Come Back to the Table, Mr. Cosby

With her Nov. 19 Metro column about Bill Cosby, Donna Britt has joined the ranks of middle-class blacks who are spending too much time wining and dining and not enough time at the kitchen table.  The language that Mr. Cosby has been using in his admonishment (yes admonishment, not criticism) of poor and working-class blacks is the same language Ronald Reagan used to prepare the American people for the dismantling of the welfare state. It is the same language Bill Clinton used to actually dismantle the welfare state. It is the same language of "personal responsibility" that Newt Gingrich used to push through the most draconian legislation of the Republican "revolution," and the same language that Louis Farrakhan used at the Million Man March: asking blacks to atone instead of opposing the Republican revolution and the gutting of social services. The overarching problem in communities of color in the District has been gentrification that is stealing recreation and education resources from the youth and diverting it to tax incentives and playgrounds for the rich, not that working-class blacks are failing to take responsibility for their kids. I invite Mr. Cosby to come back to the kitchen table and talk with the women who are working to keep their recreation centers and their homes so that he can remember what it is like. His annual visits to Ben's Chili Bowl have obviously not been sufficient to keep him in touch with the people. [more]

• Cosby: " "You've got to stop beating up your women because you can't find a job, because you didn't want to get an education and now you're (earning) minimum wage," Cosby said. "You should have thought more of yourself when you were in high school, when you had an opportunity." 
• "They think they're hip. "They can't read; they can't write. They're laughing and giggling, and they're going nowhere." "With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail. Brown versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back. We have to go in there -- forget about telling your child to go into the Peace Corps -- it is right around the corner. They are standing on the corner and they can't speak English."  "The church is only open on Sunday and you can't keep asking Jesus to do things for you. You can't keep saying that God will find a way. God is tired of you," [more]