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Jul. 7th, 2004 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexmegamiBill Cosby critiques black culture, stands behind his remarks
More harsh words for the black community
Cosby elaborated Thursday on his previous comments in a talk interrupted several times by applause. He castigated some blacks, saying that they cannot simply blame whites for problems such as teen pregnancy and high school dropout rates.
"For me there is a time ... when we have to turn the mirror around," he said. "Because for me it is almost analgesic to talk about what the white man is doing against us. And it keeps a person frozen in their seat, it keeps you frozen in your hole you're sitting in."
...
He also condemned black men who missed out on opportunities and are now angry about their lives.
"You've got to stop beating up your women because you can't find a job, because you didn't want to get an education and now you're (earning) minimum wage," Cosby said. "You should have thought more of yourself when you were in high school, when you had an opportunity."
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Cosby's getting a lot of flak for his comments - particularly from people who say, "well, he isn't poor, he isn't female". What does it matter who he is or what his socio-economic status is?
Personally, I think he's right - not just about blacks, though they're his target audience. Parents everywhere aren't doing their job - theyr're leaving the teaching to the T.V., "empowering" their kids by accepting falling grades and filthy mouths for any number of reasons, ranging from "athletics are more important" to "the teachers don't understand him" to "I'm a crack addict who doesn't give a flying fuck".
Seriously, what the hell? And he notes that it ties in to teenage pregnancy, as well - 13 year olds having kids, and then those kids having kids. You should not be a grandparent at 26. For Pete's sake, I'm not entirely sure most people should be PARENTS at 26. Do you have a good job? Can you afford to support yourself, let alone a kid? Why is there no family planning?
And it's easy to give excuses. Really, really easy. But there is always something you can do. Maybe it won't always work - but if you don't at least try, you have only yourself to blame. I'll have more outrage on your behalf if you tried going to the cops to have your abusive boyfriend arrested and it didn't work than if you stay with him thinking "he'll change with enough love".
I have no idea where I'm going with this.
More harsh words for the black community
Cosby elaborated Thursday on his previous comments in a talk interrupted several times by applause. He castigated some blacks, saying that they cannot simply blame whites for problems such as teen pregnancy and high school dropout rates.
"For me there is a time ... when we have to turn the mirror around," he said. "Because for me it is almost analgesic to talk about what the white man is doing against us. And it keeps a person frozen in their seat, it keeps you frozen in your hole you're sitting in."
...
He also condemned black men who missed out on opportunities and are now angry about their lives.
"You've got to stop beating up your women because you can't find a job, because you didn't want to get an education and now you're (earning) minimum wage," Cosby said. "You should have thought more of yourself when you were in high school, when you had an opportunity."
---
Cosby's getting a lot of flak for his comments - particularly from people who say, "well, he isn't poor, he isn't female". What does it matter who he is or what his socio-economic status is?
Personally, I think he's right - not just about blacks, though they're his target audience. Parents everywhere aren't doing their job - theyr're leaving the teaching to the T.V., "empowering" their kids by accepting falling grades and filthy mouths for any number of reasons, ranging from "athletics are more important" to "the teachers don't understand him" to "I'm a crack addict who doesn't give a flying fuck".
Seriously, what the hell? And he notes that it ties in to teenage pregnancy, as well - 13 year olds having kids, and then those kids having kids. You should not be a grandparent at 26. For Pete's sake, I'm not entirely sure most people should be PARENTS at 26. Do you have a good job? Can you afford to support yourself, let alone a kid? Why is there no family planning?
And it's easy to give excuses. Really, really easy. But there is always something you can do. Maybe it won't always work - but if you don't at least try, you have only yourself to blame. I'll have more outrage on your behalf if you tried going to the cops to have your abusive boyfriend arrested and it didn't work than if you stay with him thinking "he'll change with enough love".
I have no idea where I'm going with this.
