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Bill Cosby has more harsh words for black community
Friday, July 2, 2004 Posted: 10:12 AM EDT (1412 GMT) CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Bill Cosby went off on another tirade against the black community Thursday, telling a room full of activists that black children are running around not knowing how to read or write and "going nowhere." He also had harsh words for struggling black men, telling them: "Stop beating up your women because you canât find a job." Cosby made headlines in May when he upbraided some poor blacks for their grammar and accused them of squandering opportunities the civil rights movement gave them. He shot back Thursday, saying his detractors were trying in vain to hide the black communityâs "dirty laundry." "Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, itâs cursing and calling each other n------ as theyâre walking up and down the street," Cosby said during an appearance at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition & Citizenship Education Fundâs annual conference. "They think theyâre hip," the entertainer said. "They canât read; they canât write. Theyâre laughing and giggling, and theyâre going nowhere." In his remarks in May at a commemoration of the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision, Cosby denounced some blacksâ grammar and said those who commit crimes and wind up behind bars "are not political prisoners." "I canât even talk the way these people talk, âWhy you ainât,â âWhere you isâ ... and I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk," Cosby said then. "And then I heard the father talk ... Everybody knows itâs important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You canât be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth." Cosby elaborated Thursday on his previous comments in a talk interrupted several times by applause. He castigated some blacks, saying that they cannot simply blame whites for problems such as teen pregnancy and high school dropout rates. "For me there is a time ... when we have to turn the mirror around," he said. "Because for me it is almost analgesic to talk about what the white man is doing against us. And it keeps a person frozen in their seat, it keeps you frozen in your hole youâre sitting in." Cosby lamented that the racial slurs once used by those who lynched blacks are now a favorite expression of black children. And he blamed parents. "When you put on a record and that record is yelling ân----- this and n----- thatâ and youâve got your little 6-year-old, 7-year-old sitting in the back seat of the car, those children hear that," he said. He also condemned black men who missed out on opportunities and are now angry about their lives. "Youâve got to stop beating up your women because you canât find a job, because you didnât want to get an education and now youâre (earning) minimum wage," Cosby said. "You should have thought more of yourself when you were in high school, when you had an opportunity." Cosby appeared Thursday with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the education fund, who defended the entertainerâs statements. "Bill is saying letâs fight the right fight, letâs level the playing field," Jackson said. "Drunk people canât do that. Illiterate people canât do that." Cosby also said many young people are failing to honor the sacrifices made by those who struggled and died during the civil rights movement. "Dogs, water hoses that tear the bark off trees, Emmett Till," he said, naming the black youth who was tortured and murdered in Mississippi in 1955, allegedly for whistling at a white woman. "And youâre going to tell me youâre going to drop out of school? Youâre going to tell me youâre going to steal from a store?" Cosby also said he wasnât concerned that some whites took his comments and turned them "against our people." "Let them talk," he said. Good stuff Bill. Twenty years too late, but still important. Now what about Sudan? Posted by: Zenster 2004-07-02 |
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