Now, don't get me wrong at any point: Let me open up with some basic facts that I just won't be able to get around.
#1. I'm White (And if you believe that do I have some land to sell you! But that's the offical category that "Irish Americans" get classified into.
#2. Because of #1, I am mostly exposed to the "White" culture. This, no matter how much I try, will ALWAYS lead to me having a biased view. Just the way things are. I try to see the problem from all sides, but I'm not perfect.
#3. The language I'm going to use here is GOING to be offensive. Both to whites and blacks. I'm trying to take this topic from a hardliner direction, and this will assuradly come to me needing to make associations, and that's just the way things go. So if you don't want to be offended, please stop reading here.
But after reading the article linked above, let's get to the rant.
What he's saying is unfortunately true. Let's look at a simple point: think of a poor, uneducated, white guy, who spends his time working at a minimum wage job and watching sports games. Now if he's white we have a special name for him don't we? The culture has deemed this kind of person "White Trash". He is given no respect within the white culture, and, quite literally, is the brunt of most of our jokes (think about Jeff Foxworthy.)
Now change this man's skin color. Let's pretend he's black. The unfortunate truth is that we come to the baseline of black culture. Now in the past this was established due to segregation as well as poor treatment. But then we come to the true point: The black and hispanic kids (both groups that currently have lower litteracy rates and poorer education levels) got the exact same education and treatment that I did in school.
From the very first time I can remember going to school (that I was old enough to understand the nature of discrimination) I saw no difference in the crappy education that they and I recieved. My hispanic friend had the same classes, and was given the same aid that I was. My one black friend (keep in mind that people who have sickle cell trait can't live where I do becuase it can trigger full flegged anemia, and since blacks have a significantly higher sickle cell trait occurance ratios, you don't typically find them here at 5280 feet.) But anyway, my one black friend was significantly smarter than I am. And he achieved a much higer level of education than me. But he had one thing going for him that most of the blacks here in the U.S. didn't: his parents actually where FROM Africa (Nigeria as I recall, I can't remember for certain.) So he wasn't exposed to the same cultural standards that the blacks who are native to America (Not that he wasn't, he was from Texas) are. His parents (Like the white culture here does) put an emphasis on acedemic excellence. This ment that he wasn't allowed to fall back on "the man" as his excuse for performance.
And this change to cultures can be seen in many cultures in many cultures. You find it in the blacks of South Africa, the Irish of the United States, all kinds of previously oppressed groups. Consider: My father was the first man in his family to get a college education. Now his parents often express a barrier between him and them because he went and got all educated. This shows the cultural unacceptance of education in that group, and you can see it in all of these groups.
What Cosby is saying is: "Screw that, there's no excuse NOT to get an education, to open more oppertunites, and get a good job" By taking a stand against the culture, he's working towards breaking the cultural barrier on education, and hopefully, encourage the black community to change and get itself out of the rut that it's keeping itself in.
For that I have to laud him. Now the only thing we need to do is break down that wall in the hispanic and white trash cultural groups.
"A belief that you can't get a college deploma shows nothing but a lack of knowlege in the system."
Mood: Driven