Bill Cosby-At It Again

Bill Cosby is right.

And he is wrong.

Sounds contradictory, doesn't it? It really is not. Because nothing happens in a vacuum, one must look at the whole picture that is being painted. And Bill Cosby is not focusing on the entire canvas, just a part of it. Admittedly, a very important part of the picture, but not the whole picture. I know that Bill Cosby has done some tremendous things for Black youth and continues to do so. I also recognize that Bill is a Dr. with a degree (not just honorary) so he is speaking not only from the heart but also as an academic. But to focus his comments on Black youth alone is just wrong. And he is finally addressing the root of the problem. He is speaking to their parents. Because children can't raise themselves. So what we see in our youth (Black and White) is a result of parents taking a time out from parenting. Disrespectful, arrogant, violent, lazy kids with questionable morals are the result. All of us of Bill Cosby's generation and the generation which came after him must share in the guilt for what our children have become. Even though most of us tried to do the right things by our own children, everytime we saw a small child who was cursed out in the grocery store line and did not speak up we were guilty. Everytime we saw a parent who was out of control with their child in public and said nothing we were guilty. And every man who had an out of wedlock child and did not spend quality time with that child is guilty. (Even Bill Cosby has had some problems with this issue). Children need fathers in their life. And mothers cannot teach boys how to be men. So the children that Bill Cosby talks about took a long time to get to this terrible place they find themselves in today. The village failed them.

And Bill Cosby might want to go through a reconciliation process when he talks about the language that our kids speak today. As I recall, the cartoon characters which Bill created all those many years ago did not speak or dress like Harvard graduates. They could even be said to speak their own version of Blackspeak or ebonics, etc. Which of course is not unusual in any ethnic community. But as the saying goes, when you know better, you do better. So there was a world of difference in his Cosby cartoon characters and the Huxtable kids. And many people embraced the cartoon characters but never liked the Huxtables. So guess what their kids heard at home?

The thing that really troubles me is that Bill Cosby appears so angry when he talks about these issues. I don't see the love. And as of yet I have not heard him say that this is a national problem with all kids-Black and white. There are a lot of irresponsible, lazy, and educationally challenged parents who fail their kids and they do not all wear Black faces. I would like to see him reach out to white parents groups. I would like to see him go to schools that are majority white and give the same speech/lecture to them that he gives to Black parents. Because we all know that white kids have issues too. Can we say Columbine? Georgia is still in shock over a case where two white girls killed the grandparents of one of the girls because they basically did not want to follow the rules of the house. And Rockdale County Georgia was in the news a few years ago because almost the entire teenage (white) population there had every form of STD imaginable because they were engaging in every form of sexual union imaginable. Juvenile courts have White and Black kids on the dockets. And let's face it, Bill. White girls have abortions, not babies. The point is: We are all in this same boat that we call America. If those that fail for whatever reason continue to increase-we all go down.