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BILL
COSBY - A MUST READ
The
Reverend Jesse Jackson almost never gets
upstaged
and I had never seen the Reverend
Jesse
Louis Jackson cry in public until last month.
Jackson
invited Bill Cosby to the annual Rainbow /
PUSH
conference for a conversation about the
controversial
remarks the entertainer offered on
May
17 at an NAACP dinner in Washington , D.C.
when
America 's Jell-O Man shook things up
by
arguing that African Americans were betraying
the
legacy of civil rights victories. Cosby
said
'the
lower economic people are not holding up their
end
in this deal. These people are not
parenting.
They
are buying things for their kids.
$500
sneakers for what? But they won't spend
$200
for
Hooked on Phonics!'
Bill
Cosby came to town and upstaged the reverend
by
going on the offense instead of defending his
earlier
remarks. Thursday morning, Cosby showed
no
signs of repenting as he strode across the
stage
at
the Sheraton Hotel ballroom before a standing
room
only crowd. Sporting a natty gold sports
coat
and
dark glasses, he proceeded to unload a Laundry
list
of black America 's self-imposed ills. The
iconic
actor
and comedian kidded that he couldn't compete
with
the oratory of the Reverend but he preached
circles
around Jackson in their nearly hour-long
conversation,
delivering brutally frank one-liners
and
the toughest of love.
The
enemy, he argues, is us: "There is a
time,
ladies
and gentlemen, when we have to turn
the
mirror around." Cosby acknowledged he
wasn't
critiquing
all blacks. . .. just the 50 percent of
African
Americans
in the lower economic neighborhood
who
drop out of school, and the alarming
proportions
of
black men in prison and black teenage mothers.
The
mostly black crowd seconded him with choruses
of
Amens.
To
the critics who pose, it's unproductive to air
our
dirty
laundry in public, he responds,
"Your
dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every
day."
It's
cursing on the way home, on the bus, train,
in
the candy store. They are cursing and
grabbing
each
other and going nowhere. The book bag is very,
very
thin because there's nothing in it.
Don't
worry about the white man, he added.
I
could care less about what white people think
about
me. . . Let them talk.
What
are they saying that is so different from what
their
grandfathers said and did to us?
What
is different is what we are doing to
ourselves.
For
those who say Cosby is just an elitist who's
"got
his" but doesn't understand the plight of the
black
poor, he reminds us that,
"We're
going to turn that mirror around.
It's
not just the poor - everybody's guilty."
Cosby
and Jackson lamented that in the 50th years
of
Brown vs. Board of Education, our failings
betray
our
legacy. Jackson dabbed away tears as he
recalled
the financial struggles at Fisk University ,
a
historically black college and Jackson 's Alma
mater.
When
Cosby was done, the 1,000 people in the room
all
jumped to their feet in ovation.
We
have shed tears too many times, at too many
watershed
moments before, while the hopes they inspired
have
fallen by the wayside. Not this time!
Cosby's
plea to parents:
"Before
you get to the point where you say 'I can't do
nothing
with them', do something with them."
Teach
our children to speak English.
There's
no such thing as "talking white".
When
the teacher calls, show up at the school.
When
the idiot box starts spewing profane rap
videos;
turn
it off. Refrain from cursing around the
kids.
Teach
our boys that women should be cherished,
not
raped and demeaned.
Tell
them that education is a prize we won with
blood
and
tears, not a dishonor.
Stop
making excuses for the agents and abettors
of
black on black crime.
It
costs us nothing to do these things.
But
if we don't, it will cost us infinitely more
tears.
We
all send thousands of jokes through e-mail
without
a second thought, but when it comes
to
sending messages regarding life choices,
people
think twice about sharing.
The
crude, vulgar, and sometimes the obscene
pass
freely through cyberspace, but public
discussion
of
decency is too often suppressed in the schools
and
workplaces.
I
passed this on... Will you?
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