Karl Connor
05-18-2006, 10:20 AM
http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/...tm?POE=LIFISVA
In an interview between sessions Tuesday, Cosby said he was undeterred by critics, who he says don't want to acknowledge that their way of doing things hasn't worked. "A lot of the people who criticize me are angry because the job that they were supposed to be doing hasn't been getting done," he said. "We've been able to give people examples of other people in their communities who've been down and are now up. If I didn't like poor people, why would I come and tell them how to make their lives better?"
Cosby says he has been encouraged by the response he has received on his tour. He has found, he says, that "people have been waiting to hear the truth, they don't want to be coddled. ... They want these issues talked about."
He is especially interested in reaching black males and convincing them of the importance of embracing their roles as fathers. At the same time, he says that women have to take control.
This past Sunday in Atlanta, for instance, Cosby challenged the graduating class of Spelman College, a historically black college for women, "to take charge" in the black community, noting the great disparity between the number of men and women graduating from college and the high percentage of black males in prison.
"Who's running the show?" asked Cosby, who with wife Camille gave Spelman $20 million in 1987. "It appears that the male is, but I have news for you. It's your turn."
Some of Cosby's critics say his view is a simplistic one because it ignores institutional and societal forces, such as government neglect and racism, that have helped create the conditions in poverty-stricken neighborhoods.
One critic, University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Eric Dyson, wrote a book: Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?).
In a National Public Radio interview after his book was published last year, Dyson said, "Cosby's overemphasis on personal responsibility, not structural features, wrongly locates the source of poor black suffering — and by implication its remedy — in the lives of the poor. When you think problems are personal, you think solutions are the same.
"If only the poor were willing to work harder, act better, get better educated, stay out of jail and parent more effectively, their problems would go away."
Cosby dismisses Dyson out of hand. "The guy who calls me elitist, who is he? A professor at the University of Pennsylvania. And how much does it cost to go there?"
In an interview between sessions Tuesday, Cosby said he was undeterred by critics, who he says don't want to acknowledge that their way of doing things hasn't worked. "A lot of the people who criticize me are angry because the job that they were supposed to be doing hasn't been getting done," he said. "We've been able to give people examples of other people in their communities who've been down and are now up. If I didn't like poor people, why would I come and tell them how to make their lives better?"
Cosby says he has been encouraged by the response he has received on his tour. He has found, he says, that "people have been waiting to hear the truth, they don't want to be coddled. ... They want these issues talked about."
He is especially interested in reaching black males and convincing them of the importance of embracing their roles as fathers. At the same time, he says that women have to take control.
This past Sunday in Atlanta, for instance, Cosby challenged the graduating class of Spelman College, a historically black college for women, "to take charge" in the black community, noting the great disparity between the number of men and women graduating from college and the high percentage of black males in prison.
"Who's running the show?" asked Cosby, who with wife Camille gave Spelman $20 million in 1987. "It appears that the male is, but I have news for you. It's your turn."
Some of Cosby's critics say his view is a simplistic one because it ignores institutional and societal forces, such as government neglect and racism, that have helped create the conditions in poverty-stricken neighborhoods.
One critic, University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Eric Dyson, wrote a book: Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?).
In a National Public Radio interview after his book was published last year, Dyson said, "Cosby's overemphasis on personal responsibility, not structural features, wrongly locates the source of poor black suffering — and by implication its remedy — in the lives of the poor. When you think problems are personal, you think solutions are the same.
"If only the poor were willing to work harder, act better, get better educated, stay out of jail and parent more effectively, their problems would go away."
Cosby dismisses Dyson out of hand. "The guy who calls me elitist, who is he? A professor at the University of Pennsylvania. And how much does it cost to go there?"