From The Black Snob: Bill Cosby Was Right

Found this over at The Black Snob:

In Defense of the Pudding Pop Man (Guest Post)
Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 11:00AM
By JD McCallum

I am always leery of people who make a habit, or worse, a living, telling people what they want to hear.

When it comes to Black people telling each other what they want to hear, I especially grow suspect. I think of folk who have told us for so long that everything was Whitey’s fault, while allowing us to shirk accountability for the things we can control. I think of Black leaders who exhort the idea of living and working together while they reside in communities where their families are the only people of color in sight. I think of people who tell folk like me to sacrifice for the cause while they get rich from my inability to think for myself.

So, when a certain well known actor who has had his share of personal problems takes my community to task, and a well known academic, author and “activist” in turn takes said actor to task, I just get all confused.


William H. Cosby, EdD. America’s dad. Cliff Huxtable. To my generation, the one and only Fat Albert. Oh, and the Jell-O Pudding Pop guy. Cos, if you haven’t heard, has been telling Black folk for the last couple of years they need to watch their kids, help with homework, and basically do better. Sexual harassment suits, dark glasses and obvious self aggrandizement aside, Dr. Cosby, to some, has a message.

Enter Dr. Michael Eric Dyson. Sitting at home over a cup of tea one evening, conjugating verbs in Ebonics and suffering from writer’s block, Cos up and hands him the topic for yet another non-academic, meaningless book of the “let me tell you what you want to hear” variety.

I know when someone is telling me what they think I want to hear. I have read Cos’ words. I have read Dr. Dyson’s rebuttals, straight from his keyboard, on his own web page. I have a judgment to render.

Cosby was right.

First, considering his generation, I have to defer to Dr. Cosby on the basis of his age. I recently had a conversation where a buddy and I laughed at the idea that somehow or another; we were living through truly tough times. My 84 year old grandmother lived through tough times. These ain’t it. Cosby’s logic, surprisingly, is the same I have heard from the mouth of this woman who was married 48 years, raised six children, umpteen grandchildren and then went to volunteer at the neighborhood school after her husband’s death. She, and many her age, have never stopped marveling at how many opportunities Black folk have available to them in this day and age. She has never said, “America is perfect.” She has never said, “Things are fair.” She always believed, though, where there was a will, there was a way.

It is a sobering experience when someone who doesn’t get a paycheck for pontificating sadly recounts that we kill more of each other on street corners than the Klan did in the fields of Mississippi. It is eye opening to hear tales of how people made so much more from so much less. This is someone who remembers a day when fewer Black men went to college than can attend now. At a time when the reality was that even an advanced degree would not guarantee Black men of her generation employment beyond the post office. Most of those men went to school after military service, balancing full time jobs and families. She is not trying to hear about people who have excuses as to why they cannot support their families and better themselves and their communities.

My granny doesn’t have much patience for youngsters, including her kin, who can basically go to school on someone else’s dime and can find time to drink, party and pledge but not graduate in a timely manner.

She cannot understand how women can make babies with chains of irresponsible men and then assume someone else is supposed to care for them.

The concept of “proper” English versus “Ebonics” is lost on her. There is one language that you have to speak to earn a living in this country, she figures. Ebonics ain’t it.

My grandmother has known Black men imprisoned for political beliefs. She does not equate Geronimo Pratt with Pookie. Pook was a danger to his own community. That’s where she draws the line.

She has lived through a time where public policy makers completely ignored Black folk. Where personal expression took a backseat to personal advancement, and where Willis wagons and their half school days sent kids to Morehouse, Spelman, Hampton and the like. She clearly recounts her husband working two full time jobs and owning a barbershop to give his family a better life. She is not surprised to live in a time where a Black man sits at the helm of this country. All of these are things an academic the age of her children has argued, in his book, are the reason why Blacks aren’t making it. Further, he argues their plight is not their fault. For a woman who came from much less than many of the folk Cosby criticizes, this is silliness of the highest order.

When I asked her about Cosby’s personal problems and how they might adversely affect his message, she shrugged.

“If your doctor cheats on his taxes, what does that have to do with his prescribing you medicine to cure your cold?”

A person who tells you what you want to hear usually is profiting from doing so. A person who tells you like it is knows what great things you are capable of achieving.

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JD McCallum is the author of the blog Ya'll Know Better and he is here to give you the truth according to JD -- whether you want it or not. A native Chicagoan, McCallum has suffered through private sector, social service and special education employment. After enduring the ultimate indignity of graduate school, he decided writing would prove more therapeutic and less costly than counseling. A single parent, he steadfastly maintains he invented the question mark.

I don't know any Elder in my life that believes Cosby was wrong. I'm not an Elder and thought he was on the money.

Better Than Cosby?

(for our image)

The Possible ' Huxtable Effect' for Barack Obama

Hat tip: JJP

From Alternet

'The Huxtable Effect' and Obama

Posted by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, Brave New Films at 1:22 PM on November 2, 2008.



