Bill Cosby has some nerve talking about “personal responsibility.”
On May 17, with no warning, the 67-year-old multimillionaire comedian
ambushed three venerable Black organizations – the NAACP, the
NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Howard University
– fatally disrupting a gala celebration of the 50th anniversary
of the Brown desegregation decision. Cosby drew from the
hip (or the lip) to spray the hall with generalized insults against
people who weren’t even there: the Black poor who, he said, “are
not holding up their end in this deal.”
Apparently, Cosby thinks he is one of the deal-makers, and that
he’s been cheated. The mostly Black, tuxedoed attendees at Washington’s
Constitution Hall, forced to bear witness to Cosby’s tirade, were
also to blame “in this deal” since they had collectively failed
to sufficiently call the “lower economic people” to account for
their “personal responsibility” deficits.
Not once did it occur to “Cos” that he owed his immediate and
larger audience the benefit of a well-prepared presentation. Dr.
Cosby saw no need to buttress his rant with a single reliable
fact, nor to provide a coherent structure for his argument, so
that reasonable people might arrive at some useful conclusions.
Instead, he played the elderly “shock jock,” frothing and flailing
away, spewing a sewer of abuse that, if directed against other
ethnic groups, would be considered blood libels. (See a compilation
of “Cosbyisms” at the end of this essay.)
The super-successful entertainer, famed for his practiced timing
and flawless delivery, the evangelist of education – the discipline
in which he received his Ph.D. – displayed an utter disrespect
for his audience and for the august occasion of the anniversary.
His extended outburst, presented without the evident benefit of
even the most rudimentary preparation, was a gross violation of
professional and personal discipline – an affront Cosby would
never commit against a half-drunk nightclub crowd, much less the
corporate and university audiences he regularly addresses. Yet
he gave free rein to his inner demons in front of a throng of
African Americans at Constitution Hall on the anniversary of Brown.
The irresponsible icon
Icons always have apologists; Cosby has a media-full. Black people
who should be insulted, instead make excuses for Cosby’s shameful,
impulsive, totally uninhibited behavior that, in a non-icon, would
invite suspicions of substance abuse.
USA Today’s Black columnist DeWayne
Wickham – normally a smart fellow – sugarcoats Cosby’s bile
as “talking black” – as if Black discussions of public policy,
including subjects as momentous as the Fate of the Race, are by
definition devoid of substance, structure, precision or logic.
A similar exculpatory current runs through most corporate newspaper
columns penned by Black writers in the wake of the Cosby abomination.
Amazingly, the out-of-control, grotesquely self-indulgent comedian
was roundly praised for his “courage” in confronting the supposed
Black phobia against “airing dirty linen” in public, i.e., within
hearing distance of whites. How perverse and ironic! Much of the
Black talking classes forgive Cosby’s clear lack of a sense of
“personal responsibility” and elementary decorum, precisely because
to do otherwise would risk diminishing a Black icon – in front
of white people! Better to let Cosby’s insults to African Americans,
slide.
And since when was it an act of courage to badmouth poor Black
people in America?
By simple standards of civility Cosby is guilty of an extreme
lapse in “personal responsibility” by dint of his behavior to
his audience and to the millions of people he slandered. More
to the point, Cosby doesn’t know the meaning of the term – and
neither do most of the Black chatterers who have been bandying
it about.
Role Model mogul
What do the various political actors mean by “personal responsibility?”
Certainly, we know that in the mouths of Republicans and their
Black camp followers “personal responsibility” is a code for what
people are told to exercise when the state refuses to see to the
general welfare of its non-rich citizens. We know that song. But
what does Cosby mean, and why are otherwise progressive Black
writers and politicians bending over backwards to find ways to
agree with him?
An enormous vacuity surrounds the Black discussion over Cosby’s
remarks. People rush to say “yes” to a term, the definition of
which is not necessarily shared or understood. Where does “personal
responsibility” end and “social responsibility” begin? If a comedian
turned demagogue can hector a substantial portion of a race of
people to behave as he (vaguely) commands, then surely he is talking
politics, not just giving advice to individuals. Cosby’s politics
are in fact rooted on the conservative side of the Black spectrum
– that is, when he is being coherent at all.
