Bill Cosby caught a lot of ink lambasting the black youth and
under-class during a dinner at Constitution Hall in Washington
marking the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court
decision. There is the usual amen chorus of black commentators
scrambling to pat Coz on the back.
I am not among them. Cosby was out of pocket.
He talked down his nose at people who love and revere him,
having obviously forgotten what it means to be young, black, and
poor in America.
Cosby went on about the poor English many poor blacks use. He
has forgotten those heady days of his early '70s comedy records,
not to mention Uptown Saturday Night and Let’s Do it
Again, those funkdafied fables he starred in with Sidney
Poitier that were seasoned liberally with lewd, blue-ish dialogue
and heavily immersed in the vernacular and jive-talk of the day.
Somehow, Cosby thinks he is the only person that has learned to
code-switch between Black Vernacular and Standard English. Given —
he’s trying to make a point about misplaced priorities in the black
community. But he comes off like an elitist scumbag looking out the
window of his Mercedes, dabbling Grey Poupon on a duck meat
croissant after a hard day on the links, lamenting the Negro
Problem.
Doing the time to do the crime is one thing, but Cosby is a fool
for suggesting that anyone getting shot in the back of the head by
police for stealing a pound cake had it coming. No one deserves to
be shot by overzealous police. Cosby is either under-medicated or
he really, really likes pound cake.
He goes on in his speech talking about all the fatherless
children and irresponsible black men, but in the meantime Coz has
had some baby-mama drama of his own. I take umbrage with people
like Coz who get it in their mind to lay down “black agendas” from
a position of moral authority, as if they do no wrong. The best
role models are the flawed one — people just like you and me that
rise above their own human frailty — and Cosby would do good to
remember that. Like so many of his generation — people who have
obviously never been young, poor, or made a single bad choice — he
wags his finger at the young’uns ostensibly in the name of love
while failing to see the broken legacy he and his kind have left
behind.
We could argue that the Cosby-esque middle class fuels the cult
of conspicuous consumption as some realization of the American
Dream, and perhaps hold some culpability. Not everyone can get into
college, or would know what to do once they got there. Cosby and
his post Civil Rights drinking buddies plopped a virtual toolbox
off in the lap of a generation of people with no clue. Instead of
teaching how to fish, they microwaved some fish-sticks, moved on up
and out as quickly as possible, leaving those Other Negroes to fend
for themselves. Ultimately, we have to take care of our own, and
Cosby knows that. Instead of chastising, he and his country club
buddies need to spend more time with their fingers in the dirt,
with the Little People.
Cosby thinks that kids hanging their pants low are an obvious
sign of the Apocalypse. But it’s just another fad that will pass
just like the hip-huggers, Afros and bell-bottoms he and Camille
used to wear. And I don’t know where Bill has been, but wearing
your clothes backwards was just a cheap record industry marketing
hook that blipped across the screen and quickly fell off 10 years
ago. Cosby is so clearly disconnected I wouldn’t doubt he spends
days just walking around his brownstone in those old $500 sweaters
ranting incredulously about kids and poor blacks to no one in
particular.
Frankly, I wonder if Cosby hasn’t lost his mind.
Good fathers know when children need tough love and when they
need an advocate that will fight for them unequivocally, without
judgment or reprimand. The young, black and poor need such an
advocate — sooner than later — not admonition.
I admire the work that he does and continues to do for
education. He gives boatloads of money to black colleges, and he’s
doing a cable-access show in Philly for kids. And that’s what I’m
talking about. Instead of using his celebrity to air his gripes, he
should shut up and get busy. Black people shouldn’t be making
excuses for bad performance — Cosby got that right. But tough love
is overrated. Cosby’s words are that of a frustrated father-figure,
and he can be forgiven for scorching the earth with ire and
disappointment.
Now if he could only forgive those he has so thoroughly
demeaned, and offer them unconditional love and a listening ear —
like all good fathers do.
jimi izrael is a journalist and opinion writer living
in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. His work has appeared in the Los
Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Cleveland Plain
Dealer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and
Philadelphia Inquirer. His column appears every other Wednesday
on Africana.com, where another version of this column ran,
and he blogs occasionally at jimiizrael.com.
