in wheelchairs, paralyzed. A little girl in Camden, jumping rope, shot through the mouth. Grandmother saw it out the window. And people are waiting around for Jesus to come, when Jesus is already within you."
Read entire article here.
While Obama talks of "personal responsibility" and his followers cheer because they know he is referring to the "haves" rather than the "have-nots" he is addressing, Bill Cosby has for years been exhorting the black community to take personal responsibility, to stop blaming others, and to drop the negative influences from their lives while embracing the positive,
For this he has been attacked unmercifully.
A brave man who deserves our prayers. And he has a book too: Come on, People: On the Path from Victims to Victors
Posted in Fathers, Obama Nation | Permalink