With all the talk of the supposed 'Bradley Effect,' the media have missed the bigger story.


I voted early at the University of New Mexico today. As I stood in line (for 35 minutes) I tried to read a book and tried not to listen to other people's conversations. I managed the first okay, but the second? Failed.

Sometimes eavesdropping has its reward. A couple of twenty-something college students, neither one African-American, stood in front of me chatting about how they both used to wish Cliff Huxtable was their dad when they were kids. Cliff was tough, but cool. He wore ugly sweaters -- a plus ever since Mr. Rogers made it fatherly chic.

In all the talk about the supposed "Bradley effect" in this year's presidential election, I think big media have missed the much bigger story, which is to say few of them are writing/broadcasting about "The Huxtable Effect."



"The Huxtable Effect," as I've coined it, speaks to the importance of images in popular culture -- TV, movies, music, books, etc. -- and formation of both a sense of self in viewers and, most importantly for our discussion now, a sense of others.

Social scientists have long shown the link between what children see in popular media and how they view the society those images purport to represent. (A good source list here.)

In fact, it has been theorized that every major political movement in the United States has followed, by about two decades, a matching movement in the arts and pop culture.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s onward was predated by the Harlem Renaissance in literature and art, and the hyper-intellectual bebop movement in jazz, by about 20 years.

The women's rights movement that peaked in the 1960s and 1970s followed by about 30 years the Rosie the Riveter movement in American popular culture, which aimed to show strong women in movies and in music, spurring 6 million women to replace men at war in factory jobs.

There are no accidents of public consciousness, and there is no better tool for changing perceptions of social roles than popular culture.

So it is, I believe, that Barack Obama's successful candidacy and likely presidency were heralded with the arrival of The Cosby Show in 1984. On the air for eight seasons, The Cosby Show featured Bill Cosby as Cliff Huxtable, an all-American father, medical doctor, and love husband, in the lead role. Never before in American TV had there been such a character. But the impact of Cosby's weekly presence in America's family rooms, as the fair-minded, fun, quirky Dr. Huxtable, cannot be underestimated in its affect upon the consciousness of Americans who were children and young adults at the time.

Cosby was not alone in what I have come to think of as the Bel Air Renaissance for African-Americans in popular culture, begun in the mid-1980s. Oprah Winfrey's show got its start in 1986, and is still on the air. The 1980s saw: the rise of Denzel Washington and Wesley Snipes as America's favorite leading men, in mainstream, good-guy roles. It marked the mainstream entry of rap and hip-hop into the musical lexicon, and we saw Whitney Houston become the all-American girl-next-door vocalist (well, at least until she married Bobby.)

The incredible explosion of positive African-American role models in American popular culture, which started in the mid-1980s and has continued in force to the present day, has been profound and unprecedented in our history.

Barack Obama is reaping the political benefits of that now.

Unfortunately, the mainstream US media rarely connect political coverage to coverage of arts and culture. In newspapers, they are given separate sections, with politics regarded as masculine and important, and culture relegated to the "women's" pages. This disconnect is unfortunate, and has led to coverage of Obama's rise that is, in cultural context, laughably "surprised" by his ascent. For those of us paying attention to shifts in popular culture and public consciousness, Obama came as no surprise; he was as predictable as a happy ending to a Cosby Show rerun.

Part of the reason so many stories in the mainstream media have expressed astonishment at the rise of "a black man" to presidential candidate (and likely president) have to do with the simple fact that many of the older people in charge of those institutions owe their own worldviews to 1950s entertainment; to them, it is Ward Cleaver, not Cliff Huxtable, whom all kids wished were their own dad. America's editors and producers are living in a Ward Cleaver reality, unaware of The Huxtable Effect, or its many tentacles.

That having been said, it is important to note that the subsequent stories -- about the supposed "end of race" in America that today's mainstream editors believe Obama's candidacy represents -- are also incorrect.

Obama's success reflects the glass ceiling in American popular culture having been broken down by a single group among its many oppressed minority groups: African-Americans.

Latinos have had no such breakthrough.

In fact, according to some analysis, portrayals of Hispanics/Latinos in American popular culture are worse now than ever before. A UCLA study found that even though we represent 15 percent of the nation's population, we get less than 4 percent of all movie or TV roles; most of these are negative roles, such as gang member, criminal, maid or slut.

We have yet to see our own Huxtable family on TV. Yes, we had George Lopez, but between the drunk, abusive granny and the low-paying job, his TV family was hardly the astute, successful, happy, upper-middle class bunch we all might wish to belong to. Not since Desi Arnaz graced the small screen alongside wife Lucille Ball have we seen a middle-class Latino father who wasn't screwed up, and even so, Desi's character was cartoonish.

To make matters worse for Latinos, the drumbeat of hatred and fear-mongering on the immigration issue, on cable news programs -- especially Lou Dobbs -- and talk radio and in newspapers and magazines, has further sullied the image of all Latinos (most of whom are not immigrants, legal or otherwise, but this distinction is rarely made in US popular culture).

