Bill Cosby said this, sometime in the last 7 years or so
Some of the interesting stuff to go along with it, commentary by others
Some other things he said as well.
Its pretty interesting, and matches how I feel. The only reason I came across it is that some idiot forwarded me an email about Bill Cosby as a write in for president campaign, so i went to snopes.com to check it out. It was false as I figured, but this came up with cosby as well, as true so I read it.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?
People putting their clothes on backward: Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong? People with their hats on backward, 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 and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body?
What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail.
Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back. People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight
different 'husbands' - or men or whatever you call them now. 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.
Some of the interesting stuff to go along with it, commentary by others
Is Ronald Waters insane? Cosby never says anything like that. What he says is that the parents need to be involved, and promote learning.While the criticisms voiced by Bill Cosby are greeted by some as a long-needed airing of problems everyone recognizes but no one talks about, others regard them as unfairly saddling lower-income blacks with sole responsibility for their plight. "He unerringly and wrongly blames the poor. He seems to think that if they would only change their minds, all their problems would go away," said Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland.
Just as crazy. the fact is that without black parents being invovled in their childrens learning process, their children won't learn. There is no way for any outside group to make up for parental involvement. Its that simple and always has been. Any community that values learning also ends up with higher income, lower teen pregnancy rates, etc. Nowhere does bill cosby say that this means that the rest of the united states has no responsibility at all, just that the responsibility for raising a child comes from their parents, and its a responsibility that doesn't get used enough in black inner city communities.Critics also fear that citing failures of lower-income blacks to make the most of educational opportunities and to eschew choices that limit potential for success (poor use of language, early parenting, often unpartnered) gives white people the much-welcomed easy out of declaring themselves devoid of any responsibility for the cause or continuation of black poverty in America: "See? It's not us that puts them in the ghettos or keeps them there, it's them." Such disavowal, while comforting to those who instinctively seize it when it appears to have been offered, ignores the possibility of racial economic disparity's being the result of a combination of contributing factors rather than an either/or "If you did it, then I didn't" proposition.
Even crazier! The very nature of what cosby says is directly non-racist. The concept includes the belief that genetically black people are every bit as capable of learning as any other racial group, but their social grouping isn't encouraging it so that the children aren't learning at the same rate as children with more parental involvement.Last, Cosby's black-negative assessments could, as some have pointed out, serve as confirmations long sought by racists of their view that African-Americans are inherently incapable of helping themselves, which they would hold up as proof of their theory of black genetic inferiority.
Some other things he said as well.
Nobody says this is the only thing that needs to be done, but i dont believe there can be any permanent solution without the black community doing more to encourage fathers to spend more time with their kids, and the parents in general spend more effort on their childrens early education. Knowledge will be one of the things that breaks the viscious circle of poverty, without knowledge it will just continue."Stop waiting for a leader. Get Up! Tell your friends. And if they can't get up, we must see about them because they are true victims ... It's time to study four hours a day with your children. Teach them how much they'll be worth when they have A's instead of F's."