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My response to Bill Cosby's comments

Not long ago, a family member asked me my thoughts on some statements made by Bill Cosby about black people in America. She had a debate with one of her friends and both had good points. I responded and I was deleting my mailbox and came across the email several weeks later and felt that I might as well share it with you. Firstly I will put Bill Cosby's comments then my response to my sister's email after. Here goes...

We Can't Blame the White People Any Longer - 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. 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 walking around. 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? 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 and got all type of needles [piercing] 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, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.

See my response to my family member email below about the above comments and others

Well, Bill Cosby has raised some good and very interesting points. Bill Cosby has excelled in his career as a comedian and an actor and makes the most of it and is now looking at the 'negative' aspects of the black community. Now we need someone to focus on the positive sides of the 'black community' then these two can argue. My take on it is you are both right. First you said that Jay Z and Nelly made the most of their lives without the correct use of English, good point. I say this because they came up from practically nothing, they got caught up in the drug selling mentallity as so many other young black males, not knowing that these things were deliberately put in place for them to sell it with the risk of going to jail. Many caught the bait and are i prison or dead now because of this (A family without a father is no strong family). These two rappers both dropped out of school and honed their skills at an art 'rap' a section of 'hip hop' and became successful, then branched off to sell clothes, drinks etc becoming multi millionaires. This is the Capitalism at its best, anyone can make it, these black males doing it is testimony even though they are not the ones making the real big money in hip hop. As for the way they speak, 'who they is' etc etc it has to do with several things; blacks drop out of school at a high rate,single moms cant control their sons n daughters so they make up their own rules. These single moms somtimes work 2-3 jobs to maintain their children as the dads are either in jail, dead, or with their other families. Bill Cosby highlighted some points but quick to forget that virtually everything in society is stacked against the black community.We have to work twice as hard to make it in society and to be honest many black families have done really well in society such as condoleeza rice, colin powell, russel simmonds to name a few, there are many black inventors etc who actually come from those ghettos so not every black person in America talks like that, and so what if they do?! As long as they understand eacxh other daym. Black people are influential and as some cannot or refuse speak the English Language poperly after hundreds of years of trying,they instead made up their own words and phrases mixed up with dialects and words of other languages.The main thing is, they understand each other. However in a professional environment obviously one will have to act professional and talk that they can communicte with people without any misunderstanding. Due to how influenial hip hop is you will find words such as 'Bling' in the dictionary, why is that? thats just through the whole struggle, despite all the negative aspects and drugs n violence etc blacks came up with a culture or sub culture called hip hop, where even the way you speak or express yourself is different from how a 'white' person would talk. I put white in quotes because white kids understand the slangs that we black folks use in hip hop more so than old black people so to speak as they buy and listen to the various albums that jayz and lil wayne are putting out.

I think the old folks need to wake up and smell the coffee as we are no longer in 1960. Things are different and they will have to deal with it. We can either find a way to communciate with our people the way they know it or just keep quiet. Instead of blaming the blacks for acting promiscuosly and violently etc, why won't people like bill cosby highlight the fact that the media with blockbuster movies are harming these children where they will see these violent things on tv and try and immitate them in real life. Even video games, some parents do not even know what type of video games their children are playing in their rooms. All this violence we see happening we can easily blame it on rap music etc however people are often forgeting that the movies they are trying to immitate plays a bigger role than rap music itself. Have you seen MTV Cribs where the most popular poster or picture on almost every rapper's wall is that Scarface or 'Godfather' movie actor who was a drug taking italian guy who went around killing people and destroying buildings. My point is that what you see is more influential than what you hear. For example you have companies spending thousands even millions on a 30 second advert on TV, why? because it is very influential, people will just see an advert and go and buy a product just to try it. Just imagine all these years of cowboy movies, hollywood movies , terminator etc etc. These films obviously influences people whether we like it or not but we don't really see that as we feel powerless to ask questions about them because the movie producers and actors are white, jewish or w/e, (slave mentality) however we feel real powerful when the perpetrators are black, in this case rappers who people think are stupid, so they can attack them. By all means rappers are not innocent when it comes to the demonisation of the black community as they are the ones rapping songs about killing people in most cases niggas in their lyrics,the same slavery mentality which most of us still have, (yes you and me). It has not even been 180 years since slavery was abolished yet, we as black people are growing and progressing as a community and will need time and help from each other to continue to do so. Constructive criticim is good for improvement but I think the last thing we need is for people to be chastising the community because they are in a better position. I respect Bill Cosby for pointing those issues out but what we need is some solutions of how we can make things better. How we as black people could have our own schools teaching our children their history to show them how they end up in the society the live in so they wouldnt feel alienated or 'not part of the society'. All these and much more issues need to be addressed and until I hear people talking constructively about our problems then I don't want to know.

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