Michael Eric Dyson takes Bill Cosby on head-to-head with each issue that he brings up in his now infamous NAACP speech from May 17, 2004. Here are some highlights: Cosby: Just forget telling your child to join the Peace Corps. Its right around the corner. (laughter) Its standing on the corner. It cant speak English. It doesnt want to learn English. I cant even talk the way these people talk. Dyson: Cosbys poisonous view of young folks who speak a language he can barely parse [Ebonics] simmers with hostility and resentment. And Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Cosbys lauded 70s television cartoon series, won greater acceptance for a new cast of black identities and vernacular language styles. Cosby has made money and gained further influence from using forms of black English he now violently detests. Cosby: People with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isnt that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up (laughter and clapping). Dyson: Baggy clothes express identity among black youth, and not just beginning with hip-hop culture. Moreover, young black entrepreneurs like Sean P. Diddy Colms and Russell Simmons have made millions from their clothing lines. Cosby: Those people are not Africans, they dont know a damned thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap and all of them are in jail. Dyson: Names like Shaniqua and Taliqua are meaningful cultural expressions of self-determination.I think that it does have something to do with African roots of black identity, and perhaps with Cosbys ignorance and discomfort with those roots.Cosbys ornery, ill-informed diatribe against black-naming is a snapshot of his assault on poor black identity. And Given the vicious way blacks have been targeted for incarceration, Cosbys comments about poor blacks who end up in jail are dangerously naïve and empirically wrong. Cosby: The city and all these people have to pick up the tab on them [poor African Americans] because they dont want to accept that they have to study to get an education. Dyson: If the rigidly segregated education system continues to fail poor blacks by failing to prepare their children for the world of work, then admonitions to stay in school may ring hollow.In suburban neighborhoods, there are $60-million schools with state-of-the-art technology, while inner city schools desperately fight for funding for their students. Cosby: Im talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? (clapping) Where were you when he was twelve? (clapping) Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you dont know he had a pistol? (clapping) Dyson: 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 childrens basic needs. Cosby: All this child knows is gimme, gimme, gimme. These people want to buy the friendship of a child.and the child couldnt care less.and these people are not parenting. Theyre buying things for the kid. $500 sneakers, for what? And they wont spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics. (clapping) Dyson: And yet, some of the engaged critique he [Cosby] seeks to make of black folk—of their materialism, their consumptive desires, their personal choices their moral aspirations, their social conscience—is broadcast with much more imagination and insight in certain quarters of hip-hop culture. (Think of Kanye Wests track, All Falls Down, which displays a self-critical approach to the link between consumption and the effort to ward off racial degradation.) Cosby: I dont know who these people [poor African Americans] are. Dyson: The poor folk Cosby has hit the hardest are most vulnerable to the decisions of the powerful groups of which he has demanded the least: public policy makers, the business and social elite and political activists. Poor black folk cannot gain asylum from the potentially negative effects of Cosbys words on public policy makers and politicians who decide to put into play measures that support Cosbys narrow beliefs. Cosby: Theyre [poor African Americans] just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when youre just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. Dyson: Cosby completely ignores shifts in the economy that give value to some work while other work, in the words of William Julius Wilson disappears. In our high-tech, high-skilled economy where low-skilled work is being scaled back, phased out, exported, or severely under-compensated, all the right behavior in the world wont create better jobs with more pay. Cosby: God is tired of you. Dyson: No matter how you judge Cosbys comments, you cant help but believe that a great deal of his consternation with the poor stems from his desire to remove the shame he feels in their presence and about their activity in the world. Theres nothing like a formerly poor black multimillionaire bashing poor blacks to lend credence to the ancient assaults theyve endured from the dominant culture. Cosby: You cant land a plane with why you aint. You Cant be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.where did these people get the idea that theyre moving ahead on this. Dyson: Cosbys overemphasis on personal responsibility, not structural features, wrongly locates the source of poor black suffering—and by implication its remedy—in the lives of the poor.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 09:59:51 +0000
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