Bill Cosby’s full unedited speech on May 17, 2004 at the 50th Anniversary commemoration of the Brown vs Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court Decision sponsored by the NAACP:
Ladies and gentlemen, I really have to ask you to seriously consider what you’ve heard, and now this is the end of the evening so to speak. I heard a prize fight manager say to his fellow who was losing badly, “David, listen to me. It’s not what’s he’s doing to you. It’s what you’re not doing. (laughter).
Ladies and gentlemen, these people set, they opened the doors, they gave us the right, and today, ladies and gentlemen, in our cities and public schools we have fifty percent drop out. In our own neighborhood, we have men in prison. No longer is a person embarrassed because they’re pregnant without a husband. (clapping) No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child (clapping).
Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle economic people are [not*] holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. (clapping) In the old days, you couldn’t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye (laughing). And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had one and where you got it from. Parents don’t know that today.
I’m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? (clapping) Where were you when he was twelve? (clapping) Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you don’t know he had a pistol? (clapping) And where is his father, and why don’t you know where he is? And why doesn’t the father show up to talk to this boy?
The church is only open on Sunday. And you can’t keep asking Jesus to ask doing things for you (clapping). You can’t keep asking that God will find a way. God is tired of you (clapping and laughing). God was there when they won all those cases. 50 in a row. That’s where God was because these people were doing something. And God said, “I’m going to find a way.” I wasn’t there when God said it… I’m making this up (laughter). But it sounds like what God would do (laughter).
We cannot blame white people. White people (clapping) .. white people don’t live over there. They close up the shop early. The Korean ones still don’t know us as well…they stay open 24 hours (laughter).
I’m looking and I see a man named Kenneth Clark. He and his wife Mamie…Kenneth’s still alive. I have to apologize to him for these people because Kenneth said it straight. He said you have to strengthen yourselves…and we’ve got to have that black doll. And everybody said it. Julian Bond said it. Dick Gregory said it. All these lawyers said it. And you wouldn’t know that anybody had done a damned thing.
50 percent drop out rate, I’m telling you, and people in jail, and women having children by five, six different men. Under what excuse, I want somebody to love me, and as soon as you have it, you forget to parent. Grandmother, mother, and great grandmother in the same room, raising children, and the child knows nothing about love or respect of any one of the three of them (clapping). All this child knows is “gimme, gimme, gimme.” These people want to buy the friendship of a child….and the child couldn’t care less. Those of us sitting out here who have gone on to some college or whatever we’ve done, we still fear our parents (clapping and laughter). And these people are not parenting. They’re buying things for the kid. $500 sneakers, for what? They won’t buy or spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics. (clapping)
A\Kenneth Clark, somewhere in his home in upstate New York…just looking ahead. Thank God, he doesn’t know what’s going on, thank God. But these people, the ones up here in the balcony fought so hard. Looking at the incarcerated, 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! Then we all run out and are outraged, “The cops shouldn’t have shot him” What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? (laughter and clapping). I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else (laughter) And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said if get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother. Not you’re going to get your butt kicked. No. You’re going to embarrass your mother. You’re going to embarrass your family.
If knock that girl up, you’re going to have to run away because it’s going to be too embarrassing for your family. In the old days, a girl getting pregnant had to go down South, and then her mother would go down to get her. But the mother had the baby. I said the mother had the baby. The girl didn’t have a baby. The mother had the baby in two weeks. (laughter) We are not parenting. Ladies and gentlemen, listen to these people, they are showing you what’s wrong. People putting their clothes on backwards. –isn’t that a sign of something going on wrong? (laughter)
Are you not paying attention, people with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn’t that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up (laughter and clapping ). Isn’t it a sign of something when she’s got her dress all the way up to the crack…and got all kinds of needles and things going through her body. What part of Africa did this come from? (laughter). We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans, they don’t know a damned thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap and all of them are in jail. (When we give these kinds names to our children, we give them the strength and inspiration in the meaning of those names. What’s the point of giving them strong names if there is not parenting and values backing it up).
Brown Versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem. We’ve got to take the neighborhood back (clapping). We’ve got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It’s right around the corner. (laughter) It’s standing on the corner. It can’t speak English. It doesn’t want to speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk. “Why you ain’t where you is go, ra,” I don’t know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk (laughter). Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t land a plane with “why you ain’t…” You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they’re moving ahead on this. Well, they know they’re not, they’re just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you’re just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.
