Cosby Is No Friend To Conservatives
By Richard Davis (07/10/04)
Recent remarks by Bill Cosby exhorting African-Americans to stop blaming whites and “turn the mirror around” have been uniformly applauded by conservative commentators, including several here at Americandaily.com. Conservatives are understandably quick to welcome any talk from a black leader that departs from the usual liberal cant. But before we anoint Cosby the new Thomas Sowell we should scrutinize just what he did say and, more importantly, what he didn’t.
A conservative can embrace his comments about the “analgesic” effect of blaming others for one’s condition and the need to take personal responsibility. He even appeared to take a mild swat at welfarism by declaring that the “housing project was set up for you to move in, move up and move out.”
But is attacking welfare recipients the same as attacking the welfare system that created them? There lies the problem with Cosby’s remarks. Public criticism by a black leader over the destructive behavior of a segment of the black underclass has been long overdue, but it has been overdue because of these same liberal black leaders who have virtually forbidden such self-criticism for decades. That is why Cosby’s public blasphemy was so newsworthy. If anyone should be upbraided for their behavior it is these black elites who have systematically destroyed self
reliance in the black community for political and ideological reasons.
Liberal rhetoric and policies are a driving force behind the self-destructive attitudes and continuing moral impoverishment of many blacks. Instead of hope and encouragement, liberals continue to foist a stultifying victimhood upon the community, silencing any constructive dialogue and promoting the racial enmity and resentment so poisonous to the poor. Cosby said nothing about that.
And he probably won’t. The liberal establishment is not going to encourage blacks to turn away from victimhood, the ideology that has become virtually the cornerstone of American liberalism today. Cosby simply wants blacks to behave better. He didn’t address the complex and often subtle motivations that drive this culture, nor did he attack the “problem profiteers” who “do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, less they themselves lose their jobs,” to quote Booker T. Washington. After all, he was sitting just a few feet from profiteer par excellence Jesse Jackson (who began co-opting Cosby's remarks for his own campaign even before the cameras were off).
Cosby made clear his feelings for conservatives--and his willingness to entertain other voices--in an interview following his first diatribe in May. When asked whether he might be giving white conservatives ammunition to disparage the liberal black agenda he responded, “I don’t give a blank about those right-wing people. They can’t do more to us than they’ve already started with.” Which would be what?
In fact, Cosby doesn’t give a blank about white people in general. Much of what he said had a decidedly racist tinge. When it was suggested last week that his remarks might be exploited by whites, Cosby responded, “I couldn’t care less about what white people think about me at this time. Let them talk. What are they saying that is different from what their grandfathers didn’t try to do to us?” Well, they tried to free you from slavery, for one thing, and a great many of them fought along side you for black civil rights and continue to work for black advancement. The truth is that the vast majority of whites have never had any racist culpability. Just the opposite.
When he wasn’t slandering white people, Cosby was waxing nostalgic over black power. “Whatever happened to black is beautiful?” he asked. That campaign, despite its seemingly good intentions to raise black self-esteem, was inherently racist. The whole idea of elevating self-esteem through racial cheerleading is offensive and wrong-headed. Would Cosby support a white is beautiful campaign? There are about twice as many poor whites as blacks. Their self-esteem could use some boosting. In truth, blacks need to lessen their obsession with race rather than increase it. The key to self-esteem is accomplishment, not identity.
Thus so far Cosby has attacked the poor, silenced nonliberal voices, maligned whites and called for the re-affirmation of black is beautiful. Hold off that conservative of the year award for just a minute.
Fortunately, a vast number of blacks, possibly a majority, are finding it more difficult to accept this post-slave mentality promoted so tirelessly by the left. It no longer defines them. Blacks are moving inexorably into mainstream America with amazing rapidity, championed by a growing cadre of bright and eloquent writers and thinkers, many of them conservatives, who simply make too much sense to be ignored, despite a relentless campaign of vitriol aimed at them from the race baiters and profiteers.
