Bill Cosby has been saying some very astute and important things about culture, race and bias in America. His views tend to rankle people like Sharpton, Jackson and all the other Race Warlords and Poverty Pimps who want things to stay as they are.
I have written about him before
here,
here and
here.
The Atlantic has a
nice long article on Bill Cosby and it's worth reading and thinking about the next time you read about gangs and the high percentage of blacks in the prison system...
�This Is How We Lost to the White Man�
The audacity of Bill Cosby�s black conservatism
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.�
And to the meat of the matter:
From Birmingham to Cleveland and Baltimore, at churches and colleges, Cosby has been telling thousands of black Americans that racism in America is omnipresent but that it can�t be an excuse to stop striving. As Cosby sees it, the antidote to racism is not rallies, protests, or pleas, but strong families and communities. Instead of focusing on some abstract notion of equality, he argues, blacks need to cleanse their culture, embrace personal responsibility, and reclaim the traditions that fortified them in the past. Driving Cosby�s tough talk about values and responsibility is a vision starkly different from Martin Luther King�s gauzy, all-inclusive dream: it�s an America of competing powers, and a black America that is no longer content to be the weakest of the lot.
The article is so long and so detailed that it is hard to excerpt. Wonderful stuff and it would be great to see more people coming to Cosby's views. Talk about a good candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize -- a lot better than the current crop of Lauriates...
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