Now look, I’m telling you. It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing. 50 percent drop out. Look, we’re raising our own ingrown immigrants. These people are fighting hard to be ignorant. There’s no English being spoken, and they’re walking and they’re angry. Oh God, they’re angry and they have pistols and they shoot and they do stupid things. And after they kill somebody, they don’t have a plan. Just murder somebody. Boom. Over what? A pizza? And then run to the poor cousin’s house. They sit there and the cousin says “what are you doing here?” “I just killed somebody, man.” “What?” “I just killed somebody, I’ve got to stay here.” “No, you don’t.” “Well, give me some money, I’ll go…” “Where are you going?” “North Carolina.” Everybody wanted to go to North Carolina. But the police know where you’re going because your cousin has a record.
Five or six different children, same woman, eight, ten different husbands or whatever, pretty soon you’re going to have to have DNA cards so you can tell who you’re making love to. You don’t who this is. It might be your grandmother. (laughter) I’m telling you, they’re young enough. Hey, you have a baby when you’re twelve. Your baby turns thirteen and has a baby, how old are you? Huh? Grandmother. By the time you’re twelve, you could have sex with your grandmother, you keep those numbers coming. I’m just predicting.
I’m saying Brown Vs. Board of Education. We’ve got to hit the streets, ladies and gentlemen. I’m winding up, now , no more applause. I’m saying, look at the Black Muslims. There are Black Muslims standing on the street corners and they say so forth and so on, and we’rere laughing at them because they have bean pies and all that, but you don’t read “Black Muslim gunned down while chastising drug dealer.” You don’t read that. They don’t shoot down Black Muslims. You understand me. Muslims tell you to get out of the neighborhood. When you want to clear your neighborhood out, first thing you do is go get the Black Muslims, bean pies and all (laughter). And your neighborhood is then clear. The police can’t do it .
I’m telling you Christians, what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you hit the streets? Why can’t you clean it out yourselves? It’s our time now, ladies and gentlemen. It is our time (clapping). And I’ve got good news for you. It’s not about money. It’s about you doing something ordinarily that we do—get in somebody else’s business. It’s time for you to not accept the language that these people are speaking, which will take them nowhere. What the hell good is Brown V. Board of Education if nobody wants it?
What is it with young girls getting after some girl who wants to still remain a virgin. Who are these sick black people and where did they come from and why haven’t they been parented to shut up? To go up to girls and try to get a club where “you are nobody..,” this is a sickness ladies and gentlemen and we are not paying attention to these children. These are children. They don’t know anything. They don’t have anything. They’re homeless people. All they know how to do is beg. And you give it to them, trying to win their friendship. And what are they good for? And then they stand there in an orange suit and you drop to your knees, “(crying sound) He didn’t do anything, he didn’t do anything.” Yes, he did do it. And you need to have an orange suit on too (laughter, clapping).
So, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for the award (big laughter) and giving me an opportunity to speak because, I mean, this is the future, and all of these people who lined up and done..they’ve got to be wondering what the hell happened. Brown V. Board of Education, these people who marched and were hit in the face with rocks and punched in the face to get an education and we got these knuckleheads walking around who don’t want to learn English (clapping) I know that you all know it. I just want to get you as angry that you ought to be. When you walk around the neighborhood and you see this stuff, that stuff’s not funny. These people are not funny anymore. And that ‘s not brother. And that’s not my sister. They’re faking and they’re dragging me way down because the state, the city and all these people have to pick up the tab on them because they don’t want to accept that they have to study to get an education.
We have to begin to build in the neighborhood, have restaurants, have cleaners, have pharmacies, have real estate, have medical buildings instead of trying to rob them all. And so, ladies and gentlemen, please, Dorothy Height, where ever she’s sitting, she didn’t do all that stuff so that she could hear somebody say “I can’t stand algebra, I can’t stand…and “what you is.” It’s horrible.
Basketball players, multimillionaires can’t write a paragraph. Football players, multimillionaires, can’t read. Yes. Multimillionaires. Well, Brown V Board of Education, where are we today? It’s there. They paved the way. What did we do with it. The white man, he’s laughing, got to be laughing. 50 percent drop out, rest of them in prison.
You got to tell me that if there was parenting, help me, if there was parenting, he wouldn’t have picked up the Coca Cola bottle and walked out with it to get shot in the back of the head. He wouldn’t have. Not if he loved his parents. And not if they were parenting! Not if the father would come home. Not if the boy hadn’t dropped the sperm cell inside of the girl and the girl had said, “No, you have to come back here and be the father of this child.” Not ..“I don’t have to.”
