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I had never seen the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson
cry in public. And he's
seldom upstaged. Until, Bill Cosby came to town.
Last month Jackson invited Cosby to the annual Rainbow/PUSH
Conference for a conversation about controversial remarks the entertainer
offered May 17 at
an NAACP Dinner in Washington , D.C. That's
when America 's Jell-O Man
shook things up by arguing that African Americans
were betraying the legacy
of civil rights victories.
"The lower economic people," he said, "are
not holding up their end in this
deal. These people are not parenting. They
are buying things for their kids.
$500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200
for "Hooked on Phonics!"
Thursday morning, Cosby showed no signs of repenting
as he strode across the stage at the Sheraton Hotel ballroom before a
standing-room-only crowd.
Sporting a natty gold sports coat and dark glasses,
he proceeded to unload a laundry list of black America 's self-imposed ills.
The iconic actor and
comedian kidded that he couldn't compete with the
oratory of the Reverend
but he preached circles around Jackson in their nearly
hour-long
conversation, delivering brutally frank one-liners
and the toughest of love.
The enemy, he argues, is us:
"There is a time, ladies and gentlemen, when
we have to turn the mirror
around." Cosby acknowledged he wasn't critiquing
all blacks-just "the 50
percent of African Americans in the lower economic
neighborhood who drop out of school," and the alarming proportions
of black men in prison and black
teenage mothers. The mostly black crowd seconded
him with choruses of
"Amens."
To critics who pose, it's unproductive to air our
dirty laundry in public,
he responds, "Your dirty laundry gets out of
school at 2:30 every day. It's
cursing on the way home, on the bus, train, in the
candy store.
They are cursing and grabbing each other and going
nowhere. And, the book
bag is very, very thin because there's nothing in
it."
"Don't worry about the white man," he adds.
"I could care less about what
white people think about me . . . let 'em talk. What
are they saying that is different from what their grandfathers said and
did to us? What is different is what we are doing to ourselves."
For those who say Cosby is just an elitist who's "got
his" but doesn't
understand the plight of the black poor, he reminds
us that, "We're going to turn that mirror around. It's not just the
poor-everybody's guilty."
Cosby and Jackson lamented that in the 50th year of
Brown vs. Board of
Education, our failings betray our legacy. Jackson
dabbed away tears as he recalled the financial struggles at Fisk University
, a historically black
college and Jackson 's Alma mater.
When Cosby was done, the 1,000 people in the room
all jumped to their feet
in ovation. Long after Cosby had departed, I
could not find a dissenter in
the crowd. But in the hotel corridor I encountered
a vintage poster for sale
that said volumes. The poster, which advertised
the Million Man March, was
"discounted" to $5 Remember the Million
Man March?
In 1995 Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan exhorted
"a million sober,
disciplined, committed, dedicated, inspired black
men to meet in Washington
on a day of atonement." In 2004, perhaps
all that' s left of that call is a
$5 poster. We have shed tears too many times,
at too many watershed moments
before, while the hopes they inspired have fallen
by the wayside. Not this time.
Cosby's plea to parents: "Before you get to the
point where you say
'I can't do nothing with them'-do something with them."
Like:
- Teach our children to speak English.
- When the teacher calls, show up at the school.
- When the idiot box starts spewing profane rap videos,
turn it off.
- Refrain from cursing around the kids.
- Teach our boys that women should be cherished, not
raped and demeaned.
- Tell them that education is a prize we won with blood
and tears,not a dishonor.
- Stop making excuses for the agents and abettors of
black-on-black crime.
- It costs us nothing to do these things. But if we
don't, it will cost us infinitely more tears.
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| | Posted 8/29/2006 9:39 AM - 26 Views - 4 eProps - 2 comments
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