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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 19:41:52 -0800 (PST)
From:
Runoko@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Brother Cosby at it again
Hmmmm!!! I wonder how much dinero ole’ :Cos” is making off the new movie, Fat Albert. A whole
generation of current parents grew up learning to “talk English”
listening to his character creations. Maybe, he should spend some of those hundreds of millions to help re-educate the parents he helped mis-educate, so they can help
their children unlearn what they saw, and heard, while they were growing-up. Then, maybe, just maybe, they can “hold up their end” of this bargain nobody told
them they were part of.
Maat Hetep
The Spirit of Truth
======================
From Claral Richards:
Cosby won't let up, and neither should we ...
I had never seen the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson cry in public. And he's seldom upstaged. Until Bill Cosby came to
town.
Last week Jackson invited Cosby to the annual Rainbow/PUSH conference for a conversation about controversial remarks the entertainer offered May 17 at an NAACP
dinner in Washington, DC. That's when America's Jell-O Man shook things up by arguing that African Americans were betraying the legacy of civil rights
victories.
"The lower economic people," he said, "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? And won't spend $200 for Hooked on
Phonics!"
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 critics who's position is that it's unproductive to air our dirty laundry in public, he responds, "Your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30
everyday. 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. And, the book
bag is very, very thin because there's nothing in it." "Don't worry about the white man," he adds. "I couldn't care less about what white
people think about me ... let 'em talk. What are they saying that is 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 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 year 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.
Long after Cosby had departed, I could not find a dissenter in the crowd. But in the hotel corridor, I encountered a vintage poster for sale that said
volumes. The poster, which advertised the Million Man March, was "discounted" to $5. Remember the Million Man March? In 1995 Nation of
Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan exhorted "a million sober, disciplined, committed, dedicated, inspired black men to meet in Washington on a day of
atonement." In 2004, perhaps all that's left of that call is a $5 poster.
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."
Like:
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Teach our children to speak English.
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When the teacher calls, show up at the school.
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When the "idiot box" starts spewing profane rap videos, turn it off.
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Refrain from cursing around the kids.
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Teach our boys that women should be cherished, not raped and demeaned.
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Tell them that education is a prize we won with blood and tears, not a dishonor.
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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.
I encourage you to ...
Pass this one on!
MORE
FROM COSBY
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Can’t
Blame White People
by
Bill Cosby
They’re
standing on the corner and they can’t speak English.
I
can’t even talk the way these people talk:
-
Why
you ain’t,
-
Where
you is,
-
What
he drive,
-
Where
he stay,
-
Where
he work,
-
Who
you be...
And
I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk.
And
then I heard the father talk
Everybody
knows it’s important to speak English...
except
these knuckleheads.
Mush
mouth
is what they speak!?
You
can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap
coming
out of your mouth.
In
fact you will never get any kind of job making a
decent living. People marched and were hit in the face with
rocks to get an education, and now we’ve got these knuckleheads throwing that all away?
The
lower economic people are not holding up their
end
in this deal. These people are not parenting.
They
are buying things for kids. $500 sneakers for what?
And
they won’t spend $200 for Hooked on
Phonics.
I am talking about these people who cry
when their son is standing there in an
orange suit.
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? And where is the father?
Or
who is his father?
People
putting their clothes on backward:
Isn’t
that a sign of something gone wrong?
People
with their hats on backward, pants down around the
crack, isn’t that a sign of something?
They’re
walking around with their nasty underwear showing, and
holding onto their pants to keep them from falling
to the ground!
Or
are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up?
Isn’t
it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up to her
panty line, and got all types of needle piercings
going through her body?
What
part of Africa did this come from?
We
are not Africans.
Those
people are not Africans;
they
don’t know a thing about Africa.
With
names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all
of that crap, and all of them are in jail.
Brown
or black versus the Board of Education
is
no longer the white person’s problem.
We
have got to take the neighborhood back.
People
used to be ashamed.
Today
a woman has eight children with eight different
’husbands’
-- or men or whatever you call them now.
We
have millionaire football players who cannot read.
We
have million-dollar basketball players who can’t write
two paragraphs.
We
as black folks have to do a better job. Someone working at Wal-Mart with
seven kids saying... you are hurting us.
We
have to start holding each other to a higher standard.
We
cannot blame the white people any longer.
It
is not for media or anyone of this time anymore to say whether
I’m right or wrong.
It
is time, ladies and gentlemen, to look at the numbers.
Fifty
percent of our children are dropping out of high school.
Sixty
percent of the incarcerated males happen to be illiterate.
There’s
a correlation. Tell the media to stop asking me what I think about
people who don’t believe what I’m saying or feel that I’m too
harsh or feel that I’m just running my mouth because I’m old.
Seventy
percent of the teenagers pregnant happen to be African American girls.
Don’t
ask me to soften my message!
Bill
Cosby and the person who sent this to you.
http://www.warmspirit.org/url/57F80F/311
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