Therefore, you have the pile up of these sweet beautiful things born by nature raised by no one. Give them presents. You’re raising pimps. That’s what a pimp is. A pimp will act nasty to you so you have to go out and get them something. And then you bring it back and maybe he or she hugs you. And that’s why pimp is so famous. They’ve got a drink called the “Pimp-something.” You all wonder what that’s about, don’t you? Well, you’re probably going to let Jesus figure it out for you (laughter). Well, I’ve got something to tell you about Jesus. When you go to the church, look at the stained glass things of Jesus. Look at them. Is Jesus smiling? Not in one picture. So, tell your friends. Let’s try to do something. Let’s try to make Jesus smile. Let’s start parenting. Thank you, thank you (clapping, cheers)
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
“God Damn, what’s wrong with these niggas!”
That was how my neighbor summed it up. My neighbor being a highly successfull business man, a married black man, trying to raise his two boys to avoid the lethal culture of dependency and resentment that has seemingly infected too much of black, and white, society.
I gave him the Look, that facial expression that white people have when they are secretly glad that the black person has said what us white folks are too PC pussywhipped to say. He laughed about my reaction for weeks.
This speech should be required reading in every school room in America.
It should be printed out in 36 point font and taped to every refrigerator in American, starting with the White House.
And it should be chiseled into the foreheads of every single progressive, bleeding heart libtard who promulgated and enabled the policies which have created this lethal culture of the FSA .
A culture which has forged mental and spiritual chains far stronger than the iron shackles that old Massa used to use. And the real tragedy is that the FSA is incentivized to put on these chains THEMSELVES in the name of “caring” and “it is for the children” and” we need to help the poor”.
Bill Cosby caught holy hell for giving this speech, as you may recall. Hell from the Poverty Industry, hell from The Justice Brothers, hell from the white-guilt latte-sipping hypocrites relaxing in their hot tubs in their all white neighborhoods.
BTW: My neighbor that I mentioned earlier? When his wife tragically died from a brain hemorrhage, he sold his business down in Houston and moved his boys to a small town in the country. Seems even this pretty savvy and successful FATHER could not protect his boys from the “gangstas”.
Bill Cosby for POTUS in 2012.
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13th April 2011 at 10:40 am
Plato_Plubius says:
@ Hope,
I was thinking the same thing…I think I will print it out and make a few copies and set it in the break room at work today.
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13th April 2011 at 11:34 am
Plato_Plubius says:
This is what my wife recently wrote to our local newspaper about the school I work for…
Blurting out that you don’t have a pencil while the teacher is in the middle of teaching the lesson, arguing about every little thing you are asked to do, pounding on the door or window after you are asked to step outside because you cannot behave, threatening staff and peers. What am I describing? A day in the life of a teacher at Blaker Kinser Junior High School.
You might say that these teachers are bad because they don’t have control of their classrooms. You would be wrong. If and when a teacher suspends a student from class, they are sent to the learning director who instead of being a united front with the teachers, placates the accountability process of past educational norms by coddling the students and failing to call home to inform the parents of their disruptive behaviors. What does this do for the students?
The mission statement for Ceres schools mentions “creating productive citizens.” How does undermining teachers who attempt to teach hard work and responsibility and hold their students to some semblance of accountability create productive citizens? It’s all about the Benjamins!
….and yes I did get called into the principal’s office to discuss it…
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13th April 2011 at 11:35 am
KaD says:
I have alot of respect for Bill Crosby and have for some time. Someone needs to say this, black people need to hear it, and it can’t be white people who says it. I just recently read how he walked into the heart of a violent black neighborhood with other black people to talk to the kids and parents. He talks the talk and walks the walk.
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13th April 2011 at 12:06 pm
StuckInNJ says:
Bill Cosby was widely reviled by many in the black community for this speech. Here is one of the more calmer responses (some/many are downright nasty).
==================================================== ====================
Talking Points
Bill Cosby vs. Michael Eric Dyson
Michael Eric Dyson takes Bill Cosby on head-to-head with each issue that he brings up in his now infamous NAACP speech from May 17, 2004. Here are some highlights:
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Cosby: “Just forget telling your child to join the Peace Corps. It’s right around the corner. (laughter) It’s standing on the corner. It can’t speak English. It doesn’t want to learn English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk.”
