No excuses for Cosby

Bill Cosby is a comedian that takes the world around him very seriously.

An educator as much as a performer, Cosby came under fire in 2004 after he gave a speech in Washington, D.C., at the NACCP commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Cosby, in his books and community appearances known as “call outs,” tries to empower people, particularly people from poor, African American communities, to put aside excuses and live by their own choices.

“When people started making nonsense that I was picking on the poor, and nonsense about being too harsh, and nonsense about dirty laundry, I called [psychologist] Alvin [F. Poussaint] and said ‘Look, we’ve got to put a book out, and we’ve got to put in this book what I’m trying to get people to understand that you can make changes with your choices,’” Cosby said. “And even though you might be depressed if you’re still within your mental capacity and you can see examples of success, you may be able to use these paradigms for yourself.”

Last year, Cosby and Poussaint released “Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors.”

“I made up these two words: excusionists and apologists,” said Cosby. “Apologists make it OK for people to continue to not understand that here are things that they must do, even though they’re under attack. They must realize that while these apologists are talking about institutional and systemic racism, that as human beings we still have to fight, to overcome these things, and that if we just have a great deal of entropy and inertia that these things will continue and be generational, that we will feel a great deal of comfort in our state of depression because bad things are happening to us.

“We will feel good to be able to point to the systemic and institutional and say ‘Here’s the reason why we are in this position,’ which is a true statement. Now if you don’t want to stay in it anymore, if you want to fight, then you’re going to become a victor.”

Speaking with the passion of an activist and clarity of a professor, Cosby continued.

“There’s just too many things that make no sense,” he said. “If you don’t go to a school and check with the teachers about your child and how your child is doing, then you never will know what your child is learning. Let’s hear from the excusionists. Well, let’s say that the mother became pregnant early and didn’t finish school. She may be too embarrassed to go to the school because the teacher of her child may have been a teacher she had. OK, I buy that. However, I counter with the following: It’s not about you anymore.”

He laughed his slow, trademark laugh as he let that comment sink in.

“It’s about your child,” he resumed, “and you don’t want this generational situation to continue. You want to know what your child is learning, and I am quite sure that you can bring tears to that teacher’s eyes when you show up. And even though you quit [school], whatever reason for it, you quit, and she sees that you are the kind of mother who is interested in what the child is doing and interested in talking to the teacher, even though your English might not be good, even though your grammar is off, you’re there. … It’s not about you and your past.”

Cosby is also adamant in his views about not enough black history being taught in schools.

“It’s stuck on ‘I have a dream,’ and now it moves to Obama,” he said. “Alright, but still there’s nothing in between. So you’ve got Dr. King, Obama, and that’s not enough to chase away the heroes in the neighborhood: the drug dealer, the pimp and the people who just don’t care about moving.”

Asked if “The Cosby Show’s” fictional Huxtable family helped pave the way for Middle America to accept a black family in the White House, Cosby paused.

“The reason I don’t like to answer that particular direct question is because of what you leave out that’s important to me, which is the civil rights movement,” he said. “This is another part of that history that is not in those classrooms, not enough. People, Americans of all cultures and all shades of color, texture, hair color, eyes, body shapes, joined that movement. And so they came, busloads, to make the stand for equality, things that newspapers didn’t write about. … So for me, the Huxtables don’t get to be No. 1 without that. We benefited from that. We benefited so there is no ‘stranger’ coming into play.”

w