The Chicago Tribune’s Clarence
Page recalls:
”Cosby was saying the same thing backstage when
I interviewed him during my college days. It was 1968, but he
didn't want to talk about black power, Black Panthers or cultural
revolutions. He wanted to complain about why so many young blacks
of my generation were wasting the great opportunities that hard-won
civil rights victories had brought us. In those politically polarized
times, I was disappointed by his traditionalist attitude. But
I appreciate its wisdom today with new eyes, the eyes of a parent.”
Actually, Page appreciates Cosby with the “new” eyes of a highly
paid corporate journalist who finds enough common ground with
white conservatives to appear regularly on shows like The McLaughlin Group.
Thirty-two years later, Cosby was still urging young people on
campus to be politically passive. At Franklin & Marshall College
in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in May, 2000, he warned
students:
”Those of you going to grad school, listen to me carefully…
I know you have an idea of how you want to make a change in
the world. That is not what grad school is for. Do what they
tell you to do and then when you graduate, do what you want
to do. That is what grad school is for. If you're gonna argue
with the professor you're going to not get a good grade, you're
not going to graduate in grad school. Okay? So take your young
idea, study what they want you to study, kick tail and then
when you get your turn to write your dissertation then you tell
it the way it ought to be told.
”It is not for you to stand up and argue… You get an A on all
the tests and then, make your move.”
By that, Cosby meant, make your personal career move.
Don’t dabble in campus politics, or challenge the orthodoxy of
those in power at the institution. Shut up.
Because of men and women who shared Cosby’s worldview, many Black
college campuses were relatively quiet during the Civil Rights
Movement, a silence enforced by Black administrators who did not
hesitate to expel students and fire faculty who sought any change
whatsoever in the status quo, on or off campus. Later in the Sixties,
Blacks on white college campuses tended to be significantly more
activist than students at traditionally Black schools, largely
because they were not smothered by a “tradition” hostile to mass
Black political activity.
Cosby advocates a neutered Black politics of individual striving
within the parameters that are allowed by those in power. He
projects his own, self-invented persona as a “role model” for
African Americans to follow as individuals, while rejecting
collective action to alter power relationships. His message: Each
of you people should do as I did. Cosby’s method is derived from
a long line of accommodationist Negro leaders whose message was
the equivalent of, “Eat your Jell-O.”
Ironically, the young Cosby did not follow traditionalist counsel.
He dropped out of college to pursue the wildly perilous career
of Black standup comedian in a largely segregated America. Had
he failed as a comic – as the odds overwhelmingly dictated – without
a good education he might not have been able to buy his mother
a fine house far from the projects where he grew up. Luckily,
Cosby the dropout didn’t listen to people like – Cosby.
Spurned, vengeful benefactor
Cosby bucked the odds, but never the system. His job was to become
a Role Model for a Black presence within the existing order. Once
that was accomplished, he added a make-believe family to the Model:
the Huxtables. Writer Khalil Tian Shahyd “wasn’t surprised at
all” at the tone of Cosby’s Constitution Hall remarks:
After all, for more than a decade he presented
us every Thursday with what he thought the ideal African-American
family should look like. That we should listen to jazz, and have
people like BB King come into our home for dinner and invite us
to sit front row at his shows. Take weekend trips by limo to the
most expensive hotel in the city for dinner and pampering just
to treat our partners to a day without the children. Live in a
big house with not one neighbor of color, where our children
shave their heads to appear in a skin head rock video and are
sheltered from the real world of zero sum politics, gentrification,
under-funded and abandoned school districts, swelling prison populations,
racial profiling, economic marginalization, domestic abuse and
all those specifically “poverty based social ills.”
In addition to making Cosby a lot richer, the TV show proved
that a Black-cast show could hold white people’s attention in
prime time for multiple seasons. This was considered a great
victory. The ideal Black Role Model – Cosby himself, or the self
he created – was now the entire nation’s Role Model for Black
people. Heady stuff.
