Cosby's comments

[kip Foss]

Looks like New Orleans is waking people up. Cosby is shaking their
bed again.

"We Can't Blame White People"

by BILL COSBY

"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.


Some observations Bill Cosby made.


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.

[TheDon]

if a white person said that then the whole black community would be after them.... thanks bill for saying what i cant.

a great name i have seen $hithead... pronounced shi-theed

[Jim B.]

......in school: "Wha' fo, man, wha' fo I gots to read 'Tale of Two CIties'? Wha' fo?"

......in jail: "Hey, man, wha' fo you be breathin' mah air?"

Cosby tells it like it is, he's right, unfortunately things are really that way in some of the poorer black areas. And what's worse, some of that hip hop stuff glorifies all that, to young people of all races!!!

Gives short shrift to the middle and upper blacks in the USA though. Those people are an embarrassment to them.

And Chris Rock says, in his routine, "Now I KNOW none of you white folks would like to be ME.......and I'm RICH!!!"

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by Jim B.

......in school: "Wha' fo, man, wha' fo I gots to read 'Tale of Two CIties'? Wha' fo?"

yea.. thats 75% of my school... i almost got my ass kicked because someguy was talkn like that to me apparently insulting me and i replied.. if your going to fcuking insult me insult me in proper fcuking english not this street bull$****..

[davestlouis]

Unfortunately Cosby has a great point...there are some atrocious social issues in the black community that they seem unable to deal with. I find it shameful that some people, black or not, will spend all day Sunday at church, praying for things to improve, when they should be out there, trying to improve things. Like my mom says, "God helps them that help themselves".

The self-appointed "black leaders" seem more concerned with perpetuating the preception of racism, and don't want to fix it, or there will be no need for "black leaders". These alleged leaders teach people to be dependent on the welfare state, and don't try to help them make something of themselves.

Other minority groups try to assimilate, while some blacks try to distance themselves with their speech and dress. Guess what, the majority doesn't like those who don't go along with the group and these people with funny names, baggy britches, and garbled speech are going nowhere. As long as they are aware of the consequences of that choice to stand out, so be it, but they can't expect society to accept them.

[Jorn]

Unfortunately black leaders don't want to improve that much about the situation, it would make them absolute. There is a lot of money to make in misery of other people.

[G-Benz]

Originally Posted by Jorn

Unfortunately black leaders don't want to improve that much about the situation, it would make them absolute. There is a lot of money to make in misery of other people.

Actually, black leaders DO want to improve the situation and there are many programs created out there to correct them. But as the saying goes, "you can lead a horse to water..."

And Cosby's comments quoted above have been said years ago before Katrina...it's a cultural issue that spans far beyond the exposure of a vast throng of uneducated, unmotivated folks that were coddled within the system in NO. These folks had rendered themselves incapable of doing little more than waiting for government handouts. They have now spread to neighboring states creating the same kind of problems.

[Hatterasguy]

Cosby is right on. Going to a state school I see this all the time, some black people my age really get into this tough guy rapper thing. Baggy pants, huge shirts, can't even understand them, you get the idea. I'm like WTF your in college in a business class, do you expect anyone to hire you looking like that? Usualy but not always these individuals are the ones who never show up. Of course its everyone elses fualt but theres.

If anyone saw Trump's show a couple of seasons ago remember Randall(sp?)? Now he should be a roll model for black males, or for anybody for that matter. That guy had tons of degrees, spoke perfectly, carried himself perfectly. He is a perfect example of someone who is going right to the top, he isn't standing on the corner talking gangsta into his cell.

[davestlouis]

I don't necessarily have an issue with teens expressing themselves: goth kids in black makeup, the gangsta' thing, whatever, but at some point the parent(s) need to lean on these kids and say, hey look, getting tattoos on your forehead/neck/hands, etc seems cool now, but the day is going to come when you will get married/have a big job interview or have some other event where you will look like a buffoon...I can only imagine that there is no parental direction given to some of these kids. It's not my fault, nor is the fault of society at large, but it does become our collective problem when these unemployable people become a drain, either via welfare payments or in the penal system.

Short of taking these kids away from their families at a young, impressionable age, and rearing them in military schools/orphanages, what are we as a society supposed to do?

[davestlouis]

Let's not lose sight of the fact that black families aren't the only ones with problems...I live in a community that isn't exactly lily-white, but the last census showed that the municipality where I live is 96% caucasian. I see/ talk to some of my kids' friends whose parents are either at work all the time or divorced, they only see their dad over the summer and get no real guidance from him, even then. There's a whole lost generation of kids who are being left to raise themselves...and the results are less-than-stellar.

[Botnst]

It's not a black thang, per se. There are lots and lots of black people who work their butts off trying to do better for their families and communities.

Unfortunately, a surpising proportion of the neer-do-wells who are black are also American born and bred. In contrast, the immigrant blacks perform better than the norm of ALL groups. Th greater proportion of folks from Africa or the Caribbean see opportunity and work hard to get a piece of the pie while the greater proportion of black folks from NOLA or Brooklyn resentfully see whitey holding them down.

It's the same planet and it's a strange one. I sure wish I had a magic wand.

Bot

[davestlouis]

Even in our community, the black kids speak differently than the white/Asian/Hispanic kids...what is going on culturally with this particular group that they can't/won't talk like everyone else?

I can't imagine it's a physical/mechanical issue with mouth structure, I have to assume it's a learned behavior. What does a black person stand to gain by using a dialect that is unintelligible to the rest of society? How do they expect to accomplish anything if they can't even express themselves verbally?

[Plantman]

My son, of cuban and Belizean heritage dressed all ghetto for awhil, even having braids.

No one would give him a job and I don't blame them.

Now, imagine a black or dark-skinned hispanic kid in the same position? Right.......

My neighbor in a warehouse complex has a black dude who carries boxes from here to there.

His attire? Pants hanging off his ass and one pant leg pulled up to the knee.

WTF?

It's not only blacks, Cuban's, PR Dominican...even preppy white kids all try to dress Hop Hop and it's disturbing as hell.

Shoot!, I even see 40 year old men with shorts down to their ankles.....

[kip Foss]

It is bad enough to hear this kind of talk coming from some black ghetto kid but the white kids that say 'like' every second work and speak like a 'Valley Girl' are even worse. Now that the kids that grew up on 'valley speak' have grown up (?) and gotten jobs you can hear this type of talk every day when you call various business. The sing-song way they speak with the rising emphasis at the end of the sentenance is enough to make me sick. I just can't take a person that speaks like this seriously, I don't care how many degrees they have on the wall.

[davestlouis]

On a more general note, I have seen a lack of emphasis in public schools on the proper use of the English language. I went to a school assembly for "meet the teacher" and the principal ended several sentences with "at", as in "where the assembly will be at". That makes my skin crawl when I hear a professional educator mangle the language. Sister Consolata, my 1st grade teacher, was a perfectionist, as was Sr. Bertil in 2nd, Sr. Alcantara in 3rd...etc. I'm still afraid of nuns to this day, but at least they taught me how to speak and write cogently.