These thinkers, inheritors of a strain of black thought that reaches back before Frederick Douglass, were silenced by the victimizers who usurped public discourse following the civil rights era, but they are making an impressive comeback. It is they, not the Bill Cosbys, who are changing the rhetoric and self-image in the black community. They do it with reason and persuasion, not self-righteous moralizing, by attacking the excuse makers and the underlying causes that inhibit success. They include Sowell, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Walter E. Williams, Ward Connerly, Mychal S. Massie, Clarence Thomas and others. Jesse Jackson won’t invite any of them on to his stage, but they’re being heard nonetheless.
A common response to Cosby’s remarks has been concern that he is airing blacks’ “dirty laundry” in public. This is not something blacks do. (His nasty rejoinder to that charge, that “your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day,” reveals the simmering class divisions that are becoming evident in the black community. One black critic declared that Cosby’s remarks “betray classist, elitist viewpoints that are rooted in generational warfare.”) Nearly every writer remarked, as did Jackson, Kweisi Mfume and others, that what Cosby said is no different from what blacks routinely tell each other every day in private. “Bill Cosby’s message was not new to black people,” Jackson said. “It’s a common message.” Time magazine’s Christopher John Farley explained, “There are still certain things some black people won’t talk about in front of some white people.”
Is the reason for this enduring public silence humility or racism? What they are saying is this: Rather than dealing with black problems openly--and thus giving real help and support to the disadvantaged instead of simply casting them off as victims of white America--they remain silent and let whites be blamed. That isn’t humility.
Victimhood is a self-fulfilling ideology. If you’re told enough times you’re somebody’s victim, that’s what you become. That inevitably isolates you from the rest of society, gives you a lifelong, debilitating self-image, and fosters hatred and resentment. The racism and anti-Americanism so pervasive among black elites originates with this ideology. It’s always at hand, a balm for their bitter souls, and it reaffirms their blackness. Psychologically, victimhood is as addictive as crack.
And it can be subtle. Commenting on the Cosby controversy, syndicated columnist Clarence Page wrote about an “important new movement” within the black community, “self-reliance liberalism” (there’s an oxymoron for you). This movement, Page wrote, holds that “we blacks cannot sit around and wait for the government or white society to save us. Many of us have come to believe that blacks must take control of our own fate, both as individuals and as a group.” Spoken like a true liberal victim. Note the racist attack on whites for not saving blacks and the expectation that both whites and government should. How did blacks come to the mindset that someone else is responsible for their success?
One reason is that victimhood shrouds success in mystery. You can’t talk about it because doing so detracts from the public face of victimhood. Ask Asians about success, and they’ll give you the recipe in their sleep (and it won’t involve government or whites). But how can blacks account for it when they can’t even talk about it? The recipe, used by countless individuals and groups over the centuries, including Bill Cosby, is not part of the public discourse in the black community. It’s no surprise then that many blacks believe success and failure are racially oriented. Victimhood leaves them no other explanation.
Cosby didn’t offer any real solutions, just angry rhetoric, and there’s enough of that already in the black community. Watch a black seminar or conference on C-Span most any weekend and you’ll get your fill fast enough.
Still, Cosby’s message did strike a chord with a surprising number of black commentators, not just conservatives, which indicates there may be a healthy debate beginning for the souls of black folks. Writing in Commentary magazine in February, McWhorter wrote that despite the many “connoisseurs of victimhood” who continue their “self-indulgent quest for indignation now, indignation forever,” it has become clear that “there is a large number of blacks in America, maybe even a silent majority, ready for a message other than the race-baiting and crafted pessimism so often served up as advanced black thought.”
Though Cosby wears his liberal indignation on his sleeve, his words might open the door to some other voices, even to the conservative ones Cosby detests. That is what blacks need even more than a lecture on behavior. They need diversity.
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