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Date: 2004-07-07 09:50 am (UTC)There are a pile of environmental jobs I can't apply for because I'm not Aboriginal... guess how much that makes me bristle?
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 11:33 am (UTC)I'm not sure where I stand on affirmative action. On one hand, one should be able to get a job on merits beyond ethnicity. On the other hand, I do worry about racism. I'm not sure where the happy medium is, or even if there is one.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 11:12 am (UTC)In your commentary about teen pregnancy, well, I don't blame the parents entirely. A parent could sit down with their kid, have a heart-to-heart about sex, contraception, pregnancy, disease, emotional impacts of sex - and the kid could STILL go out and get themselves in trouble. Why? Because teenagers/kids are autonomous from their parents. There's only so much you can do and you have to trust that their psychological wiring didn't come out screwed up. That's why I never want kids. I don't like to gamble.
Secondly, we don't know that these people haven't tried. Neither does Cosby. Just because the media reports some statistics or some news about crazy gangster kids is by NO MEANS an accurate portrait of what is actually occuring and how it is occuring. By painting poor (black)people with the same broad brush, he's saying it's OK to continue thinking badly about the poor even though we have no understanding of their situation, how they got to be there, or even what they're doing to get out.
And as for accusations of abuses against the English language. Well, here on the Internet, the situation is FAR WORSE.
OMG11l33t! ur s0 kewl kthxb.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 11:29 am (UTC)I disagree with the argument about painting with a broad brush - if you get bogged down in specific cases, you lose sight of the bigger picture. Yes, maybe there are cases where there aren't enough jobs (probably quite common, in fact). Maybe there's rampant discrimination. But those are things that can be pointed out, and dealt with somehow. He's not addressing all poor black people; he's addressing the ones that wallow in their miserable situation.
He isn't saying "think badly of the poor". He's saying, "are you poor? Don't let that be an excuse to let your kids have sub-standard education. Don't let it be an excuse to become a stereotype." Replace poor with Aboriginal, black, female, physically disabled - pretty much any given group can be put in there and it still makes sense.
If I said, "don't not go into mathematics just because you're a woman," very few people would jump on me for being sexist and airing women's dirty laundry. If I said that parents were hindering their female child's potential growth by saying "girls shouldn't play with trucks" or "girls don't like science" or "girls should stay at home and pop out babies", who would accuse me of being sexist, or even anti-parent? I don't think there are a lot.
As for English, at least on the internet we can attribute it to (hopefully) laziness. In school essays, or the spoken word? You have fewer excuses for being ig'nant.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 12:41 pm (UTC)"*swoon*).
But if we don't deal with people on an individual basis, we never can get an accurate greater picture of what's going on. A greater picture based on misconceptions, inaccurate data and misleading statistics will NOT solve poverty at large, which is why we have to address the individual cases. 'Course, strangely, I'm a fan of hard data.
Sure, you get what Cosby says after you say to yourself, "Oh, he's only talking about poor black people who wallow in their own misery." However, by using exaggerated statistics (he said 50%, article cites only 13.1% and another census site states it's 10.9%)and alarmist emotional attacks, he risks alienating the people he's trying to address. IN ADDITION to undermining the efforts of hard-working communities and organizations by emphasizing an incorrect statistic that reinforces a stereotype of black people. After all, who will give money to these agencies when they obviously don't work, according to Dr. Cosby? Actually, the overall drop-out rate for black youths has dropped SIGNIFICANTLY since the 1970s from 21% to 11%. Additionally, in the 1999 survey of drop out rates, black youths did not rate much higher than their white counterparts (6.5% to 4.0%).
Also, his statement about buying $500 dollar shoes - he doesn't cite any evidence for this. If he's going to make statements like that, where's his data? Otherwise it just becomes some rich guy railing about a situation he doesn't understand based on stereotypes that may not have any basis in reality.
