No, you teach them to climb, but not by giving them a solid gold ladder and walking away.
And I don’t buy that caste system bullshit. I’ve seen enough evidence of people building themselves from nothing, getting to college without a dime through hard work and sweat to know it isn’t true.
But that’s now how most people see those shows, is it? They see it and say that Cosby was acting “white”. Not that being a doctor is something for a black man to shoot for.
Has anyone here not heard sarcastic comments about, say, Wayne Brady being “too white”? How he’s just a new-age minstrel performing for his mass’as?
What Cosby is bitching about isn’t that these people are a bunch of garbage-talking, gold chain wearing, crooked-hat attired do-nothings. He’s bitching about the fact that their motherfucking GOAL is to be a bunch of garbage-talking, gold chain wearing, crooked-hat attired do-nothings.
Fuck, how long do you think it’ll be until “baby momma” and “baby daddy” are in the dictionary?
-Joe, wrap star
I t looks thoi me that there are some people who think that, because Guin is a known liberal ;), she is disagreeing with Cosby . Quite to the contrary, she has restated some of what he said.
Gold Ladder? Dude you appear to have some serious resentment issues. I noticed a few comments and let them slip… why do these discussions always end up a variation of the welfare queen?
I know I haven’t even suggested giving these people a free ride, so I don’t know where this golden ladder is coming from…except from inside you.
holmes, your very first post in this thread was for Cosby to not make speeches, but to give money. We gave you examples of his charities but that wasn’t good enough. You just said above that if you had gotten in trouble, the help you would have wanted was “dough”.
Sounds like you’re the one looking for a handout.
I’d rather have a group of folks working to show people the errors of the paths they’ve chosen and assure them that it’s not hopeless, America is NOT a caste system, and if they work hard, they can get THEMSELVES out of trouble.
Let’s try to keep this in context, shall we:
Yes I still feel that it’s wrong to tell a bunch of Rich folks what a bunch of losers a group of people are when YOU have the ability to directly be an agent of change and I didn’t say give them money…I said offer them loans, education etc. Show me where I said to give these people cash in hand. I didn’t.
Yes I called you and the others on Bill’s Charity, ONLY because of the constant “He’s helping the community” line, No Bill’s helping HIS community, not the people he deems unworthy.
Perhaps you’ve never had a child, but they are freaking expensive, and most new parents would rather have cash in hand than a toy or such and you of course noticed I included a JOB in that same sentence when I said I wanted dough SPECIFICALLY for the baby.
Look at your shoulder my friend, I feel the weight must be giving you back problems.
Exactly, thank you.
I agree with Cosby here. I’ve seen this trend and it disturbs me. If someone had said that back in the sixties, they would have been called a racist, and rightly so. After all, the people involved in the Civil Rights movement were fighting AGAINST the notion of blacks not being capable of success, of intelligence, of hard work and education. They fought AGAINST that. ANd now, we see a lot of people embracing it. That’s scary.
It’s self-defeating and insulting. Perhaps it stems from low self-esteem, or insecurities. (Afraid to try, so they just say, “well, that would be acting white anyways!”).
Maybe it’s just because I was an education major at one time, or that in my family, education was always such a big deal to strive for.
Now, it’s seen as some how “selling out to the (white) Man!” And I find it disturbing, not only in and of itself, but that to SAY I find it disturbing is often dismissed as being racist. (Because I’m white).
Whatever, holmes. I have no idea what that last line means, but trust me I know children are expensive.
I also know ignorance is expensive. For me, I’d rather have my children be smart and well cultured than have money. There are state and city programs to make sure basic needs are taken care of.
Bill Cosby doesn’t need to do it. What Bill Cosby does is provide people with information like dressing your kids up as gangstas and letting them listen to rap all day does more harm than good. Should we give people a home loan without a road map to homeownership?
I don’t think telling people that they’re harming their own culture is telling them they’re losers, it’s telling them they’re GOING THE WRONG WAY…turn back!.
Really, what If told you my Grandfather was black in South. What if I told you some men came to take the land he scrapped and saved for. What if I told you they took is land an he had no redress. What if I told you he struck one of them because they made a comment about my mother who was a teenager at the time.
How much hard work who my grandfather have to do keep them from beating him to death? How much hard work did my mother have to do to keep from getting raped?
How much hard work did my Grandmother have to do to raise a housefull of kids and what chance did they have in 1940 North Carolina? How much hard work did they have to do to be able to vote, own property?
I’m not saying this happened, just asking. Now suppose my mother saw that despite the hardwork of her father who’s dead now, the promises of equality and Justice, they still have none. The voting rights act passed in 1965…
You know the American dream of hard work and the world’s yours…didn’t happen for them, like it did for Bill Cosby, and you and me.
