Bill Cosby’s Confused Notions of Responsibility

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:

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.