Bill Cosby is a man who cares

Why else would he choose the occasion as keynote speaker for the NAACP's 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision two years ago to give the black America a verbal butt-whipping for allowing it inner-city communities to go so far astray?

Why else would he refuse to back down despite heavy criticism from black (and white) liberal writers and commentators for "airing blacks' dirty laundry" and "blaming the victim?"

Why else would he not only defy his critics by pointing out their own hypocrisy ("Your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day... they're cursing and calling each other n****,... they can't read or write, and they're going nowhere..."), but also criss-cross the country at his own expense to speak at inner-city schools and community centers in an effort to hammer home his tough-love message of personal and parental responsibility?



Because he cares.Recently, Dr. Cosby spoke at three inner-city elementary schools in Baltimore, MD, exhorting black children to embrace education and black adults and parents to be better parents.

As reported in the Washington Times:
"These people," he told parents, referring to their children, "are not on this earth for us to fool with, to bring up in a manner that they're not thinking properly, that the word 'life' has no love in it."
[In criticizing black mothers for having children "for the wrong reasons"], "A woman says, 'I want something that loves me.' Stop her. Duct-tape her to the closet," he said, drawing laughter with this line at all three schools. "Give her a dog."

[Responding to the complaint that the government is building too many prisons], "Let them build them," he said.

"That doesn't mean you have to go there." A product of humble beginnings born at a time when blacks were far worse off, Bill Cosby embraced education to lift himself out of poverty, ultimately earning a doctorate in education (not an "Honorary" doctorate, a real one) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. With his speaky-clean stand-up comedy repetoire, he became one of the most respected, celebrated and financially successful entertainers of all time.

In addition, Cosby has donated millions of dollars of his own money to black colleges and universities. He has put hard-scrabble black kids who are not his own through college and graduate school on his own dime. This man has put his money where his mouth is many times over, and has thus earned the right to speak about against things run amok in the black community.Cosby isn't afraid to challenge black folks to take a good look at themselves and stop worrying about what the (white) neighbors think.

He has no qualms about exhorting blacks, 40 years into the post-civil rights era, to stop being frozen in the "whole" of victimhood and blaming "whitey" for everything that ails them, no matter how "analgesically" good it feels.

He could care less how many whites are within earshot as he challenges blacks to get their collective house in order. It doesn't matter to him how much he may be despised for telling blacks to be better, more responsible parents to their children.
If I had my way, Bill Cosby would be head of the NAACP.

Unlike the current leadership of the oldest and largest (and, nowadays, most irrelevant) civil rights organization in the country, his man has shown that he actually cares about the black community, especially its most vulnerable segment - the younger generation. He has a message that it would behoove black America to heed. Those who choose to disregard that message (or try to shoot the messenger) will do so at their own peril.