Mr. Cosby, Stop Blaming the Victim
Comedian Bill Cosby can't seem to help himself. In his latest shoot-from-the-lip outburst against blacks, he claims they can't read, write or speak coherent English. Black children, he said, are "going nowhere." But he is as wrongheaded this time as he was when he made similar remarks in May.
Look, we can all agree that the gap between black and white students is too wide and that black-on-black crime is unacceptable. But Cosby -- a multimillionaire -- is way out of line in trying to pin these tired stereotypes on all poor black youth, without any acknowledgment that many young blacks and their parents are striving to achieve, and indeed are achieving, often against terrible odds.
Recent surveys by the U.S. Department of Education found that since 1975 black enrollment and SAT scores had increased in many school districts while the dropout rate had decreased. The number of blacks receiving bachelor's and master's degrees also has markedly increased. What's more, despite Cosby's snide comments, a 2002 national survey of student attitudes by the Minority Student Achievement Network, an Illinois-based educational advocacy group, found that black students were as motivated, studied as hard and were as serious about graduating as whites.
And despite Cosby's charge that "the lower-economic people are not holding up their end," even in the poorest of poor black neighborhoods countless numbers of children live in non- welfare-dependent, two-parent households in which the children do not sell drugs, join gangs, get pregnant in their teens or mumble in unintelligible babble.
Cosby should know these things. He has spent much of his career battling the clown, coon and mammy images of blacks in Hollywood. He has written books touting the achievements of young blacks. He has given tons of money to charitable and educational causes whose goal is to provide resources and create opportunities for the legions of young blacks who want to improve their lives.
Though Cosby is one of the best-known blacks to fan negative racial stereotypes, he's hardly the only one. Despite much evidence to the contrary, many blacks -- and that apparently includes Jesse Jackson Sr., who nodded approvingly during Cosby's latest tirade -- routinely trash, demean and ridicule themselves. They unthinkingly spin sordid tales of ghetto carjackers, gangbangers, drive-by shooters and dope dealers that supposedly turn every black community into a war zone.
