Eh.
I can see where he is coming from regardless of who funded what and why.
The truth is the truth no matter who tells it. Same for lies.
In my mind Cosby was looking at us going down instead of up and was furious / not trying to hear any excuses. Especially from Men.
Cant say he's wrong when the numbers cant be explained any other way.
We (as a whole) were better off in many ways when he came up than we were in the 90s.
For me it all starts and ends with the Black family...meaning husband, wife, and children.
Sure socio-economic problems, drugs, cops, racism, welfare, employment, etc. were used against us but what's that compared to what our ancestors faced...and they managed to stick together through all of that.
When wasn't the "institution" against us in this nation?
If we know what the traps are, where they are, and who set them - then how can we keep falling into them and still blame the trapper?
That's what the trapper is supposed to do...we the fools who keep going for it.
How we more mad at Cosby than the people setting the traps?
It IS a lack of morals.
It IS a lack of cultural / life values.
There were PLENTY of Black folks who didn't rock with MLK or Malcolm X either. Doesn't mean they were wrong.
We cant keep going like this. We cant be so insecure that nobody cant tell us nothing.
Especially someone like Cosby who certainly gave more of his money and time to the advancement of Black people than most ever will.
Not gonna lie - I didn't like what he said or how he said it either...but my pants were sagging at the time too.
Hit dogs gonna holler.
Reminds me of that Boondocks skit from 10 years ago....
Nah, I think Cosby is wrong and don't agree with this take
Like I said, if Cosby was speaking on an individual level, ok fine. But presenting it as some unique thing happening in the black community, on a macro level, is nonsense. Observable reality says it is nonsense. If it was a uniquely black thing then we would see it replicated across class lines in black America, and not replicated across race lines in America generally.
Secondly, previous generations struggled and made choices Cosby would criticize in the face of systematic oppression. People point to black people's supposed moral failings or singling out the single-parent household is not a new phenomenon.
The Moynihan Report came out in 1965 and blamed singled-out single-family households as the main driver of problems black people were facing. What Cosby did was take that a set further because Moynihan at least acknowledged the role the state can play to undo the damage it did. You can try to argue truth is truth no matter who says it (which is a principle you seem to deny Lamont Hill strangely,) but my point with white conservatives what that they use these arguments as a cudgel against people that want to solve any systemic issue. White conservatives were not interested in Cosby for his views simply to hear them, they were interested in how they could be deployed in the cultural debate on how best to help black people in this country. Which is, they don't, they instead need to help themselves and stop being morally bankrupt. To claim they are just speaking truths requires stripping out some context to their arguments
Third, I find the whole "well other generation had it tougher" completely uncompelling. Sure they did, but that doesn't excuse the current state of affairs black people have to face now. They told slaves they were lucky they didn't have it tougher than another group of slaves. They told people that lived under white terrorism during reconstruction that at least they were not enslaved, they told people toward the end of Jim Crow that at least they were not black what black people did during reconstruction, now they tell black people that things are not as bad as the 1960s. To me it is an empty argument used to be dismissive of the current state of affairs that drive the outcomes we see.
Like I always believe. Black people are regular folk, responding to what they have to work with.
If you wanna get your Glen Loury on, cool go ahead. But I find Bill Cosby to be mostly full of ****. It is great he donated money to help black people but that doesn't make his arguments any more cogent or compelling to me.
-The Boondocks skit is ******** too. I put it in the same category as Chris Rock "black people vs. n-words bit"
I like the Boondocks but that was some nonsense
The entire episode was about people bastardizing Dr. King's image, mainly for profit, and they do the exact same thing they argued against with this speech