Have You Seen: Bill Cosby Rant

[dgridley]

Have you seen this yet?:

They're standing on the corner and they can't speak 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 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 pistol? 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 through 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.​

Taken from an NAACP speech Cosby made in 2004, the first time I saw it, I was tempted to think it might have been a Net hoax attributed to Mr. Cosby, but Snopes confirms it here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/cosby.asp

In any case, I was thinking about his old show I-Spy (with Robert Culp) earlier tonight, then came across a reference to this on Reddit..

 

[maximum]

The entire speech: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/billcosbypoundcakespeech.htm

Dr. Cosby has, since that speech in 2004 (and even mildly prior to that), come down hard on the members of the African-American community who blame whites/the "system"/others for the high black-on-black crime rates, school dropout rates, ect. He has now taken a very hard-hitting (and to many offensive) approach to trying to get those with that view (particulary the youth) to take responsibility for their own actions. He uses his race and notority to get their attention, his brains and ability to talk on anyones' level (his doctorate is in education), and his rather uncanny ability to take any subject and basically "hit 'em where it hurts or hits home", to get his message across. While he gears this towards African-Americans (and for good reason..statistics of crime, poverty, ect., not to discount the fact that being of that race himself he gets their attention more than say most caucasions would), I think the message is one that is universal. Youth of today, and parents, would do well to listen to him, regardless of race. If only his critics would take the time to hear what he is saying before concluding he is being just a "tool of the 'white man'", rather than the reality that he is just a highly educated man telling it the way it is no-holds-barred (IMHO). We all have to take responsibilty for our own actions, and where we end-up is no ones fault but our own...a lesson he preaches well, I believe.