Thanks to the best commenters on the Internet for reminding me that Obama’s speech to the NAACP last night is the same thing Bill Cosby has been saying for years.
Here are some quotes from Cosby’s May 2004 speech at an NAACP event for the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, courtesy of Snopes.com:
They’re standing on the corner and they can’t speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk: Why you ain’t, Where you is, What he drive, Where he stay, Where he work, Who you be… And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk.
Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.
People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around. The 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 they won’t spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics.
I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn’t know that he had a pistol? And where is the father? Or who is his father?
…We have millionaire football players who cannot read. We have million-dollar basketball players who can’t write two paragraphs. We as black folks have to do a better job. Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.
We cannot blame the white people any longer.
Sounds a lot like “No excuses,” doesn’t it?
Let’s see if the same folks who’ve given Cosby so much heat for his comments will pipe up when the same sentiments are coming from the The Most Historic President of the United States Ever. I’m guessing they’ll keep it to themselves, but anything’s possible.
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RACIST! RAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST! Simon’s a…
Wait a minute…
Bill Cosby was my hero for that speech. Besides, they don’t have to blame us anymore (I know you’ll be shocked to learn I’m a white girl) because they’re about to take our money for reparations…
He’s so freakin’ awesome…
I think the reason that those people attacked Mr. Huxtable is now glaringly apparent.
Bill Cosbey is a time-traveler who plagiarized The Chosen One’s speech! Outrageous!
@ TheIrish Hee. You is funnee.
Wait, does this mean that now Bill is BLACK??? When before he was accused “by his own people” of trying to be white???
This just means that Bill Cosby is a Ding Dong (Beige, I just couldn’t resist!!!)
I’m on my way to your house RIGHT NOW. With a pound cake and some Coca Cola.
I think it is interesting that Bill Cosby was so vilified for saying people could elevate themselves, when that is what most civil rights leaders were saying in the 1950s and 1960s. The kids who were in the court cases for integration were chosen because they were stand up kids who did their best and could show the world that they were just as capable (if not more) as any white kids.
I don’t understand why he was so vilified for pointing out that parents have responsibilities to their children, and that there are parents out there who are not fulfilling said responsibilities. If parents are not taking care of their children, someone SHOULD point it out. Quite frankly, if you aren’t trying to help your kid learn or become self-sufficient and able to function in society. you aren’t doing your job. If you aren’t doing right by your kid, you deserve to be called out. Setting your kid up to fail because you can’t be bothered to make the effort to raise them should be considered abuse. I don’t care if you are black, white or purple with pink polka dots. Not doing your best by your kids is wrong, and the only person to blame for bad parenting is you.
I don’t like Bill Cosby but I read the whole speech and he was right.
Now that the “Messiah” levered his Almighty wisdom on Cosby’s side, I hope I will hear some black racist bitching about it, just for the fun to hear them.
$500 sneakers-the hell you say?
I have loved Bill Cosby’s comedy since I was very young. While I was never a huge fan of The Cosby Show, I grew to respect how he was trying to teach his “kids” to grow up and not be knuckleheads.
Then I heard about this speech. I read it. And I realized just how freaking brilliant he is.
Then I heard some of the response from black leaders. And I realized just how freaking stupid they are.
I was going to say, “Give it a minute”, but then I realized, we ARE talking about the Anointed One here. So it may never happen. Granted, this is the sort of thing that Jesse Jackson wanted to castrate O for saying, which would have made Jackson useful and given him true purpose for the first time in his life, but still.
I think current black “leaders” (read: race-baiting demagogues) vilify this sort of straight talk because it undermines their efforts to keep black people enraged at white people. I mean, if you’d spent your entire adult life making a living as a professional sh!t-stirrer, and someone from your own group comes along and says, “Wait a minute. That’s pretty much on US,” you’d be threatened, right? Even if he was right, right?
Right.
When the news first broke that Bill Cosby said this, I was grinning. I am so sick of the black people who whine about why they can’t get ahead in life, and if I were black I’d probably be even sicker of them. The whole thing gets even stupider when you think about how lots of Asian people come to America and don’t know how to speak English and within one generation their kids are on the honor roll and getting into good colleges.
Plus, what about the black people who start out in bad situations and end up educated and with good lives? If other people in those situations “just can’t get ahead,” that’s taking away the acknowledgment of how hard black people from bad situations who got ahead worked. Oh, someone did get ahead? Well, it must be a fluke or something, because black people from the ghetto just can’t get ahead. Frederick Douglass would challenge white kids to write more letters of the alphabet than he could and learned how to read that way. What excuse do modern black people have? As long as you have an address, you can get a library card and go to the library and check out books and learn something. Even if you’re homeless, you can still sit in the library and read a book as long as you don’t disturb anybody.
I said the same thing TWENTY years ago. Does that mean Bill owes me an apology?
