Go Figure Column: "WAY TO GO, BILL !!" No, Kiss My A$$, Bill! - Bill Cosby vs Michael Eric Dyson
Thursday, August 16, 2007 at 6:30 PM
Posted in Go Figure Column
by DCN
The following was sent to me from one of my resources. Enjoy!!
Talking Points
Bill Cosby vs. Michael Eric Dyson
Michael Eric Dyson takes Bill Cosby on head-to-head with each issue that he
brings up in his now infamous NAACP speech from May 17, 2004. Here are some
highlights:
Cosby: "Just forget telling your child to join the Peace Corps. It's right
around the corner. (laughter) It's standing on the corner. It can't speak
English. It doesn't want to learn English. I can't even talk the way these
people talk."
Dyson: "Cosby's poisonous view of young folks who speak a language he can
barely parse [Ebonics] simmers with hostility and resentment." And "Fat
Albert and the Cosby Kids, Cosby's lauded '70s television cartoon series,
won greater acceptance for a new cast of black identities and vernacular
language styles. Cosby has made money and gained further influence from
using forms of black English he now violently detests."
Cosby: "People with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack.
Isn't that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his
pants up (laughter and clapping)."
Dyson: "Baggy clothes express identity among black youth, and not just
beginning with hip-hop culture. Moreover, young black entrepreneurs like
Sean 'P. Diddy' Colms and Russell Simmons have made millions from their
clothing lines."
Cosby: "Those people are not Africans, they don't know a damned thing about
Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap and
all of them are in jail."
Dyson: "Names like Shaniqua and Taliqua are meaningful cultural expressions
of self-determination.I think that it does have something to do with African
roots of black identity, and perhaps with Cosby's ignorance and discomfort
with those roots.Cosby's ornery, ill-informed diatribe against black-naming
is a snapshot of his assault on poor black identity." And "Given the vicious
way blacks have been targeted for incarceration, Cosby's comments about poor
blacks who end up in jail are dangerously naïve and empirically wrong."
Cosby: "The city and all these people have to pick up the tab on them [poor
African Americans] because they don't want to accept that they have to study
to get an education."
Dyson: "If the rigidly segregated education system continues to fail poor
blacks by failing to prepare their children for the world of work, then
admonitions to 'stay in school' may ring hollow.In suburban neighborhoods,
there are $60-million schools with state-of-the-art technology, while inner
city schools desperately fight for funding for their students."
Cosby: "I'm talking about these people who cry when their son is standing
there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? (clapping) Where
were you when he was twelve? (clapping) Where were you when he was eighteen,
and how come you don't know he had a pistol? (clapping)"
Dyson: "And then there are the problems of the working poor: folk who rise
up early every day and often work more than forty hours a week, and yet
barely, if ever, make it above the poverty level. We must acknowledge the
plight of both poor black (single) mothers and poor black fathers, and the
lack of social support they confront. Hence, it is incredibly difficult to
spend as much time with children as poor black parents might like,
especially since they will be demonized if they fail to provide for their
children's basic needs."
Cosby: "All this child knows is 'gimme, gimme, gimme.' These people want to
buy the friendship of a child.and the child couldn't care less.and these
people are not parenting. They're buying things for the kid. $500 sneakers,
for what? And they won't spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics. (clapping)"
Dyson: "And yet, some of the engaged critique he [Cosby] seeks to make of
black folk-of their materialism, their consumptive desires, their personal
choices their moral aspirations, their social conscience-is broadcast with
much more imagination and insight in certain quarters of hip-hop culture.
(Think of Kanye West's track, "All Falls Down," which displays a
self-critical approach to the link between consumption and the effort to
ward off racial degradation.)"
Cosby: "I don't know who these people [poor African Americans] are."
Dyson: "The poor folk Cosby has hit the hardest are most vulnerable to the
decisions of the powerful groups of which he has demanded the least: public
policy makers, the business and social elite and political activists. Poor
black folk cannot gain asylum from the potentially negative effects of
Cosby's words on public policy makers and politicians who decide to put into
play measures that support Cosby's narrow beliefs."
Cosby: "They're [poor African Americans] just hanging out in the same place,
five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to
stay there long enough to get a job and move out."
Dyson: "Cosby completely ignores shifts in the economy that give value to
some work while other work, in the words of William Julius Wilson
'disappears.' In our high-tech, high-skilled economy where low-skilled work
is being scaled back, phased out, exported, or severely under-compensated,
all the right behavior in the world won't create better jobs with more pay."
Cosby: "God is tired of you."
Dyson: "No matter how you judge Cosby's comments, you can't help but believe
that a great deal of his consternation with the poor stems from his desire
to remove the shame he feels in their presence and about their activity in
the world. There's nothing like a formerly poor black multimillionaire
bashing poor blacks to lend credence to the ancient assaults they've endured
from the dominant culture."
Cosby: "You can't land a plane with 'why you ain't.' You Can't be a doctor
with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.where did these people get
the idea that they're moving ahead on this."
Dyson: "Cosby's overemphasis on personal responsibility, not structural
features, wrongly locates the source of poor black suffering-and by
implication its remedy-in the lives of the poor."
They're standing on the corner and they can't spea k 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
< I>
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 p
istol ? ?
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 thro ugh 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.
We cannot blame the white people any longer."
C. Dancy II - TPA Opinion: totally agree with Michael Eric Dyson. I get so sick and tired of Safe Negroes who forget where they came from. I can't really relate to the Cosby cartoons series because I didn't watch them when I was growing up, however when I visited my grandma's house on Saturday mornings the children would be watching them.