Dyson: “Cosby’s poisonous view of young folks who speak a language he can barely parse [Ebonics] simmers with hostility and resentment.” And “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Cosby’s lauded ’70s television cartoon series, won greater acceptance for a new cast of black identities and vernacular language styles. Cosby has made money and gained further influence from using forms of black English he now violently detests.”
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Cosby: “People with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn’t that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up (laughter and clapping).”
Dyson: “Baggy clothes express identity among black youth, and not just beginning with hip-hop culture. Moreover, young black entrepreneurs like Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Colms and Russell Simmons have made millions from their clothing lines.”
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Cosby: “Those people are not Africans, they don’t know a damned thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap and all of them are in jail.”
Dyson: “Names like Shaniqua and Taliqua are meaningful cultural expressions of self-determination.I think that it does have something to do with African roots of black identity, and perhaps with Cosby’s ignorance and discomfort with those roots.Cosby’s ornery, ill-informed diatribe against black-naming is a snapshot of his assault on poor black identity.” And “Given the vicious way blacks have been targeted for incarceration, Cosby’s comments about poor blacks who end up in jail are dangerously naïve and empirically wrong.”
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Cosby: “The city and all these people have to pick up the tab on them [poor African Americans] because they don’t want to accept that they have to study to get an education.”
Dyson: “If the rigidly segregated education system continues to fail poor blacks by failing to prepare their children for the world of work, then admonitions to ‘stay in school’ may ring hollow.In suburban neighborhoods, there are $60-million schools with state-of-the-art technology, while inner city schools desperately fight for funding for their students.”
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Cosby: “I’m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? (clapping) Where were you when he was twelve? (clapping) Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you don’t know he had a pistol? (clapping)”
Dyson: “And then there are the problems of the working poor: folk who rise up early every day and often work more than forty hours a week, and yet barely, if ever, make it above the poverty level. We must acknowledge the plight of both poor black (single) mothers and poor black fathers, and the lack of social support they confront. Hence, it is incredibly difficult to spend as much time with children as poor black parents might like, especially since they will be demonized if they fail to provide for their children’s basic needs.”
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Cosby: “All this child knows is ‘gimme, gimme, gimme.’ These people want to buy the friendship of a child.and the child couldn’t care less.and these people are not parenting. They’re buying things for the kid. $500 sneakers, for what? And they won’t spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics. (clapping)”
Dyson: “And yet, some of the engaged critique he [Cosby] seeks to make of black folk—of their materialism, their consumptive desires, their personal choices their moral aspirations, their social conscience—is broadcast with much more imagination and insight in certain quarters of hip-hop culture. (Think of Kanye West’s track, “All Falls Down,” which displays a self-critical approach to the link between consumption and the effort to ward off racial degradation.)”
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Cosby: “I don’t know who these people [poor African Americans] are.”
Dyson: “The poor folk Cosby has hit the hardest are most vulnerable to the decisions of the powerful groups of which he has demanded the least: public policy makers, the business and social elite and political activists. Poor black folk cannot gain asylum from the potentially negative effects of Cosby’s words on public policy makers and politicians who decide to put into play measures that support Cosby’s narrow beliefs.”
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Cosby: “They’re [poor African Americans] just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you’re just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.”
Dyson: “Cosby completely ignores shifts in the economy that give value to some work while other work, in the words of William Julius Wilson ‘disappears.’ In our high-tech, high-skilled economy where low-skilled work is being scaled back, phased out, exported, or severely under-compensated, all the right behavior in the world won’t create better jobs with more pay.”
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Cosby: “God is tired of you.”
Dyson: “No matter how you judge Cosby’s comments, you can’t help but believe that a great deal of his consternation with the poor stems from his desire to remove the shame he feels in their presence and about their activity in the world. There’s nothing like a formerly poor black multimillionaire bashing poor blacks to lend credence to the ancient assaults they’ve endured from the dominant culture.”
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Cosby: “You can’t land a plane with ‘why you ain’t.’ You Can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.where did these people get the idea that they’re moving ahead on this.”
Dyson: “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.”
Hot debate. What do you think?
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13th April 2011 at 12:44 pm
StuckInNJ says:
Dyson: “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.”
.
.
Here’s the thing I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND.
So many people go apeshit ballistic ANYTIME “personal responsibility” is mentioned as one of the chief causes for the black plight. Dyson does it here. RE does it ad nauseum all the time. Why???
It’s 2011 fer chrissakes. What “structural features” are NOW in 2011 holding down blacks that don’t ALSO hold down all other races? Aren’t we ALL fucked equally by banksters and government??