Why would they believe people like you or Bill Cosby when you said the all they need is hard work…? They tried working hard, didn’t work out too good for 'em. Especially when he doesn’t even have the guts to tell it to their faces?
just asking.
I would say it’s 2004, use the resources that your forefathers fought and sacrificed for.
They don’t have the resources, why can’t see that? For Christsakes, it’s only been 30 freaking years since they had FULL access to the Bill of Rights, one generation.
If you look at ALL the immigrants they lived the EXACT same way, and within a generation or 2 they got better. What you’re looking at is ONE Generation.
It’s gonna take 3 to sort this mess out.
I’d make a deal with Cosby.
For every speech he gives to a rich white crowd, telling them to stop discriminating against the blacks that are perfectly qualified to work for them, he can give one speech to blacks ranting on them for not taking the opportunities he just got for them due to his previous speech. Yes, it is possible for blacks to rise above their hardships and make it in this country. There is plenty of evidence of that.
With that said, it’s still a LOT harder for a poor black person to make it than a poor white person, all else being equal. My wife has what is commonly known as a “black name.” She is white. She has applied to numerous jobs for which she is infinitely qualified, but gets not even a rejection letter in return. Zilch, nothing, nada. She goes to a job fair, where people can see her, and applies for many of the exact same jobs. Now she gets to decide which of the many offers to turn down. Worse than that, many of them actually make comments about her name being unusual. It’s a VERY common name and has been around for a LONG time, just not very common for a white person.
End the fucking discrimination, then come back and bitch about those not taking advantage of the system.
they don’t have schools to attend?
They don’t have libraries?
They don’t have programs like HeadStart?
Most importantly, they don’t have their own brains to get involved with the lives of their children? (and this applies to every parent on the planet) To read to them? Nurture them? Tell them that the life DMX espouses is WRONG?
Please.
It amazes me that speaking the truth is viewed as attack by some people.
Which community is that?
Besides, who gets those loans, education, etc? Who decides who gets to go to that school that The Cos just put up in Harlem? Who decides which hundred families get that loan?
Maybe Billy should build some nice apartment complexes and give them low rents. Oh, that’s been tried. Many, many times. How are the projects in your area? In this area they’re terrible. Oh, for the first year or three they probably aren’t bad places to live, but I did some work as a new one was going up in this area. It’s been about three years, and you won’t find me there after dark without a damned good reason.
So, Holmes Cosby Junior, who gets the money? Which tiny percentage do you give it to? Do you make them take a test? Promise not to have babies before a certain age?
Maybe you can have them make a certain grade requirement and then you’ll pay their college?
Cuz that’s called a “scholarship”.
Yeah, that’s the solution. Subsidizing people with money “only for the baby and the baby’s needs”. Weren’t you just bitching because people had insinuated the idea of “Welfare Queens”?
And what job would that be? One that they’re qualified for or one they’re not? What jobs are they qualified for?
Perhaps, instead, people should have the sense to not have children until they can afford it.
That’s what I’m doing. Then again, I grew up in a poorer neighborhood (Bay View, for those in the Milwaukee area) with a single mother working 60 hours a week. Somehow I grew up into a semi-functional adult.
I guess I’m lucky. Or maybe my mother tried. And so did I.
-Joe, not black
I find myself falling on to sides of this debate. I agree with many of the things Cosby has said, but I too find myself uncomfortable with his choice of arenas to give his speeches. See, as a black man, I spend a lot of time making the exact same arguments as Cosby’s. Hell, I said something similar the night before last when talking to my oldest son and his friends. The difference; I was talking to the people whom the message would help. I’m right here, down in the trenches. The way Cosby is doing it is like the way the cool kids in school would laugh and talk about you as soon as you left the room, he’s talking to his peers. Sure some of what he’s saying is filtering back in the form of sound bites on the news, or a short blurb in the paper, but just how many of the people who need to hear that message are watching the news or reading papers?
I’ve always resented the image through which we black people are perceived. An early poster mentioned it previously but it’s hard going through life knowing, not thinking but knowing that the next crack head to make the news will throw just a little more dust on an already dirty exterior. But you know what, I can live with that, because I’m down here trying to make a difference with me, mine and as many of their friends that I can get to stand still long enough for the lecture. Then Cosby comes along and validates the very perception through which we are viewed; I say to Cosby he needs do the same; take your message to the people who would most benefit from hearing it.
