by Jeff Winbush
G21 Alumnus Emeritus
and Radio Raheem
G21 Staff Writer

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the definition of "staying power"

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[Editor's Note: Mr. Winbush's commentary in this feature is reprinted by permission of the author. It originally appeared in Columbus ALIVE. -RA]

COLUMBUS, OHIO, USA - POINT: Anybody ever read the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks? This one always stayed with me:

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon

Bill Cosby caught heat over some remarks he made at a gala commemorating the Brown vs. Board of Education school decision. Among his remarks:

"The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting."

"People putting their clothes on backward: Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong? ... People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up ... and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body? What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a ... thing about Africa."

"With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all that crap, 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. ... They are standing on the corner and they can't speak English."

There were two things wrong with what Bill Cosby said. He shouldn't have criticized folks for the names they give their kids. Just because there probably aren't a lot of white kids named Raekwon doesn't mean someone who is might not come up with the cure for the common cold.

The other thing is he could have gone a lot further.

What Dr. Cosby is talking about is a disease that has reached epidemic proportions in the Black community. It's called anti-intellectualism.

Cosby isn't the first to go off on the Culture of Stupidity. So has Spike Lee and Chris Rock and Oprah Winfrey and Colin Powell and Magic Johnson and Charles Barkley and The Boondocks.

It's already hard enough to raise a chid positively in a world filled with so many negative stimuli. It's even harder when forces conspire to keep that child stupid.

Violent, misogynist rap keeps black folks stupid. Celebration of pimp, thug, and being a sociopath culture keeps black folks stupid. Drugs, alcohol and too much greasy, starchy foods keeps black folks stupid. A steady diet of trash TV, no books, no computers, and no library cards keeps black folks stupid. Too much emphasis on immediate gratification, easy credit, and lack of fiscal discipline keeps black folks stupid. Too much emphasis on gold-capped teeth, $200 sneakers, tricked-out rides with the biggest rims, cell phones pressed to the ear, pit bull on a leash and pants hanging off the butt keep black folks stupid. Too much priority on being cool, getting paid and hustling instead of being smart keeps black folks stupid.

Dr. Cosby knows that as tough as the job market is in this global economy for White people it's ten times harder for Black people. Especially Black people who have a great color cell phone but no job to go to and put all their assets on their...posteriors...and have SUV's that coercome through brains and ability.

Was Cosby too harsh? Yes he was if the truth is harsh. If the truth is most of us aren't going to win American Idol, play point guard for the Lakers or become a mogul and Broadway star like P.Diddy. Most of us are going to have to get up, clean up and go get a crappy job doing something we hate for people we don't like. That is, if we haven't prepared ourselves for something else besides thinking about rings, material things and bling-bling.

Cosby said something out loud that a lot of folks -- black, white and otherwise -- say in the privacy of their dining room. In response to his remarks some say Cosby must think he's still in the bourgeois, buppie world of his television show. However, if Bill Cosby, with all he's done for education, charity and uplifting the race, hasn't earned the right to be a little grumpy with other black folks then nobody has the right.

Malcolm X said tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. I doubt he meant slinging enough rocks to buy the new Air Jordans at Foot Locker.


OAKLAND, CA, USA - COUNTERPOINT: If Bill Cosby, the revered American comedian, actor and Black philantropist, had just spoken out at the symposium in honor of the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, taken the applause from the Right and concern from the Left and shut up, I wouldn't be moved to take him to task. But then, on Thursday 30 June, 2004, at the conference of the Rainbow/PUSH coalition, the old man had to open his damned mouth again. And when he did, he pissed a brother off. He made me pick up a pen, something I have tried to avoid.

When I wrote my article in response to Shelby Steele's piece in Harper's magazine a couple of years back, I had no idea of the response I would get. I was both flattered and made to look at where I was coming from. I have to thank all of you who read this magazine, or simply visited it because of the link from a search engine, for helping me think more clearly.

Maybe that's why I've been contributing less here this last year. Now that I know there's a chance that G21 is not just a "hip little station at the end of the FM dial," I've been a little afraid of the effect of what I say. And I used to be a playful kind of guy here, my brothers and sisters.

Then, all of a sudden, I'm getting e-mails from college professors and high school teachers asking me if they can use my writing for "diversity training" in their classes and asking me to submit my opinion of "important issues of race."

So I went into retreat. I hadn't bargained on that kindah shit. I'm just a workin' man with a few opinions about life on the street.

So I been devoting myself to family life. Me and my wife, Tanya, have been trying to make a life for ourselves and a future here in Oaktown. And now, we're making a family. Tanya is expecting my first daughter at the end of this year.

But Bill Cosby had to open his big, rich-ass mouth again and make me need to talk back.

I'm gonnah put my response "in context," as our Esteemed Editor usually advises. Among the things Mr. Cosby said, at the Washington gathering:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids, $500 sneakers for what, and won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics. They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"

Cosby also referred to imprisoned Blacks. "These are not political criminals; these are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, saying 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"

Old men can be grumpy. Old Black men can be particularly grumpy simply because they believe they have earned the right to lecture the rest of us brothers because they have not been taken out by jail or a bullet long enough to have them gray hairs. I know this because I've known our Esteemed Editor since he has lived to have a dotage. Old men love to lecture. More power to them.

