What Cosby Should Be Talking About

Time ^ | June 3, 2004 | Christopher John Farley

[mcg1969]

There are still certain things some black people won’t talk about in front of some white people. American culture may be seemingly more integrated than, say, 50 years ago, but cultural walls remain. Racial issues, in multiracial company, are often circled until they are impossible to ignore and have to be discussed; blacks, when there are only other blacks around, often cut to the chase. But private black discourse, in my experience, is not focused on pinning things on skin color. The main difference between multiracial conversations and ones solely among blacks is that in private, African Americans are often more critical of themselves than outsiders would ever dare to be.

Last month, Bill Cosby broke the unwritten rule of keeping black dirty laundry in black washing machines. While at a multiracial gala dinner in Washington, D.C. commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Cosby targeted under-educated lower-income blacks as the source of various social problems. Among his comments: “People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around...the lower economic people are not holding up their end of the deal. These people are not parenting.” He went on: “Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.” And he mocked the way some blacks name their children: “With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all that crap, and all of them are in jail....They are standing on the corner and they can’t speak English.” Let’s hope Fantasia Barrino, Shaquille O’Neal and Muhammad Ali never see a transcript of Cosby’s comments.

[mcg1969]

What an incredible spin. "Keep black laundry in black washing machines." Oh, please. Am I to believe that privately, black civil rights leaders blame their own people, while publicly they excoriate The Man? No way.

[mcg1969]

Here's another gem: Without non-traditional language, we wouldn’t have Public Enemy rapping “Don’t Believe The Hype,” Diana Ross singing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” or Bob Marley declaring he had “So Much Things to Say.” Without slang, we wouldn’t have the blues poems of Langston Hughes, or some of the patois-infused verse of Derek Walcott.

Of course you wouldn't, but these artists would very likely have still produced art. It would have been different, but it's incredible to suggest it would be worse just because it might actually use proper English.

[headsonpikes]

Mistah Farley should title his column 'Carry Me Back To Old Virginny'.

Plantation days placemarker.

[SoCal Pubbie]

How much poorer would our lives be without the sing song "Oh, you betcha!" or the lilting "Oh mygawd, fer shure!" dancing in our ears?

[FormerLib]

What, they want to control what Bill Cosby is allowed to say just because he's Black? How racist!

[laotzu]

Is this Chris Farley of SNL fame?

[ClearCase_guy]

Actually, this makes me think even less of Jesse Jackson. I suppose I am expected to believe that (in private conversation) Jesse Jackson often says, "We cause the problems. It's our own damn fault. Our culture is rotten -- you know it and I know it. But, forget about that, I'm going to go extort more money from the White folks. I got some new dirt I can pin on Texaco, and all I want to say is 'Ka-Ching!'"

[laotzu]

Is this Chris Farley of SNL fame?

[b4its2late]

Hearing the truth must hurt when you know you are wrong.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Yes, Cosby is right that education is important and kids should master English — but they should also be taught that vernacular black culture has worth. Certainly Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote such vernacular classics as Their Eyes Were Watching God — understood that. “Zora chose to write in dialect because she thought the language of ordinary, rural, self-educated black folk was beautiful,” Valerie Boyd, author of the Hurston biography Wrapped in Rainbows told me. “She thought this language — the language of her youth, her primary language as a storyteller — was poetic and rich and full of vivid imagery and worthy of being celebrated and immortalized in literature.”

So let's see . . . when poor Blacks use rural Southern dialect liberals love it and conservatives scream at them to get an education. When poor rural Southern whites use rural Southern dialect conservatives love it and liberal laugh at them because they don't speak proper English.

Does this sum it up?

[ClearCase_guy]

When poor rural Southern whites use rural Southern dialect conservatives love it

I guess I've never noticed that. The other stuff you mention, I agree with.

[Tanniker Smith]

Chris Farley from SNL died several years ago. Same year as Phil Hartman.

TS

[Post Toasties]

“People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around...the lower economic people are not holding up their end of the deal. These people are not parenting.” He went on: “Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.” And he mocked the way some blacks name their children: “With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all that crap, and all of them are in jail....They are standing on the corner and they can’t speak English.”

Am not black myself but I've always asserted the first half of what is excerpted here publicly to whomever. However, I place the lion's share of the blame on Leftists with their dialectic and their lower economic strata social engineering which has more or less openly manipulated black culture in the past to expedite certain socialist objectives.

[subterfuge]

"Does this sum it up?"

No. I don't follow you.

[Post Toasties]

When poor rural Southern whites use rural Southern dialect conservatives love it

Senator Foghorn Leghorn is a 'Rat. Who 'loves' that?

[Zionist Conspirator]

When poor rural Southern whites use rural Southern dialect conservatives love it

I guess I've never noticed that. The other stuff you mention, I agree with.

I read some neo-confederate boasting about how the "hillbilly" dialect of Appalachia represents the English of the Elizabethan period and the literary zenith of the language. I don't doubt it, either.

"Black" English doesn't come from Africa but from the British Isles (it conserves certain archaic British dialects). As one who grew up reading Uncle Remus and B. A. Botkin Southern folklore anthologies I must admit that (while I believe knowledge of Standard English should be taught to all) I have never considered the various venerable American dialects to be "leftwing" or in need of eradication.

Personally, I'm a big fan of Gullah.

[Post Toasties]

Shakespeare as a corn likker swilling clay eating cracker?

Have to think on that one a little.

Ok. I'm done.

[BJClinton]

Is this Chris Farley of SNL fame?

Only if he is writing from the grave.

[wingnutx]

Cosby’s commentary is also strikingly similar to the words of a younger, hipper cultural critic: comedian Chris Rock. In Rock’s “Niggas vs. Black people” routine from his breakthrough 1996 “Bring the Pain” tour, Rock contrasted the values of middle class blacks with lower-income blacks who had succumbed to a kind of gangsta despair... “There's like a civil war going on with black people,” Rock announced. “There are two sides: there's black people, and there's niggas. And niggas have got to go.”

That Chris Rock routine is hysterical, and also very insightful.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Shakespeare as a corn likker swilling clay eating cracker?

As I understand it, Appalachian really is Elizabethan English (or closer to it than our standard English of today), and the English of that era sounded more like our "hillbillies" than like contemporary English.

The same goes for "Black English." In fact, some factors (such as the use of the infinitive form of "to be" as a finite form) are common to both.