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13th April 2011 at 12:54 pm
Muck About says:
@Stuck said, “It’s 2011 fer chrissakes. What “structural features” are NOW in 2011 holding down blacks that don’t ALSO hold down all other races? Aren’t we ALL fucked equally by banksters and government??
Not really. When a woman is paid by the Gov for having children with no support (the higher number of little bastards, the more money she gets), she and her children are getting a far worse deal than the male who impregnated her.
No self respect, no pride, no sense of accomplishment, just fuck and duck.. And it’s multigenerational, and totally self reinforcing. A little boy grows up watching his mother (you hope) get screwed by ten different men, dropping little brothers and sisters every 10 months or so and guess what you do when you turn into a big boy.
Right, you know how it’s done, you fuck and duck and fling sperm to the wind. That part is in the genes and your growing up years just reinforced the urge. Why buy the cow when all the milk runs free out there? The little girls grow up watching the same damn thing and what do they do when they hit puberty? Hah! They fuck and drop kids every 10 months or so just like their Mama did.
Couple all that with no education through peer pressure (being _different_ and wanting to learn gets you kicked out of the “in” group) and you have a real mess that exists today and is getting worse as the FSA multiplies like rabbits, littering the world with little bastard(or bastardesses as the case may be) knowing – KNOWING – full well that guilt and liberal bull shit thinking people will always be there, standing by with a handout, money, food, housing, etc…
Trouble with all that is that it it about to crimp some asses. We’re broke and going broker by the minute. What gets cut first? Why old folks and welfare mothers, that’s who. The males involved just keep on selling dope, eating with food stamps or knock over a bank every few weeks or if it gets really tough, they knock over the bank (no guns!) and stand there for the cops to pick up and provide free housing and meals at the local lockup. Guns mean real prison time, so those who need a year off, just do something so they can get free room and board for a little while and then back out on the street until they screw up again (which is guaranteed).
Bill Cosby has been singing this song for many years. He makes people look at their community through responsible eyes and rather than accept the truth, they curse him, call him and Uncle Tom or whatever.
The man is calling it like he sees it and I see it the same way. Now all we have to do is make being on welfare and collecting food stamps a worse experience than working and being responsible for your kids – it’s too late for you, but your kids, that’s another thing.
MA
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13th April 2011 at 2:07 pm
Goldorack says:
wow….
twice in the same evening. Bill Crosby, RESPECT!
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13th April 2011 at 2:47 pm
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
@Stuck:
Great post, I had forgotten about this Dyson jerk. He is a “sociology” professor at Georgetown, with a PhD from Princeton, has made the rounds of the progressive POS universities in Chicago, Columbia (!!!!) and Brown, and has written 15 books.
At least we can be thankful he missed Hahhvarrhd.
His responses to Cosby’s clear headed and common sensical approach to the problems in the black community is to apply every progressive, liberal, apologist argument in totally absolving the black community of any responsibility what-so-ever. Dyson’s standard answer is “It’s always whitey’s fault”.
BTW: Cosby’s speech could just as well apply to a large swath of white and latino households as well.
Here’s a thought experiment for Professor Dyson: How many Eubonic speaking black kids named Taliqua, with 8th grade educations at best, with their butt cracks hanging out of their baggy jeans, ever make it to Haaahhvard, much less the work force?
Sadly, the fate of kids who pursue Professor Dyson’s course is prison, the grave or permanent status as a private in the FSA.
What a douche bag this guy is.
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13th April 2011 at 4:24 pm
Josey Wales says:
To bad he isnt in the White House!!!!!
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13th April 2011 at 6:41 pm
Reverse Engineer says:
HEY, HEY HEY! IT’S FAT ALBERT!
RE
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13th April 2011 at 6:50 pm
howard in nyc says:
Dyson: “Names like Shaniqua and Taliqua are meaningful cultural expressions of self-determination.
that is one of the most ignorant sentences i have ever read in my life.
racist too. in it’s own perverted way.
sadly, having heard my mother speak those very words, “what is wrong with these nigga’s” literally hundreds of times in my formative years, having uttered it myself, or variations on the theme (in college, we preferred, “what’s wrong with my/your people?”), sadly i know the answer. in all too much detail. but i am over my quota of words for the week, in the platform, on this subject.
fuck it. you guys are right. i surrender. niggers and black culture ain’t shit. wake up, white people!
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13th April 2011 at 1:20 am