It’s simple:
Bill Cosby isn’t really black. And even if he is, he’s an Uncle Tom. I mean, did you watch his show? A black man being a DOCTOR? Good gawd. Might as well call him Dr. KLUXtable.
Just listen to how he talks! All uppity and correct, like some sort of house ni**er ready to wag his oreo finger at US? Oh HELL no.
You just listen to the good Reverends. They’ll lead us to the promised land.
As a white southerner and someone who grew up in “Bombingham”, there’s baggage here I can’t even fit in my car. I went to an enrichment-program school, and kids were bussed in from all over town, to make things racially “fair”. Race wasn’t an issue for us; it was so much more a matter of how well you did on tests and whether or not you could outspell or out-wisecrack someone else. I didn’t find out until near the end of eighth grade that the black kids got beaten up in their neighborhoods for “acting white”. That didn’t make sense to me then, and still doesn’t.
I know whites who act as though they were locked in basements all their lives, and whites who don’t. Same thing with blacks. The real unfairness there is that the black person isn’t supposed to CHOOSE to speak correctly, to pursue educational opportunities, to get married and stay married, to stay on the right side of the law. Our family doctor told us, before he moved his family to Nashville, that they had gotten more crap from blacks here in SW Georgia than he’d ever had to deal with, anywhere. I guess he was screwing up the curve.
Beige
Did the white kids get beaten up for being white as well? In 9th grade I got beat up by a black kid and a white kid so I feel like I’ve done my part for racial equality.
I think that Cosby needs to write a primer for black people on tipping. As a long time pizza delivery guy it’s fairly obvious to me that education in this area is lacking.
Actually, the only time I’ve ever personally been beaten up for my race was in China. Got punched on a bus in Nanjing and punched, oddly enough, months later in Tiananmen Square. Both times by Chinese guys who didn’t like yang gui zi (“foreign devils”). At least, that’s what they said.
A black guy here in GA did try to force my car, with my kids and me inside, into oncoming traffic the other day. He was looking right at me as he swerved over. Never seen the stupid pr*ck before in my life.
And now for something completely off-topic (for the most part), has anyone every seen “House of Cosbys”? Cosby not only tells it like it is, but imagine if we had…
http://www.channel101.com/shows/show.php?show_id=121
Bah! None of the links seem to work there. Sorry, folks. But I know you can find them on youTube.
As someone who comes from a bi-racial family, I have never understood the whole concept of not liking someone because of their skin colour. There are a lot of people I don’t like, but is never based on the colour of the skin…it is always based on who they are. Trash is Trash no matter what colour. That said, I think it is high time we took out the trash.
Here ya go.
Butt-Naked Cosby made my soul hurt.
*swoon*
I love this website more than words can express. Good job, y’all.
Here’s Cosby’s entire speech:
http://www.eightcitiesmap.com/transcript_bc.htm
Okay, just saw that Fortunate_Son had posted a link to the speech in the previous entry.
Not trying to jump on his bandwagon. My old-guy brain didn’t think to look.
I love Bill Cosby and what he has been saying for years. Nobody ever gave him a second glance and accused him of turning his back on his “brothers and sisters”. NOw that the Messiah has spoken people think he has a golden tongue and will cure all ailments.
There are plenty of people who know Cosby’s words are true, but are afraid of the backlash. Anyone who is well-traveled, or who has spent time in a major city, has seen this for themselves, first hand. Too many times have I seen a child raised in an awful manner, and then the results are blamed on white people.
Want a prime example? Go to your local Wal-Mart.
By the way, white trash are guilty of the same things, and have the same lack of responsibility.
It basically has boiled down to who will give the lazy and worthless in society the most to be elected the leader of that “Race”. Look at the leaders of the NAACP and the “Black Communities” for the last 20 years. Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, all people of low standards and an excuse for any problem in their organizations.
Imagine if Bill Cosby had been the head of the NAACP. Perhaps the victim mentality would subside.
The race warlords – Sharpton and Jackson – would never allow it though. They would be out of power.
True, although the irony of trying to blame white people is lost on them. It’s mortifying to see someone from home (north AL, southern middle TN) acting methy and skanky and just generally confirming the stereotype. When southerners show up on the news, it’s never a degreed professional–who DO exist, BTW. It’s always some three-toothed doublewide peckerwood, all Ernest T. Bass, nasaling “Ah done seen that UFO whut cut up them cows.” GAAAHHH.
I was griping about the local welfare queens and crack thugs, and a friend who lives in Maine rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah, we have the same problems up there, only they’re a lot paler and wear more flannel.”
As opposed to rigged town-hall meetings to support healthcare?
With DNC volunteers asking questions?
I wish Bill Cosby was president.