While hate crimes overall are down for all other groups, Latinos have seen hate crimes against us in the US increase dramatically during the past 8 years -- just as positive popular culture images of ourselves have declined, and hateful immigrant-bashing has increased. While the media jumped to protest cries of "kill him" about Obama by racists at republican rallies, the very same outlets had no problem promoting Dobbs and his ilk.

Yes, Obama is the political expression of a racial barrier knocked down in America, a movement begun in the arts and pop culture. But it does not mean the end of "race" or "ethnic" discrimination in our country. In many ways, it marks merely a beginning. I, for one, am hard at work writing TV pilots and movie scripts that I hope will start the New Uptown Renaissance -- for Hispanics/Latinos. If I succeed within the next few years, I can guarantee you that round about 2030, we will see the first viable Latino presidential candidate, and, hopefully, the first Latino/a US president.

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.

John McWhorter Actually Has a Point

Hear John McWhorter on NPR, discussing the book All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can't Save Black America.

I typically don't agree with John McWhorter, but on the issue of Hip Hop, I tend to agree with his position more than I disagree. 15-20 years ago, I would have probably been more resistant to his position. I once saw Hip Hop as something that had a lot of potential to be a vehicle for social change. That's not the case anymore. That fire fizzled out a long time ago. It has been replaced by something completely different.... something much more destructive than constructive.

I have become a little more Conservative as I have gotten older, and I can't stand anything about Rap music or Rap culture, particularly as it is packaged today. The problem for folks like John McWhorter, Bill Cosby, and Juan Williams is that Black folks are not very open to their message...often because of the messenger. Part of the reason has to do with the fact that a large number of Black folks are so brainwashed and indoctrinated into the Hip Hop lifestyle, and brainwashed by the Black establishment (Civil Rights Inc.) that they will never be open to the ideas of McWhorter or Cosby/Puissant. And so the message fades with the messenger.

This will ultimately be to the detriment of Black people, IMO.

An Interview With Dr. Alvin Poussaint

Dr. Alvin Poussaint was interviewed on St. Louis Radio station KMOX on Saturday, 11/16. He discusses his new book Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors.

Listen Here

Juan Williams Discusses Growing Divide in "Black America"

Juan Williams examined the Black intra-racial divide on NPR's News and Notes program yesterday (Thursday). This has been evident for the last several years.... but Bill Cosby helped to really get a discussion going on the issue. It seems that before Cosby so boldly raised the issue, Black Americans were treating it like the Elephant in the room.

Well Juan acknowledges the Elephant. He discusses data from a recent NPR/Pew Research report on the issue of racial identity. The report seems to support what I have felt for a long time- that there is no such thing as a "Black America" per se. That is such a monolithic term and I have never favored the way that it has been used. This society is always attempting to place Black people in a box. In fact, Blacks seem to be the most "Boxed in" of all the major ethnic groups.

However, since the Civil Rights struggle of half a century ago, Blacks have become much more diverse, socially, culturally, economically, and politically. This is especially true in terms of cultures and values. The truth is, there is no overriding issue, such as unmitigated racism, that requires the kind of oneness or unity that was seen 50 years ago. Blacks have chosen many different paths. Unfortunately the media has not caught on to that fact. We are still referred to in monolithic terms....and it annoys the hell out of me. Ironically, this media ignorance has been one of the reasons for my push back against the Rap Culture, BET and the like, because there is this track record on the part of the media to lump Black folks together in one big pot.

The results of this study are not new to Black Americans, since many have known this for years. But it may be news for the news reporters and the TV producers. Will they do something constructive with this information, such as change the way they refer to Black people or change the way they report events? Somehow I doubt it.

The report is similar to Dubois's two Souls analogy, although it is now manifesting in different ways.

This Black cultural split is real and "the community" is becoming more divergent everyday. This is why I also don't like the term "Black Community" because it suggests a oneness that does not really exist and has not existed since the Black Pride movement of the 70's thru parts of the 80's. Black people are clearly choosing different value systems and lifestyles. In addition, the Black intra-racial gap is also growing in terms of economics and education.

There is a permanent underclass that is emerging, and Black Americans will disproportionally be a large part of that group.... and this time it will not be because of an oppressive White Man holding them back, it will be because of the choices that they have made and the value systems that they embrace.

So how will Black people identify in the future since the skin color paradigm is being shattered? A more important question might be... would society (esp. the Media) finally recognize our diversity?

It is amazing to me that in 2007, people like Dog Chapman, Michael Richards, Don Imus, etc feel that they can run to ONE MAN whom they feel represents all Black people. It's insulting. When Dog Chapman ran to Al Sharpton, it was just as insulting to me as the racist tirade itself... perhaps even more insulting.

But as long as we share Brown skin, I think we will always be treated as a monolith. This, in a way, is turning into a new form of racism. White Americans are seldom required to deal with these racial identity issues. But as a Black American I constantly feel under attack... as if I must constantly answer for the wrongs, the lifestyle choices and the values embraced by the wider group.