Is Bill Cosby Right?...

Author Eric Dyson poses the question. Is Cosby right: Or has the Black Middle Class Lost its Mind?. He then goes on to deliver a blistering personal criticism of Bill Cosby.

Referring to Cosby's now famous speech before the NAACP in 2004. In this speech Cosby accused Blacks of squandering the sacrifices of those that came before us.

Cosby chastised Black parents for not parenting, youth body piercing, and they poor use of the English language. Eric Dyson even go as far as to criticize Cosby's personal relationship with his daughter, in a biting review of Cosby personal history. Dyson also criticizes the Black middle class on  what he refers to as the growing rift between the elite 'Afristocracy' and the struggling 'Gettocracy.':

It is time for the Black middle class to abandon the politics of shame and instead  embrace the gospel of collective responsibility put forth by visionary leaders such as Marcus Gravy, Martin Luther King. Jr., and W.E.B. Du Bois.

Dyson chastise Cosby for his demure on Black issues in the past only to now wrap himself in the cloth of their salvation, Dyson accuses Cosby of straying away from the messages of Black leaders like Jesse Jackson.

It is interesting to note that back in the days of Jesse Jackson's presidential aspirations. When corned by the press before the New York Primary on comments made  by Lois Farrakhan of the nation of Islam, which disparaged Jews. Jackson made the point that the message was important  not the messenger.

In the first chapter and through out this book Dyson while paying lip service to the message, berated the messenger, through a back-then-and-now attack on Bill Cosby's personal and professional life. In his eloquence, he then proceeded to dredge up much of the old  defeatist rhetoric of victimization. And demonstrated his well-heeled reputation as orator for the Hip-Hop generation.

I suspect that the crux of Michael Dyson's consternation. Is that these stirring remarks made by Cosby in a public forum gives aid and comfort, as he puts it, to "the prophets of Black ethical erosion..."

If what Cosby says is true, then critics who have said the same, but who courted charges of racism, are vindicated [here Dyson resonates with a strong prevailing sentiment] ...Cosby's  over emphasis on personal responsibility, not structural features, wrongly locate the  source of poor Black suffering -- and by implication, its remedies -- in the lives of the poor.

When you think the problems are personal, you think the solutions are the same. If only the poor were willing to work harder, act better, get educated, stay out of jail and parent more effectively, their problems will go away...but one can do all these things and still be in bad shape at home work and school.       

Eloquent diatribes like this pervades this book. But the above string of words ignores the crucial points Cosby made about  personal responsibility, parenting, absentee fathers and unwed mothers.

The math is quite simple. When a poor uneducated mother have two or three children the resources available to them diminishes with the addition of each child. Her family has now become an albatross around her neck. The opportunities for her personal improvement goes down with it.

Add to this looming misery, an absentee father, and there is a break down in the kind of environment needed to create the necessary support structure. As they will need this to help prepare them to improve their lot. Or as, the sentiment of every parent goes: "To help them have a better life than what I had."