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From Birmingham to Cleveland and Baltimore, at churches and colleges, Cosby has been telling thousands of black Americans that racism in America is omnipresent but that it can’t be an excuse to stop striving. As Cosby sees it, the antidote to racism is not rallies, protests, or pleas, but strong families and communities. Instead of focusing on some abstract notion of equality, he argues, blacks need to cleanse their culture, embrace personal responsibility, and reclaim the traditions that fortified them in the past. Driving Cosby’s tough talk about values and responsibility is a vision starkly different from Martin Luther King’s gauzy, all-inclusive dream: it’s an America of competing powers, and a black America that is no longer content to be the weakest of the lot.

After what has come to be known as “the Pound Cake speech”—it has its own Wikipedia entry—Cosby came under attack from various quarters of the black establishment. The playwright August Wilson commented, “A billionaire attacking poor people for being poor. Bill Cosby is a clown. What do you expect?” One of the gala’s hosts, Ted Shaw, the director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, called his comments “a harsh attack on poor black people in particular.” Dubbing Cosby an “Afristocrat in Winter,” the Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson came out with a book, Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?, that took issue with Cosby’s bleak assessment of black progress and belittled his transformation from vanilla humorist to social critic and moral arbiter. “While Cosby took full advantage of the civil rights struggle,” argued Dyson, “he resolutely denied it a seat at his artistic table.”

But Cosby’s rhetoric played well in black barbershops, churches, and backyard barbecues, where a unique brand of conservatism still runs strong. Outsiders may have heard haranguing in Cosby’s language and tone. But much of black America heard instead the possibility of changing their communities without having to wait on the consciences and attention spans of policy makers who might not have their interests at heart. Shortly after Cosby took his Pound Cake message on the road, I wrote an article denouncing him as an elitist. When my father, a former Black Panther, read it, he upbraided me for attacking what he saw as a message of black empowerment. Cosby’s argument has resonated with the black mainstream for just that reason.

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ORIGINAL: RealityLicks

Leaving aside the validity or otherwise of Cosby's argument for a moment, when do other ethnic groups get the benefit of the deliberations of CM's finest minds?

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ORIGINAL: Level

Got any in particular in mind?

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ORIGINAL: kittinSol

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ORIGINAL: Level

Got any in particular in mind?

Texans?

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ORIGINAL: kittinSol

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ORIGINAL: Level

Got any in particular in mind?

Texans?

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ORIGINAL: servantforuse

Any ethnic group could benefit from the advise of Mr. Cosby. His biggest problem is that he is preaching to the church. The ones that should be listening just don't care..

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ORIGINAL: kittinSol

Who's the Bill Cosby of Texans? I don't know: you need to enlighten me with regards to Texans. They tried to endoctrinate me with this particular ethnic type . Is he representative of the ethnic Texan?

Come down here, and I'll enlighten you, all right.

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ORIGINAL: lronitulstahp

   i am tired of hearing this is a poor/rich issue.  What i feel is that it is a willing/unwilling issue.  i grew up below the poverty level...for years, my mother used my grandmother's address in order for me to attend a better school.  Education was stressed as the key to a better life.  So i clung to that idea.  i did my schoolwork with zeal...i was a member of every club i could be in, was in honors and academically gifted classes...had teachers and other students make racially insensitive remarks, and used them as fodder to further strive towards a better life.   
The difference for many is that they make excuses.  Cosby, like myself, is wondering what has happened to countless Black Americans...so many accept mediocrity as the status quo...where is the drive that brought about the harlem Renaissance, the civil rights movement?  There is a dumbing down that makes well educated African-Americans the butt of jokes.  Thug life is perpetuated and appreciated, and there's a sort of suspicion of those that live outside of this "ideal".   
If i hear one more person say i sound or act like anything other than a black woman, i'll bloody likely scream.  In my grandmother's day black people "acted" like whatever the best of their abilities was able to procure.  There was no judgement of well-read Blacks...if anything there was pride...there was inspiration...there was a desire to be a thinker, to be able to to be viewed as an intellectual was a goal...not a shame. 
It  would be wrong of me not to mention that schools aren't fully equal, and that there are disadvanteges...that's part of the reality...there are many reasons why Blacks could remain in a place of negativity, and despair...but for me, those have always been the reasons i refused to stay down.  But that's how i roll....

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ORIGINAL: lronitulstahp

hmmm...i am also a spank ass woman...when i'm lucky....

Perk 

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ORIGINAL: lronitulstahp

hmmm...i am also a spank ass woman...when i'm lucky....