Bill Cosby And Clarence Thomas: The New Odd Couple?
By Barbara Stock (07/06/04)
Dr. William Cosby is an American icon. Cosby is beloved by white Americans as much as Black Americans. Through the years, he has been a role model demonstrating that Black Americans can be doctors, lawyers, and successful comedians and go back to school and obtain a doctorate degree.
William H. Cosby started out life in a north Philadelphia housing project in 1937. His mother was a maid and his dad was often away from home serving in the Navy. He suffered from the racism and bias but was successful not only despite them but because of them. Racism gave him the incentive to prove white supremists wrong. Cosby was active in the civil rights movement and knows what it was like before these laws were enacted.
Cosby often refers to his family in his comedy routines, showing that it was no different from any other family--white or black. Bill had a mother and a father, loving grandparents and siblings. Cosby had a family unit to protect and nurture him. Bill was not rich; in fact, his family was quite poor. One of his jokes relates how his father would complain about walking to school everyday and the route was uphill--through the snow--both ways! No school buses for his father. Food? His dad told him he ate dirt and was glad to have it! Now that’s poor. No one is better at describing family members that everyone can point to and say, “My dad said the same thing!” or “That’s my grandmother that he’s talking about.”
Sadly, Dr. Cosby, who obtained his PhD. in education in 1977, has also suffered the loss of his only son, Ennis to random and senseless violence in 1997. Cosby, with his wife of 40 years, grieved in private and went on.
Bill Cosby is successful because he had a good foundation--his family--and because he worked. He worked hard. Cosby went through the hard times and survived because he is one of the best- and he is one of the best because he worked and learned and got an education. No one handed him anything.
Clarence Thomas, now a supreme court justice, also started life poor. His father abandoned him and his mother and after Clarence’s brother accidentally burned down their home, Clarence was sent to live with his grandfather. It was his grandfather who taught him the importance of a good education. While getting that education, Clarence Thomas became the unthinkable--he became a conservative!
Because Clarence Thomas “wandered off the liberal plantation” and became a vocal conservative, he was put through what he called a “modern day lynching” during his confirmation hearings. Thomas was called an “Uncle Tom” for not following the liberal line. Conservative Black Americans are treated like traitors and pariahs.
So what do Clarence Thomas and Bill Cosby have in common other than the obvious? They are both Black Americans and both are very successful in their chosen professions even though they were born poor. Thomas is conservative. Cosby is liberal.
Bill Cosby, icon though he is, is venturing into “dangerous” territory. Cosby is wandering off that “liberal plantation” where it is carved on the liberal Rosetta Stone that white America is the sole reason black America isn’t doing better. That liberal line is that Black Americans bear no responsibility for their slow advancement in society despite the advantages that the civil rights movement provided.
Instead of taking extra effort to make sure their children go to school and learn to read and write, many Black Americans instead blame “the slavery syndrome” for a multitude of crimes including the murder of a two-year-old boy. Slavery, which ended over 140 years ago, has become an excuse.
Bill Cosby shocked the crowd at the Rainbow Coalition gathering when he put the put the blame squarely on the non-existent parenting skills of many of today’s Black parents. "Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, it's cursing and calling each other n------ as they're walking up and down the street," shouted an angry Cosby in front of a shocked Jesse Jackson. Cosby continued, "They think they're hip. They can't read; they can't write. They're laughing and giggling, and they're going nowhere." This writer believes this is “dangerous talk” from a Black man that almost sounds conservative. Cosby is furious that the blood, sweat, and tears shed to get civil rights has been wasted by people who want nothing more than to be “victims” of society.
This was not Cosby’s first outburst at Black America. In May of this year, Cosby had this to say: "I can't even talk the way these people talk, 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... and I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk," Cosby said then. "And then I heard the father talk ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth."
Now he has said the unthinkable: "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 you're sitting in." Cosby dared imply that perhaps Black Americans have to start taking responsibility for their own failures instead of blaming “whitey” for all their problems. Cosby told the crowd that young Black men need to stop beating their women out of frustration and the inability to find a job. Why can’t these young Black men find decent jobs? To get a decent job, one must be able to read and write.
Even an icon like Bill Cosby is now on very thin ice with far-left Black Americans who make their living blaming “whitey” for just about everything wrong in their communities. Men like Jesse Jackson, whose very existence depends on the ”victimization of the Black man” theory, mumbled some shocked line of support for Cosby’s remarks. "Bill is saying let's fight the right fight, let's level the playing field," Jackson said. "Drunk people can't do that. Illiterate people can't do that." Is that what Mr. Cosby said? What Cosby said was they have a level playing field and have been wasting it.
The rumble from the far left is already starting. Today, one of those radical leftist Black Americans was ranting about how Cosby has no right to say these things because he is rich and he can’t relate to poor Black Americans. How dare he make such accusations! Cosby dares to speak the truth because he is a man who recognizes the problem and actually has the courage to voice it. When white Americans make similar statements, screams of racism soon follow. Being a Black American, Bill Cosby has every right to say what he feels are the core problems facing young Black Americans today. Who would know better than he?
It will not be long before Dr. Cosby joins the ranks of Justice Thomas as an uppity rich Black man who can no longer identify with the real problems of the average Black American. What are those problems? Lack of good jobs? No, there are good jobs available but you have to be able to read, write, and communicate in the English language to get them. That means staying in school and learning something. That means having parents who take responsibility for their children’s lives and give them guidance. That means community leaders who teach Black children to grab life by the horns and stop blaming everyone else for their failures. That means they must stop blaming slavery, white America, and the system. For some, those words are heresy. Are you listening Jesse? You could learn a lot from Bill Cosby. We all could.
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