Cosby said, according to Leiby: "Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids – $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.'He added: "They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"
The Post said Cosby also targeted imprisoned blacks.
"These are not political criminals," he said. "These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, [saying] 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"
This is something that needs to be said by someone in the black community. You can bitch about racism and prejudice all you like, but eventually it needs to be understood that while there are certain things stacked against you it doesn't help that you keep stacking things up against yourself. Responsibility for your own actions must be taken. It is possible for anybody to succeed in this society, but to do so it has to be understood that dropping out of school, fathering multiple children with multiple women, and joining a gang and going to prison isn't the way to go about it. It won't allow you to succeed and it won't allow your children to succeed.
Many in the black community don't seem to understand this, and no number of outsiders telling them is going to get the point across. Outsiders who call for personal responsibility are racists and bigots. It's important that leaders within the community push the idea because they're really the only ones who stand a chance at convincing those who need to be convinced.
Instapundit
