bill cosby and education
Jeffrey...@hotmail.com
COMMUNITY
By Bill Bradberry
In commemoration of this year's Fathers' Day, I took an informal,
unscientific poll last week among a fairly representative sample
cross-section of people, asking this question: "What well-known, living
African-American male represents the best role model of an
African-American 'Father Knows Best'?"
Overwhelmingly, by a margin of 10 to one, Bill Cosby was the favorite.
His television persona as well as his personal life have framed him as
the image most people I asked considered the best.
Cosby has ignited a storm of controversy over what should become a key
campaign issue for the presidential candidates this fall; that is, what
will the parties do to improve education and parenting skills in black
America?
Sadly, in the year of the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of
Education Supreme Court case, we still have not achieved parity in
education. In fact, we are slipping backwards toward resegregation and
perilously close to disaster.
The Brown solution was integration via busing, which, in the South, put
most of the burden on black children to get up early and get home late,
just for the opportunity to sit next to white students, rather than
raising schools in the black community to the same level as the
better-equipped white schools.
In the North, so many white parents objected to the insanity of busing
their children out of their own neighborhoods and black students in
(remember South Boston?) that irreparable harm was done to both
communities just to achieve some elusive sense of "balance."
Busing as a solution was a dismal failure. But, since nobody seemed
prepared to deal with the real issues, it remained the solution for
decades.
Now we seem primed at last to tackle the real issues. Bill Cosby hit
the nail on the head and thus lit up the debate.
In his May 17 remarks in Washington, D.C., at a function commemorating
the 50th anniversary of Brown, Cosby made reference to parents whose
children had been arrested. He wondered aloud, "Where were you when he
was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18 and
how come you didn't know that he had a pistol?"
Cosby pointed out that the biggest problems in the black community are
directly related to the lack of education.
Reflecting on the comments he drew from the right in response, Cosby
wrote in a June 6 letter appearing in the Los Angeles Times about the
many problems plaguing black communities today, including rising crime
rates, drugs, children having children.
He said, "Most of these ills stem from several factors, but an
important one is the lack of education of too many of our young people.
Studies show a correlation between inadequate schooling and a wide
range of distressing outcomes, including early death, a propensity
toward violence and substance abuse. Given the high dropout rate at
many urban high schools, it is easy to understand why the social fabric
has become tattered."
Agreeing with Cosby, Theodore M. Shaw, the new head of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Education Fund, in a commentary in the May 27 Washington
Post, said, "Violence and dysfunction in poor black communities are
under an especially glaring spotlight. 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."
But John McWhorter, a black darling of the far right, argues vehemently
against Cosby and Shaw, claiming that "the reason so many black people
just sat on their hands and descended into slovenly dependence in the
late 1960s was that the expansion of welfare deprived them of any
urgent reason to do otherwise. A bureaucracy was created to pay
unmarried black mothers to have children and spend their lives on the
dole. Expanded welfare encouraged the worst in human nature among those
blacks least inclined to resist it. Yet both the public intellectuals
and the state-level bureaucrats responsible for this remain unrepentant
today."
Cosby, firing back in his open letter, says, "What we need now is
parents sitting down with children, overseeing homework, sending
children off to school in the morning well fed, clothed, rested and
ready to learn."
He says what we need is self-empowerment through "parent power." Cosby
says, "It starts and finishes in the home. That's the one place I know
where children can find respect, guidance and love. We need to be one
big extended family."
We must reverse the trends and get back on track toward making the
school systems in this country work, which is clearly something they
cannot do without help from parents. Instead of cutting funding for
inner-city schools, the next administration needs to restore the
programs that were designed to help the schools do what they are
intended to do for all Americans, that is, find a way to own a slice of
the great American Pie!
If the Democrats and Republicans fail to address this critically
important issue at their upcoming conventions this summer in New York
and Boston, African-Americans may be forced to look for someone else
who will.