Remember Bill Cosby?
He used to be revered by just about everyone. A brilliant entertainer. A man who used his Ph.D in education to avidly promote educational betterment of children, particularly Black children. A loving husband and father, married 50 years.
When did it all fall apart?
If you answer that it started with the current spate of women coming forth and claiming Cosby molested or raped them, you are wrong. Those claims are irreparably damaging Mr. Cosby\’s reputation, it is true. But that is not when it started.
I could be wrong, but I recall that the taking down of Bill Cosby started shortly after a speech he made at an NAACP event in 2004, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court\’s Brown v Board of Education ruling which desegregated public schools.
And what was so objectionable that he suddenly went from a superstar icon to persona non grata among many Black “leaders”?
Well, here\’s the “controversial” part of Mr. Cosby\’s speech. See if you can figure it out:
They\’restanding on the corner and they can\’t speak English. I can\’t eventalk the way these people talk: Why you ain\’t, Where you is, What hedrive, Where he stay, Where he work, Who you be… And I blamed thekid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk.
Everybody knows it\’s important to speak English except theseknuckleheads. You can\’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming outof your mouth. In fact you will never get any kind of job making adecent living.
People marched and were hit in the face withrocks to get an education, and now we\’ve got these knuckleheadswalking around. The lower economic people are not holding up theirend in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buyingthings for kids. $500 sneakers for what? And they won\’t spend $200for Hooked on Phonics.
I am talking about these people whocry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where wereyou when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you whenhe was 18 and how come you didn\’t know that he had a pistol? Andwhere is the father? Or who is his father?
People puttingtheir 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 pullhis pants up? Isn\’t it a sign of something when she has her dress allthe way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through herbody?
What part of Africa did this come from? We are notAfricans. Those people are not Africans; they don\’t know a thingabout Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and allof that crap, and all of them are in jail.
Brown or Blackversus the Board of Education is no longer the White person\’sproblem. We have got to take the neighborhood back. People used to beashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different\’husbands\’ – or men or whatever you call them now. We havemillionaire football players who cannot read. We have million-dollarbasketball players who can\’t write two paragraphs. We as Black folkshave 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 higherstandard.
We cannot blame the White people any longer.
Very soon after speaking those words, we started hearing about Bill Cosby\’s alleged sexual depredations. Things were never the same for him after that.
And now, as women magically come forward with years-ago tales that we never heard about until Mr. Cosby\’s speech (the way they did when Herman Cain outraged Black “leaders” by running for President as a Black conservative) we see cancellations of personal appearances and shows.
Once the destruction is complete, will these women disappear – the way they did for Mr. Cain?
I do not know what Bill Cosby does in his private life. But I do know that, when timelines coincide this way, every red flag I own immediately raises high in the air.
The most hurtful part of this carnage is that, while Cosby gets the business, someone like al sharpton, who has spent his entire public career race-hustling for the betterment of al sharpton and little else, remains unscathed.
The people – especially the so-called Black “leaders” – who celebrate and kowtow to al sharpton, but can\’t wait to jump on the condemnation bandwagon for Bill Cosby, do more damage to young Black people than the most virulent White racists you will ever find.
If they truly give a damn about Black people moving forward and succeeding, that just might be something they should be thinking long and hard about.
