This past Friday legendary performer Bill Cosby give a lecture to the students at Kansas City’s Ruskin High School on the state of the black community…
The refreshing viewpoint Mr. Cosby brings to the table is the preaching of personal responsibility as opposed to blaming every problem blacks face on racism and slavery. In contrast to the Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton’s of the World.
Mr. Cosby didn’t sugar-coat the problems facing black youth.
He told the kids to “pull up their pants, learn proper English, go to the library and work hard in school” if they want to succeed. He was also very critical of rap music with its negative portrayals of women and its glamorous portrayal of the drug trade.
I couldn’t agree more.
All kids, regardless of race, need to step away from the video games, televisions and Ipods and start studying.
Kids today spend a whopping 55 hours a week glued to various electronic devices and only about 6 hours a week reading books, magazines and newspapers. Is it any wonder that academic performance of America’s youth, when compared to the rest of the World, is plummeting?
Mr. Cosby, along with Kansas City Mayor Sly James, outlined how bad crime is in the black community.
Despite only being 13 percent of the overall population, blacks make up 49 percent of America’s murder victims and 41 percent of the prison population. The teen birthrate is 63 per 1000, more than double the rate of whites and a lot of these kids are being raised without fathers and all of the welfare, social and affirmative action programs can’t take the place of a father.
Cosby dares the black community to take responsibility for its own problems.
Not just to blame whites or think that government is the panacea. His dialogue flies against the politically correct mentality that portrays blacks as victims. He’ll have none of that.
Cosby thinks it’s time for the blacks to take care of themselves and it is…
dead on the money
Bill Fishy is a hero and a great man.
Nice article.
Excellent
bill cosby
They will call him an Uncle Tom and ignore him, no matter how right he is. Things will only get worse. You can count on it. These kids have never heard of Bill Cosby.
Bill’s been right a long time
Bill has had this hard nose opinion on his fellow race for years and the black including that idiot Mayor Sly don’t and won’t listen to what he says. Sly as most of the rest will name drop Bill like Glazer does all of Hollywood but in the end it changes nothing.
Many blacks agree with Bill except the blacks that could help to make a real difference who I guess are afraid to admit a comedian is correct about what is wrong with their race.
Sorry, on the phone, 62, and old
Hard to type–
Fishy is Cosby.
My mistake—-:)
You know what they say…
…about sowing one’s seed on the rocks. Nice try Bill but the problem isn’t that these kids don’t have enough people preaching at them.
no one wants to hear Mr Cosby’s message
because Mr. Cosby
response to paul
That message can even extend beyond just black people but to all people. It is easier to think of an excuse to fail and give a half hearted effort than to give everything you have and keep fighting if you do fail the first time. I’ve seen young people come in looking for jobs with the attitude that they won’t get hired, not fill their applications out properly, not dressed appropiately, not know anything about the company they want to work for, etc. They want to be taken seriously even when they are not taking their job search seriously. You also have to start somewhere even if it is a low wage job. I’m sure your sucess came one step at a time. I know people personally that started out in menial low paying jobs and are now sucessful business owners. And yes, some of the are black.
Mike, I wanted a career in telecom….
back when I was a snot nosed kid and decided things based on little fact and no mentoring!! I KNEW I had the ability, so after reading an ad placed my this small, private telco in Joplin, Mo stating all you had to BE, including 21, which I wasn’t, I walked in the door and told them I didnt fit anything they asked for in the ad but was, without a doubt, their best choice. 4 day later, I was on a plane going to Chicago for my first training seminar on the products and started crawling through 120 degree attics pulling wire and cable installing phone systems! So, yes, I started at the bottom, or in this case, the TOP of the bottom since it was in the attic!
And, you’re right, that problem exists everywhere but to a factor of 10 in the black community for some reason. Pick what ever stat you want and its an order of magnitude WORSE there. Im not a sociologist or a Bible thumper, but here’s my simple reason, also shared by many other groups; break down of the family unit.
The black community wasn’t like this 40 years ago. And 40 years ago, there was a strong black man in the home, backed up by a team of what seemed like 27 grandmothers that would open a can of whoopass on you for any reason. There were expectations, accountability and requirements. You respected your parents and grandmother or paid the price. Somewhere between then and now, that vaporized. And rapidly behind that, what we see today as the outcome. At least, thats my opinion of where it broke down.
response to paul
You are correct in what you are saying. My main point was that no matter who you are or are from, you can be sucessful if you put an effort into it. There is a paradigm in some of the black community right now that is making it harder to suceed and that is what Bill Cosby is trying to change.
It doesn’t help that the average black IQ is 85. There are a lot of things higher IQ people just ‘get’ that lower IQ people can’t understand and it works against them. Things like how to interview, how to balance a checkbook, etc.