But now I gottah say this: Cos' shut up and sit down!

What you have said, twice this year was meant to be inflammatory or you wouldn't have used the language you did. What it did not acknowledge was the political and cultural divide that does exist among our people. You have claimed -- in the myriad Mouthpiece Media interviews that your statements have generated -- that you were simply bringing out the "dirty laundry" of the Black community that everybody knows about anyway.

I RESPOND AND ACCUSE: What you were really doin' what getting yourself back in the public eye, which you have always craved, while contributing to the class divisions that Buppie Blacks like you thrive on.

If you want to be the darling of the Mouthpiece Media and the political reactionaries in this country, Cos, you've succeeded. That's another reason you should just shut up.

But, sadly, I know you won't. You're in the pulpit, rich man, and I know you won't give that up easily.

Meanwhile, down here on the street, we see what you are about. We are not easily fooled.

And here's something we know:

1. As soon as assimilationist niggaz like you could move out of the Black community -- helping to destroy it -- and have "nice" white neighbors -- you were gone. It didn't take a Tokyo minute.

   In the process, you left many children behind. They weren't yours, so you didn't give a damn. You could donate money to charities and such to salve your conscience while bleeding the economic wealth of your own community into (mostly) White-owned coffers --- further making yourself a darling.
   
   

2. You say that the brothers on the corner, as in my old neighborhood in East Oakland, "can't speak English." Lemme ask you something, Cos: You ever driven through Appalachia? You ever been up in the hills of West Virginia or Tennesee? What language are the people up in "Snuffy Smith" country speaking? You tell me and we'll both know.

   So why ain't you takin' them White folks to task? Is it possible that you would be accused of racism -- as I'm doing to you right now? Is it possible that you wouldn't be a Mouthpiece Media darling under those circumstances but rather a pariah?

   How you like me now?
   
   

3. Know how to age graciously, Cos. This is a thread I'm taking from a phone call from my Publisher. As he gets old, he's trying to do so with grace. (Though he hasn't lost his tendency to lecture from what I see, either.)

   The BIG difference between him and you, Cos, is that he has become more -- not less -- tolerant of the generations that follow him as he ages.

   Where you talk about them and their parents not taking personal responsibility for what you perceive as their failings, my man talks about how valiant they are in the face of false imprisonments, a documentedly biased criminal justice system, a gulag instead of an education intiative and OUR OWN PEOPLE -- like you -- leaving us behind.
   
   

4. Let's face it. Cos, you and people like you -- who did exploit and succeed from the benefits of Brown v. Board of Education and affirmative action programs Back in the Day -- have done little or nothing to speak out about the disproportionate Black incarceration rate in this country, the disparity in housing or income, the roll back of the rights you now claim the "little people" did not use.

   And when the progressive rollback of the programs you benefitted from began in the 1980's, under President Reagan, you were mum or looked the other way while making beaucoup bucks off of television shows depicting happy, snappy, Black and sappy Negroes.

And NOW you want to blame us for our situations because we didn't get rich?

In fact, you looked the other way and sent a few bread crumbs down from your table -- just like Massa used to do. But you're familiar with that. You learned your perfect English in the house, while the rest of us were working in the fields.

When you, Mr. Cosby, and other members of the so-called "Talented Tenth" abandoned our communities to assimilate into Anglo-Saxon American cu lture, you relegated us to the tender mercies of the pimp-ho-drug-slinger-exconvict culture that you now say you decry. Give me a damned break, brother! You presume to blame us for what you left us to? Get real.

You and your ilk, people like pastor and former San Francisco Supervisor (political sop?) Amos Brown of San Francisco -- who effectively destroyed the Black Fillmore district in San Francisco by gladly taking money from the politicos of the Redevelopment Authority there, people who wanted to chase our people across the Bay to Oakland -- you people! you people! left us screwed, blued and tattooed. There is no other honest way to say this, Mr. Cosby.

And you refer to us brothers as "those people"? What about you people you who preach down to us from your privileged (bought by White privilege) heights?

Just sit down and shut up!

We do need uplift, but you wouldn't know what it was if it bit you in your damned hindquarters. Ask your maid, Mr. Cosby, to remind you what it's like to be an honest working person again. Ask her how we have to juggle which bill we will pay this paycheck, whether the money goes toward rent or food. Ask her what it's like not to have time to look down on the brothers on the corner who have gotten exhausted looking for a job that people with "accents" from the 'hood will never possibly get from bastards like you and your White corporate friends. It seems you've forgotten.

Yeah. It seems you've forgotten that most, the majority of us, are too poor to pay damned attention and struggling just to survive and raise ouir families. We are "those people" you consider ignorant and a waste of air. So the Hell with you, Cos'. Shut up. Sit down.

When my little daughter grows up, the best I can look forward to now, after all your lip-flappin', is telling her what a great comedian and fine man Bill Cosby once was. I won't tell her why you made me pick up my pen again. I hope no one else will.

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