Cosby’s words ... and those of some critics
Here are excerpts of Cosby’s controversial NAACP remarks:
In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. In the old days, you couldn’t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye. And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had on and where you got it from. Parents don’t know that today.
Fifty percent dropout 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.... 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.
These [Brown v. Board] people who marched and were hit in the face with rocks and punched in the face to get an education, and we got these knuckleheads walking around who don’t want to learn English. I know that you all know it. I just want to get you as angry [as] you ought to be. When you walk around the neighborhood and you see this stuff, that stuff’s not funny. These people are not funny anymore. And that’s not my brother. And that’s not my sister. They’re faking and they’re dragging me way down because the state, the city, and all these people have to pick up the tab on them because they don’t want to accept that they have to study to get an education.
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Some comments from Cosby’s critics:
And then there are the problems of the working poor: folk who rise up early every day and often work more than forty hours a week, and yet barely, if ever, make it above the poverty level. We must acknowledge the plight of both poor Black (single) mothers and poor Black fathers, and the lack of social support they confront. Hence, it is incredibly difficult to spend as much time with children as poor Black parents might like, especially since they will be demonized if they fail to provide for their children’s basic needs.
– Michael Eric Dyson, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities and African American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania
I think that the context of the situation, the Brown case, was interesting. The key point of the efforts of Thurgood Marshall and Charles Houston was that no matter how hard African Americans try, that discrimination was a permanent barrier to further advancement. I think [Cosby’s NAACP] comments missed the point of how real those barriers are....The reality is that since Brown, African Americans have attained unbelievable educational achievements. The current generation is better educated than Bill Cosby’s. His comments misplaced the anxiety of the older generation.
– William Spriggs, executive director of the National Urban League’s Institute for Opportunity & Equality, quoted in the Washington Times, May 26, 2004.
Predictably, conservatives are applauding Bill Cosby for saying that the problems of the Black community stem primarily from personal failures and moral shortcomings. But just as we in the progressive African American community cannot countenance the demonization of poor people, we must not cede the issue of personal responsibility to ideological conservatives. Most poor Black people struggle admirably to raise their children well. Parents, including single mothers, work for low wages, sometimes in multiple jobs, to support their families...But many of the problems Cosby addressed are largely a function of concentrated poverty in Black communities – the legacy of centuries of governmental and private neglect and discrimination.
– Theodore M. Shaw, director-counsel and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., from the Washington Post, May 27, 2004.