'People don't know how to parent'

MLK BREAKFAST | Bill Cosby rips into poor blacks who behave irresponsibly

January 22, 2008
BY MAUREEN O'DONNELL Staff Reporter modonnell@suntimes.com
He left the Cosby sweater behind and aired dirty laundry instead.

Bill Cosby used an appearance at a Rainbow/PUSH Martin Luther King Day breakfast to joke, chide, cajole and lecture a roomful of 1,800 African Americans on parenting and responsibility

It's a message he has been repeating for several years, drawing kudos and criticism. Some say he's lost touch with the grinding hardships of the black underclass. Others say he tells it like it is.

Though best known for his role as TV dad Cliff Huxtable, he's been a top comic and actor since the '60s. So even as he railed on negative topics Monday, he kept the crowd at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers laughing.

Cosby didn't mince words. He talked about babies having babies and dropping out of school. Giving up. Getting government checks. His successful-looking listeners paid $100 a plate, but that didn't let them off the hook, he said.

"You've got to talk to these 20-year-old women with children who are teenagers," he urged, to some uncomfortable laughter. When youngsters have babies, "People don't know how to parent,'' Cosby said. "They didn't have the child with the intent of sending somebody higher."

Cosby recalled lecturing at-risk youths to help them get back on track and in school. One fell asleep and confessed he'd been up until 4 a.m. with his girlfriend. "He's screwing some 13-year-old girl without a rubber . . . so she can have something . . . that loves her."

Back in his day, Cosby said, "you had to have a resume" to take a girl to the movies.

"You can't just dismiss dogs and water hoses'' used on activists in the civil rights era, he said. But how, he asked, do those injustices square with some youths -- "all they can do is curse . . . and bragging because they got two, three babies somewhere that the government is sending checks twice a month."

Education is the answer, he said. "You need parents to say. . . .'You don't have to be at Northwestern, but what you have to be is in those books.' "

He also targeted profanity and negativity in hip-hop. For some radio stations, "You've got to treat them just like they're the Ku Klux Klan if they're not doing right. If they're playing that stuff, and it's leading children to not know how to behave, then don't advertise."

The breakfast was one of many tributes to the slain civil rights leader at area schools and places of worship, including a "Martinmas" celebration at DuSable Museum and concerts at the Chicago History Museum and Orchestra Hall.

As he left the Sheraton, Cosby was asked whether his message is diluted by a 2004 lawsuit alleging he drugged and molested a woman. He settled with her out of court in 2006. A federal judge in the case had denied the woman's request to shield names of a dozen other women who accused Cosby.

"Oh, please, if I'm telling you where the bridge is out, you going to bother about what my character is?'' Cosby replied.


Bill Cosby rips poor parenting :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State

Tell Bill I said to have a coke and a smile, and shut the **** up"

sameo sameo




Uncle Bill makes some valid points about the commercial nature of "gangsta rap", but fails to put this in the context of the wider society. The issue of "acting white" being applied to educated AA's is not an innaccurate statement if the figures about the ammount of AA males especailly that go to jail as opposed to college are to be believed. It exposes a wider society that believes education is only for white folks, These kids are only saying what society has indoctrinated them to say and think.

I doubt speeches will do anything for the blacks he is trying to reach, he needs to build institutions, create programs,most young black males don't have a idea who he is(especially the ghetto ones) but i do think he can have an effect on the middle class and richer blacks.