If the large part of people are struggling because of economic limitations, then Dr. Cosby's address is really patronizing. Does he think that the rest of the black community ISN'T aware of these problems? It's been talked about before and maybe it only seems like a huge problem because the media LOVES stuff like this and that's all we (and he) see(s).
Granted, he may have been taken entirely out of context.
I think that the slang tossed on the internet is a more direct transcription of how we speak than school essays. I don't think laziness is an excuse either, for the state of the English language on the Internet. OK, chat rooms are an exception because it's talking with your hands. Similarly, how I speak with my peers is COMPLETELY different from how I address an interviewer or an authority figure (that I respect). Just because we heard it on the media or some kids talking like that in groups on a street corner, doesn't mean that they don't adopt a different manner during a job interview. I don't speak Chinese to an interviewer, but I do with my family. Just because I dress a certain way with my friends, doesn't mean I'll wear jeans and a tank top to a formal interview.
One really interesting thing to note is the HISPANIC dropout rate is something ridiculous, like 27%.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779196.html
http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/figures/1-figure-1.gif
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 01:16 pm (UTC)As for the rhetoric used, yes, okay, it may alienate people; but it also might be used to convince people to right themselves. There are a ton of people on both sides of that line.
For the record, him being rich doesn't mean that he can't hold an opinion on the matter. That's like saying non-criminals can't hold opinions about criminals, or that non-psychiatrists can't have opinions on mental health. They may not be formally educated, but they CAN point at something and say, "this does not look right".
As for $500 shoes vs. $200 educational tools, I don't know if there IS a study on that. It would certainly be an interesting one. Still, there are probably many anecdotes that we could find online where someone on welfare still has cable, high-speed internet, a PS2 with tons of games, etc., etc.
I think he realizes that the community is AWARE of these problems, but he feels that they choose to blame it on outside factors rather than taking matters into their own hands.
Sadly, they won't release a complete transcript of what he said, so we probably aren't going to GET a context...
Slang tossed around on the internet - OK. I was talking more about issues of spelling and grammar. I can understand, if not agree with, the idea that otherwise intelligent and insightful people just aren't going to spellcheck everything they write to put on the internet, whereas they would for a resume, or a school essay.
I don't know about street-speak versus corporate-speak; I know that the only difference in the way I speak between the two is in the level of formality used when addressing someone. That may not hold for everyone.
Still, I find that better-educated people generally speak more eloquently overall; I have to assume that the same goes for people with poor diction who abuse slang and use poor vocabulary. (Perhaps another sociological study in the works.)
Your clothes and the language you speak are conscious choices that you can change; your level of education and the way you come across because of it may not be.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 02:30 pm (UTC)I don't think that accurate statistics and individual cases are separate issues. If we do not investigate individual cases, we suffer the possibility of making gross assumptions which skew the general. Besides, the general consensus of public opinion is that *some* people are welfare cheats, but not all - so how can we know which people honestly need welfare without looking at it on a case-by-case basis?
Sure, he can have an opinion, anyone can have an opinion. But that doesn't mean it's right, accurate, relevant, or justified. Or that people who listen to it *without considering it critically* are any less ignorant than the people he's railing against.
Well... looking at the Consumer Expenditure Report, it doesn't strike me that poor households, overall, are spending a great deal on expensive clothes - housing takes up 34% percent of their income, food 17%, utilities 9%, clothing taking up 4-5%, transportation 16-18% (1). But a more in-depth study could be done, breaking down what people buy on average. Bah, anecdotal evidence.
Without the entire transcript, we can't say what Cosby thinks about those urban organizations neither can we get into his brain because of lack of MIND POWERS. BASTARDS! That's censorship, not releasing the whole transcript!
He's still talking about hearing this in casual conversation, it's still anecdotal. A gang of teens on a street corner talking slang are not necessarily going to use the same language in an interview or on an essay.
But, yeah, you're right, there's a sociological study in there and until we get the data, there's not much else can be said without delving into flagrant conjecture.
(1)http://www.bls.gov/cex/2002/share/income.pdf