Yes, our problems are generational in many ways self-sustaining. What started with Vietnam and the welfare system has only increased with the advent of open air drug dealing, which I should point out is what is fueling that explosion of our numbers in the prison system. The main effect of this is a dearth of male leadership at the right levels in our streets, and a generation of unemployable men. Just where do you think the fathers of those women having multiple fatherless children are? Yes, our culture also promotes this when you see the antics of gangsta rappers being duplicated everyday in your streets by legitimate gangstas. Add to that mother’s who’ve just given up, or those who work too many jobs to do put a meal on the table, and many times only wish is to see their kids make it to adulthood in any form educated or not and yeah we’ve got problems.
So I stay. I started my business here, and when the need arises I’ll try to give kids here jobs. When I buy a home next year, it’ll be here. I’ll probably stay till I’m too tired to move away form it, and I’ll keep trying to get the message out, down here where it can be heard. The problem with Cosby is that he’s not airing his dirty laundry; he’s airing our dirty laundry.
You know what Joe, so did I. My Mom worked hard too but not 60 hours more like 50, and there were six of us. She tried, some of us tried too. In addtion to me, I have a brother who’s a very successful contractor, and another who owns a cleaners, I have a sister that sales realestate in the valley. I also have a brother who other than a rare 18 month stint, has never spent more than 6 months out of jail since age 12. I have another who tried that road, got popped and lucky for him got drug court, and has since reformed himself. Overcoming a constant message is as much in the individual as it is in the messenger. Just look at those WMD debates. 
Stuffy, since you are in the trenches I have some questions. I know I sometimes sound hostile when I am not so please don’t misinterpret my tone.
Would it be less “airing our dirty laundry” if Cosby were to give that same speech in front of a housing project? Would the people you feel should hear his message hear it any better then? Or would they still dismiss him as a rich, virtually white man and deride him for “slumming?” Can he say these things at all, in any venue, and be heard by the same people you speak to or has he lost all credibility by being a pompous rich guy? Have you found that you have gotten through to your son and his friends?
It just seems appropriate with the Stuffy and Merijeek reminicences:
Obviously, it’s not just a Black issue.
Stuffy great post. I don’t think Cosby is wrong, exactly. But I’m kind of aggravated by what I see is this rush to tell black people what they need all the time, and his comments seem to encourage that. Quite frankly, I find it patronizing. I’ve been preached to all my life simply because I’m black, not because I’m actually doing anything worthy of a lecture. It’s the belief that all black folks need someone to scold them and tell them ostensible things like “Stop beating your wife”–as if people will suddenly stop just because Dr. Huxtable says it bad–that really really bothers me.
When I read stuff like this…
by Uncommon Sense
…it makes me think that a lot of white people are applauding Cosby not because they think his message is actually going to do anything effective, but because they see his comments as mollifying to their own guilt-ridden pride. Well here’s a newsflash: most black people do not blame white people for the socioeconomoc disparities between the races, but they do attribute a lot of it to the vestiges of slavery, Jim Crow, and institutional discrimination. The things that Cosby was ranting against contribute to poverty and a ghetto mentality, too. They are also symptoms of poverty and a ghetto mentality. Breaking the cycle takes more than a celebrity making a feel-good speech to a room full of well-dressed people.
by Uncommon Sense
Yes, because black people are unaware that teenage pregnancy is a problem, drug dealing/abuse is a problem, and lack of education is problem. Thanks to Bill, we know that now. So now we can change. Right.
by dropzone
Ideally, his message should have been directed to all of us (as opposed to them), but that is not how his message is being treated. All I keep hearing in thread is how black people are (yet again) fucking up. Here’s another newsflash: “our” children are already falling into the same traps “in which so many black children today find themselves”. Black children are not unique in fucking up; but they are disproportionately represented in conditions that favor fucking up. Get it?
by jarbabyj
And what I’m saying is the man could have easily framed his speech so that it wouldn’t put so many people on the defensive. Being told “YOU’RE SCREWING IT UP!” does not exactly make you feel like he is on your team, now does it? Especially when he never says “we need” or “this is our problem” or “what we should be doing for our kids.” And when white people (yes that’s what I said) start picking up the chant and talk about what “they” need to do, it’s even less productive. That is why people are calling this an attack.
And? Do you think the illiterate folks with the gold chains and the baby-momma-drama are going to even read the paper? And if they did, are they suddenly going to have a eureka moment and decide to apply to Harvard?
I’m not saying Bill was wrong to say what he said. I’m just asking people to stop acting as if this feel-good-speech of the year is just what the black people need to save them from themselves. The real battle is being fought outside of the eye of the camera. Change will have to come from within, but just because Bill Cosby is a black man, does not make him a part of that “within”.