Role Model Politics is nearly as emotion-laden as cult-of-personality
politics – and just as divorced from reality. The Role Model is,
by definition, the template of righteousness and progress. Those
who fail to follow the Role Model’s path are rejecting the Model’s
persona. No wonder Cosby goes ballistic at poor Black people’s
behavior – or what he imagines that behavior to be. He takes it
personally. It’s as if “those people” are all playing the “dozens”
at his expense. How else to explain the explosive vitriol of Cosby’s
Constitution Hall performance?
However, Cosby’s inability to perceive that he is obligated as
a matter of “personal responsibility” to atone for his blanket
verbal assaults, is his personal problem. It is far more
worrisome that so many Black opinion molders harbor similar attitudes
towards politics and the poor. Cosby showed his ass, but the same
ill winds are blowing through the spaces in lots of Black skulls
in high places. Deep down, they value other Black people little,
and trust them less. They would rather celebrate virtual
social mobility (the “Huxtables”) than fight for the material
resources that bring the possibility of dignity to millions. They
see more virtue in a millionaire parting with a fraction of his
money – although never enough to risk falling out of wealth –
than in the selfless work of thousands of community organizers
and activists who are motivated by a sense of both personal and
social responsibility.
Dr. King and Malcolm X and Fred Hampton died in a social struggle
to empower Black people. Cosby demonizes these same people, employing
the enemy’s language, like some vengeful, spurned benefactor.
Yet much of Black media pretend not to see the throbbing ugliness
in their icon, thus calling into question their own fitness. In
the face of a brazen assault on the human dignity of African Americans,
they equivocate – or join in the mass lynching. Mimicking racists,
they impose yet another burden on the already super-disadvantaged
Black poor. As Paul Street wrote in the April
8 issue of :
”The harsh material and structural-racist reality
of American society interacts with timeworn, victim-blaming ruling-class
explanations of poverty to play an ugly game on the nation’s most
truly disadvantaged. They are expected to magically leap
beyond their social-historical circumstances – to exercise an
inordinately high degree of sound personal responsibility just
to keep their heads above water – while others are structurally
empowered to “pass Go and collect $2 million” without such exercise,
and indeed to deepen the well of black disadvantage.”
If huge numbers of Black people could be drawn together to figure
out precisely how we have failed each other, that would
be one helluva “social responsibility” conversation. But the
Bill Cosbys of the community cannot be allowed to hog the microphone,
just because they may have paid for it. As journalist-educator-lawyer-activist
Lizz Brown
says, “That doesn’t give him license.”
In truth, we can’t afford Bill Cosby anymore. He costs more than
he gives.
Bill Cosbyisms
Cosby on the Black poor:
"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 won't
spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.' "
Cosby on Black youth culture:
"People putting their clothes on backwards: Isn't that
a sign of something gone wrong? ... People with their hats on
backwards, 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 to the crack and got all type of needles [piercings]
going through her body? What part of Africa did this come from?
Those people are not Africans; they don't know a damn thing
about Africa."
Cosby on civil rights:
"Brown versus the Board of Education is
no longer the white person's problem. We have got to take the
neighborhood back. We have to go in there – forget about telling
your child to go into the Peace Corps – it is right around the
corner. They are standing on the corner and they can't speak English."
"Basketball players – multimillionaires
– can't write a paragraph. Football players – multimillionaires
– can't read. Yes, multimillionaires. Well, Brown versus Board
of Education: Where are we today? They paved the way, but what
did we do with it? That white man, he's laughing. He's got to
be laughing: 50 percent drop out, the rest of them are in prison."
Cosby on poor Black women:
"Five, six children – same woman – eight,
10 different husbands or whatever. Pretty soon you are going to
have DNA cards to tell who you are making love to. You don't know
who this is. It might be your grandmother. I am telling you, they're
young enough! Hey, you have a baby when you are 12; your baby
turns 13 and has a baby. How old are you? Huh? Grandmother! By
the time you are 12 you can have sex with your grandmother, you
keep those numbers coming. I'm just predicting."
Cosby on the sons and daughters of poor, Black, unmarried
mothers:
"…with names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and
Mohammed [!] and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail.
Cosby on Blacks shot by police:
"These are not political criminals. These
are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot
in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we
run out and we are outraged, [saying] 'The cops shouldn't
have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake
in his hand?"
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