Truth of Cosby's message lost in his cultural attack

Eric Cooper

"The Advocate" -- A Tribune paper
Thursday, June 10, 2004

By Eric J. Cooper

Cosby's Remarks

Syndicated columnists have responded favorably to remarks made by Bill Cosby, the comedian and television/movie star, at a Howard University fund-raiser in Washington, D.C., commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. But Cosby has done both a service and a disservice to this country with his sharply pitched remarks about - and by extension, to - individuals and families with lower incomes. Cosby stated that "The lower economic people are not holding up their end of the deal." He spoke about the "knuckleheads," whose droopy pants style are matched in his view by droopy ambitions and dropped parental responsibility, which has led to dimming prospects for the African-American community.

Cosby's remarks may have reminded us of the positive - that striving, self-improvement, drive and acculturation into the worlds of American study and work are possible for everyone. However, the remarks also were a disservice, because Cosby did not speak to our society and its systems on behalf of children and youth for whom success is a mirage. They are oppressed by substandard housing, job discrimination, divisive social policies that undermine families, and by the pernicious impact of such conditions, particularly on people of color.

Many people make it over those barriers and beyond those limitations. The heroic American families that rise above the damage of history and contemporary racism are to be celebrated, and their children are to be applauded for their accomplishments. Read the writing of just one of many students from Providence, R.I. who have grown up in conditions not visited upon middle-class children, but who join all with their spirit of hope:

"The challenges I have faced have made me a stronger person. In the past few years I have come to realize that regardless of the cards that I have been dealt, I have the power to change my life. I have seen many of my peers end up addicted to drugs and alcohol, in jail, or dead after being in the situation that I lived. Once I felt that I was meant to fail, but because of teachers who have cared for me, I feel as though my success can set an example for many to follow."

Cosby has clarified that he did not mean that all poor people are hobbled by their own actions. That was welcome, but it does not get us where we need to be. We need to work on both the individual and the institutional sides of the success equation. Part of the challenge is that the playing field needs to be leveled, and the diversity of our society honored while standards are upheld in our highly competitive world.

Many in society are frustrated. The legacy of the civil rights movement is not raised high by illiteracy, dissipation, abuse, disrespect, waste of scarce resources or neglect. People braved bloody streets and have endured the irony of the Supreme Court's 1955 decree to desegregate with "all deliberate speed." The fight continues, yet the poor cannot wait for all of society and systems to lift them up.

Motivated students succeed despite all the unfair roadblocks, particularly when they have mentors and good schools. Yet we cannot remain comfortable while a rift deepens between those who live well in an integrated America and those who, for various reasons, cannot. That rift will deepen if we only point to the failings of individuals and families and not to the failings of our institutions and civil systems.

Cosby came through in the press as taking his frustrations out only on the children, youth and parents most in need of a helping hand in our nation. Personally, I am not going to engage in a verbal assault if droopy pants are a style and not emblematic of a life, or if the language of rap is just one way of communicating, or if youth do some "strutting" in advance of achievements in the world. There are times that those pants, that talk, those misogynistic views, that swagger, that desperate reach for immediate attention, do not work well in the university or workplace, or in creating loving and self-sustaining families.

African-American, Hispanic and latino cultures are not in opposition to success in school, even though some street behaviors are detrimental to important learning. Some home behaviors are as pernicious as some school practices. All should be seen for what they do to the prospects of our children and they should be challenged as strongly, as Cosby challenged families to lift their children with literacy rather than with fancy shoes. I would patent his passion, not the pitch of his message. When frustrated by lack of progress, it is simplistic to blame just those who don't make it - forgetting the complex causes for lack of progress by many groups.

Rather than functioning as the great equalizer 50 years after the "Brown" decision, schools too often both reflect and replicate social-class structures and social biases. Effective schools, by comparison, know how to educate all of their students, whatever family and financial challenges many of their students bring with them.

This is where influential leaders such as Cosby and others should direct their frustrations. He and others might challenge the inequities that exist in our educational systems. Does it make sense to lash out at the victims of societal policies and unfair distribution of resources

There are millions of successful urban students. Sadly, the positive stories in the press are about individuals, the critical ones about groups. There are thousands of successful schools. But positive stories generally are about a particular school, negative stories about kinds or systems of schools. And there are millions of children and youth not making headway, and thousands of schools not getting enough of the job done. Cosby should help us see past the swagger and the surface to the spirit of America's youth, and to find ways to help families who fall short.

Stamford Public Schools parent Eric J. Cooper is president of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education at The Council of Great City Schools, Washington, D.C. & the University of Alabama at Birmingham.