A major reason why I shifted from center left to center right was my disgust with victim culture. Leftists demand minorities be dumb, drugged, drunk and especially ANGRY. This way they have proof the system’s failed and what’s needed is a true socialist utopia. The Klan couldn’t come up with anything more suicidal than “education is white”, and they don’t have to. Gangsta culture is doing the work for them.
Emerson – Yeah, and it is even better when they evict someone from their race when they lean toward the right. Like your not allowed to be black, if you don’t fit the liberal stereotype.
You didn’t vote for Obama? You sir, are obviously an Uncle Tom.
Hmm. “Anonymous” up there was me. Don’t know what happened, but it was probably something I did or didn’t do.
It just seems obvious that the victim mentality has been so thoroughly inculcated in generation after generation of low-income Americans (many of whom are black), that overcoming it would be analogous to teaching a congenitally blind person about colors.
Someone said it perfectly above, but to reiterate: One reason–probably the MAIN reason–why urbane, successful blacks get so much shite from their compatriots is because they disprove the notion that the cards are invariably stacked against blacks. If A succeeds while B sits on his ass and whines, and they both came from the same circumstances, then B probably won’t want to be reminded that he, too, could have done something with his life. There’s no “magic”. There’s precious little “luck”. The harder you work and the more you refuse to give up, the “luckier” you get, and it really and truly doesn’t matter what color you are. Dr. Ben Carson, Justice Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, and a host of others have done it. But had they sat back and bitched their whole lives about how the Man was keeping them down, they would have lived and died in uselessness and obscurity.
Being white has never gotten me anything for free, except misplaced attitude from blacks. I would rather have done without that, too.
JGM: at this point, even Bill Clinton would be a welcomed relief.
Beige: stuffed my face with pound cake and Coke while watching Fox News all weekend. But at least I sweated it all out, being that it would cost half a hybrid to run the AC nowadays. See, BO, I’m already trying out the 3rd world misery that you so desire for your citizens.
SG
I’m pricing a couple of acres, some goats and a yurt; and my daughter’s not getting married for less than 10 camels provided she survives the cliterodectomy.
HELLO to the imagery.
I’m going to hold off on agreeing with Bill Cosby until some white person of equivalent eloquence and taste blasts stupid white people for acting the same way. Think about how many people are so PROUD to be poorly educated, idiotic, asshole rednecks, and didn’t get that comedians like Jeff Foxworthy were actually NOT praising them? We all tend to do moronic things once in a while, educated or not (and I have pulled more than my share of ghastly gaffes), but why doesn’t everybody at least aspire to be urbane and sophisticated? I went to private schools packed to the gills with both rich peoples’ kids and poor peoples’ kids and everyone in between, but there was nothing funnier and more disheartening than watching a privileged rich kid grasp desperately to achieve “the common touch.” Apparently dignity and grace equal pretension, so even if we know better we’re supposed to act like Beavis and Butthead and not laugh at them. God bless America.
And if you find any sexy eligible bachelors who can help me couth up a little, but who still don’t mind gross humor once in a while, please let me know.
Anna, I believe you have hit the nail on the head here: “Apparently dignity and grace equal pretension…”
Truly, that’s at the crux of why a community (any, really) would keep their own down with the forced use of humilation, degradation, insults and violence to get what they want: more playmates living the same low-rent life as they do.
My own personal experience is this: I grew up one of the most violent, volatile, and poor housing developments of the day when I was a baby till I was 27 and moved away to another city. In my time, I can’t recall any black people acting the way any of you describle or being taken away in a cop cars. In fact, it was all the while people. And all of the few black families that lived around us were private, quiet, went to school, didn’t drink or do drugs, didn’t rob homes in the middle of the night, didn’t lazy around working the system and generally any of the other things you associate urban youth to be fond of geting into. The black families exhibited pride in themselves, wouldn’t allow any of their kids to play with any of us white kids, and they always did better in school than us lazy whities. Not one black parent wanted the taint of living in a housing project to rub off on their kids, lest they become unfocused and get stuck living a low rent life forever. All of them went to on to leave the housing project within 10 or so years (a lot of them in far less time), and most went onto sports scholarships when they couldn’t get an academic one. I had the honour to be allowed to hang with two boys and their sister. The sister and I were good friends till their father moved them away. One of the brothers I set up and has been with my friend for over 20 years, enjoying a good life with a couple of mixed race kids.
By all accounts, it was the whities who were the trash in my ‘hood. BTW, my mother should have been black. She never let us hang with the rift raft either.
I grew up hearing various people referred to as “trash”, and even by age five, I had figured out that that label had nothing to do with economic status or race, and everything to do with behavior. I had some drunk, suicidal Cherokee uncles on one side who were “trash”, and some churchgoing, wifebeating, adulterous Scottish “trash” on the other side. Mixed in among them were some decent people who just wanted to work, raise their families, and be left alone.
Should I take it at its face value, and if so, then why? ,
People want to look good for all sorts of reasons. ,