10:00 AM CDT on Tuesday, July 13, 2004

By JOHN McCAA / WFAA-TV

The recent media brouhaha over the comments of comedian Bill Cosby about African-Americans taking more responsibility for certain aspects of their own lives has been fascinating to watch.

For those of you who may have missed it, while participating in a program marking the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision last May, “The Coz” fired off on black youth for their manner of dress. He called their popular oversized clothing “ridiculous.”

He went on to complain about the widespread lack of mastery of proper English by lower-income African-Americans. He chided parents for not raising children properly. Cosby wants all black people (particularly lower-income black people) to take more responsibility for themselves and others.

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The firestorm that erupted has been mind-boggling.

Writer and commentator Michael Eric Dyson called Cosby’s comments “classicist, elitist and rooted in generational warfare.” He accused Cosby of waging a 10-year war against black youth.

In Cleveland, writer Roger T. Jones referred to Cosby as “certifiably nuts” in Free Times magazine. He also said, “What Cosby has done – naïvely so, I think – is to reproduce, albeit in blackface, all the hortatory prejudices that already exist about black people.”

Make no mistake, Cosby’s comments were rough and blunt – and he has not backed away from them.

At the Rainbow/PUSH Annual Conference in Chicago last month, when someone talked about what they believed to be his “improper” airing of black America‘s “dirty laundry” in public, Dr. Cosby was only too happy to respond.

“Let me tell you something,” Cosby said. “Your ‘dirty laundry’ gets out of school at 2:30 every day; it’s cursing and calling each other n**** as they’re walking up and down the street. They can't read, they can’t write. They’re laughing and giggling, and they’re going nowhere.”

The value of an education to change lives is completely lost to young people and their very young parents, Cosby complained.

To hear the media tell it, his comments were a revelation. But the whole controversy may say more about the media and its coverage of black America than anything else.

For most of the ‘90s, C. Delores Tucker, who has served as chair of the National Political Congress of Black Women and chair of the Democratic National Committee Black Caucus, railed against the lyrics of “gangsta rap” and the images contained in music videos. At concerts and in lyrics, rappers called her everything but a child of God.

I can’t imagine any Sunday passing in the last 20 years without language like Cosby’s pouring across the pulpit of just about any predominantly black church in America … let alone in Texas.

Locally, the Rev. Tony Evans at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, the Rev. Caesar Clarke at Good Street Baptist, the Rev. N.L. Robinson at Mt. Olive in Arlington, the Rev. Freddie Haynes at Friendship West and countless others have fired away on the same topics for years: black children born out of wedlock, abortion, improper language and poor parenting. Sometimes their sermons included even stronger language than Cosby’s, followed by a chorus of “Amens” from church members in agreement.

But television networks and national magazines seem to have missed that.

On the radio, longtime popular talk show host Robert Ashley of KHVN has led similar discussions hundreds of times and heard from tens of thousands of listeners in agreement.

Every local African-American-owned newspaper has featured columns by writers such as Rufus Shaw railing against the same things.

Bill Cosby touched a nerve … not by what he said, but where he said it.

Others who have preached and taught the same thing for years were communicating with a mostly black audience when they spoke or wrote. Bill Cosby, by virtue of who he is (and where he was), had everybody’s attention.

The problem with Cosby’s statements, black commentators in particular have warned, is that they will be used by the political right to dismiss or minimize any role that racism plays in the problems that still plague African-Americans.

It is true that for years Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Glenn Loury, Willie and Gwen Daye Richardson, Shelby Steele and a host of other black conservative political commentators have been saying what Bill Cosby said, but their columns and opinions have carried little weight among African-Americans. Lumping Bill Cosby in with them would be an error of alarming proportions.

The fact is, Cosby has always expressed belief that racism is an important contributor in making life difficult for African-Americans. He still believes that.

Still, his observations have found some support among people in civil rights leadership roles.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has defended what he said.

Prof. Cornel West of Princeton University says the entertainer was simply acknowledging “the humanity of black people” and says recognizing personal responsibility among African-Americans is “just as important as talking about the personal responsibility of President George Bush.”

Bill Cosby’s tough talk, West says, is needed. “He’s speaking out of great compassion, trying to get folks on the right track.”

So what’s all the fuss?

Historically speaking, the debate generated by Cosby is just the latest chapter in a discussion that has been going on inside the black community for 200 years.

W.E.B. DuBois thought Booker T. Washington let white America off too easy on the subject of race when Washington talked of the “Atlanta Compromise.”

In the early part of the last century, writers Langston Hughes and George Schuyler clashed in articles over black culture.

Author Zora Neale Hurston, much disliked by dramatists such as Richard Wright, believed fellow African-Americans spent too much time concentrating on the negative. But in 1943, when she attended one Florida meeting of blacks on future development, she rejoiced, “Nobody mentioned slavery, Reconstruction, nor any such matter. It was a new and strange kind of Negro meeting --without tears of self-pity. It was a sign and symbol of something in the offing.”

I‘ve even heard some insist Frederick Douglass might even dish out a little “tough love,” were he alive today.

“Everybody has asked the question, ‘What shall we do with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning.

Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!”

– Frederick Douglass, "What the Black Man Wants"

The blacks of Frederick Douglass’ time were not free, of course, and there is widespread belief that institutional racism still keeps whole neighborhoods bound to a lifetime of poverty.

Still, if anything, Bill Cosby’s raised voice has started a lot of people talking, and gotten the media to pay attention to an age-old discussion in black America.

But how long will it last?

Go behind the scenes of the newsroom with John McCaa. The News 8 anchor has been with WFAA-TV (Channel 8) since 1984. His weekly online column draws from current events and his experience to give viewers a glimpse into the world of TV news. Delivered every Monday.

E-mail John McCaa: jmccaa@wfaa.com

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