You are unlikely to get Mr. Walker to face reality. He seems to be most comfortable on assigning blame on the 'system', while absolving underperforming and non-achieving Black of any personal responsibilities for the poor choices they make in life.
This is typical of your anti-people posture, as I have asked repeatedly, if you feel my positions are so backwards, please just stop writing to me. I only replied to your last email because I did not want other members of this list serve to think that I would not comment on Sharpton. So again, I suggest that since you find my views so abhorrent there is a simple solution stop bothering me as I asked you for the first time, a few years ago, and repeated recently. If I am so off mark, then you have nothing to fear, your wish to find a place in the harem of the Shining White Prince will be fulfilled - you have to merely believe in your capacity to attract his attention..
For the benefit of the objective members of this list server, I offer the following interpretations of Cosby's very ill-conceived choice of comments from a noted scholar and activist Ron Daniels who wrote the following (I would also like to inform those who do not know I worked in and for a few years was in charge of the University of Ill at Chicago "minority' matriculation program for several years and was able to bring well over 3 thousand people into that school, until the university decided to end this commitment, this experience afforded me an excellent opportunity to observe how hard tha majority of our young people in this country try to achieve under terrible conditions, conditions as Daniels and the great majority of our leadership, know is deliberately foster by what ssemakula calls the system -- ):
The Cosby comments: Valid critique or blaming the victim?
By Ron Daniels
-Guest Columnist-
Updated Jun 13, 2004, 11:18 pm
Ron Daniels
(FinalCall.com) - It was supposed to be a gala celebration of the 50th anniversary of the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision which decreed that the doctrine of âseparate but equalâ in education was unconstitutional. It was only fitting that the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the organization which assembled the team (led by Thurgood Marshall) that won the decision, would hold a major commemorative celebration on this occasion. The festivities provoked a furor of controversy, however, when Bill Cosby, âAmericaâs dad,â mounted the podium to bemoan the lack of progress among âlower classâ Blacks. Reminding the audience of the suffering and sacrifice endured to tear down the walls of segregation for Blacks, Mr. Cosby essentially said that far too many Blacks are unprepared and unwilling to take advantage of the opportunities created by the Civil Rights Movement.
He particularly singled out young Blacks who chronically speak non-standard English and warned that it would be difficult for them to succeed in American society if they cannot speak standard English. He also harshly criticized parents who will buy sneakers for their children that cost hundreds of dollars but do not purchase items like âHooked on Phonicsâ that would be useful to their education and preparation to compete in American society.
While some in the audience were apparently stunned by his comments, it was the conservatives via their media outlets who pounced on his remarks as verification of the view that, to the degree that Blacks are not progressing/succeeding in American society, it is a result of cultural flaws and the failure to take personal and collective responsibility for self-improvement. Now their views were being validated by one of Americaâs most famous icons, a Black man named Bill Cosby. Within days, the controversy spread beyond the Fox news crowd to engulf the mainstream media.
Black opinion varied considerably. Some Blacks felt that Mr. Cosbyâs comments were somewhat harsh and that the lower class should not have been singled out and stigmatized as a group. However, many also felt that he simply had the audacity to say in public what a lot of Blacks complain about privatelyâthe perception that a young generation is largely on its own, out of control and heading nowhere except to prison or the cemetery. Predictably, other Blacks criticized Mr. Cosby for blaming the victim and not addressing the root causes of the behavior which he so vociferously spurned.
It is important to indicate that this is not a new controversy. There has probably never been a time when the older generation in the Black community did not complain about the attitudes and habits of the younger generation. And, there have always been Black leaders who have emphasized the need for Black people to correct âbadâ habits and clean up our act as a prerequisite for entry into mainstream American society.
Booker T. Washington devoted most of his life to advocating self-improvement and self-help as a philosophy for Black advancement; and he built the Tuskegee Institute as a vehicle to fulfill his vision. Marcus Garvey. A Philip Randolph, W.E.B. DuBois, Mary McCleod Bethune, Martin Luther King Jr. and certainly the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his disciple Malcolm X all espoused self-improvement and self-help in one form or another as an essential dimension of the Black Freedom Struggle.
Currently, I am not aware of a major civil rights/human rights leader, from Minister Louis Farrakhan to Reverend Jesse Jackson, C. Delores Tucker, Susan Taylor, Reverend Al Sharpton or Kweisi Mfume, who does not regularly exhort Black people to dedicate ourselves to improving our conditionâwhether it be denouncing gang violence and fratricide, the denigration of women in rap lyrics to devoting less time to athletics and more to academics, striving for excellence in education, improving parenting skills to harnessing our economic resources.
And few would deny that we face a myriad of problems in terms of counter-productive, even nihilist attitudes and behavior which is prevalent in many urban inner-city Black communities. Dr. Betty Shabazz would often tell young people not to âcooperate with our oppressors.â There is a constant need to exhort/encourage/inspire the disadvantaged and dispossessed to rise above circumstances to achieve liberation and success. Bill Cosby is right, we need to do better!
But surely Bill Cosby is aware, even if he did not articulate it on the stage, that much of the dysfunction of Black life is directly attributable to the destructive effects of institutional racism. Otherwise, it would be like some âresponsibleâ Native American leader lecturing his people about the apathy, alcoholism and high rate of suicide on reservations without acknowledging the genocide and cultural aggression directed against Native peoples as the root cause of these maladies.
Moreover, even âwell-offâ Blacks are victims of racism in American societyâif it were not so, then there would not be an income and wealth gap between Blacks and Whites. But what is a mere irritant and inconvenience for the âprivileged classâ among Africans-in-America is devastating for Black poor and working people, most of whom struggle mightily to teach their progeny good habits and encourage them to take advantage of a good education.
But Americaâs âdark ghettosâ are not battle zones of desolation, violence, apathy, dysfunction and despair by accident. They are the ânatural end product of a society built on the twin foundations of racism and capitalism.â And, while we lament the condition and attitudes of the âlower classâ and exhort them to do better, let us never forget that they, and all Black people to some degree, are victims of the benign and blatant neglect of a racist and callous society.
Given that reality, self-improvement as a strategy is certainly necessary, but it will never be sufficient to change the life chances of vast numbers of Black people, who are locked in the âlower class.â The solution is to continue to work for self-improvement, while waging an unrelenting struggle to finish the unfinished civil rights/human rights struggle in this country.
 Copyright 2004 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com
