Annual Rainbow/PUSH Coalition conference in Chicago
NNQueen said:
If you have the text of his speech, please post excerpts of it here being
"Bill Cosby and his wife, Camille, gave $20 million to Spelman College in Atlanta in 1988. We here at Destee try to deal in TRUTH, raw truth, undiluted truth. Dr. Cosby to some degree is speaking the truth regarding some of our behavior as a people, which if we are honest we can bear witness to also. What Dr. Cosby is saying is about the same that Minister Farrakhan would say, its just that at least with someone like Min. Farrakhan saying these things we know they are coming from someone who LOVE'S US and would give their LIFE for us, and who has, in fact.
Cosby said in an address before Jesse Jackson's 33rd Annual Rainbow/PUSH Coalition conference in Chicago,
"It is almost analgesic to talk about what the white man is doing against us, and it keeps a person frozen in their seat. It keeps you frozen in your hole that you are sitting in to point up and say, 'That's the reason why I am here.' We need to stop this . . ."
"There is a time, ladies and gentlemen, when we have to turn the mirror around," he told the crowd of 500 people at the Sheraton hotel.
"I couldn't care less about what white people think about me at this time," he said to loud applause.
"Let them talk! What are they saying that is different from what their grandfather said? What are they doing or trying to do us that their grandfathers didn't try to do to us? But what is different is what we are doing to ourselves," Cosby said.
"The housing project was set up for you to move in, move up, and move out," he said.
Being poor had a different meaning to older generations, according to Cosby.
"If you go up to people -- when you ask them and you say, 'Were you poor?' they would say, 'No, no, our parents were broke, but we were not poor.' There was a spirit in that house," he explained.
His message to black people who say he's exposing the "dirty laundry" of the black community was blunt.
"Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day. It's cursing and calling each other '******' as they're walk up and down the street. They think they hip -- can't read, can't write-50 percent of them," he said.
Cosby stressed the importance of education and proper parenting.
"The more you invest in that child, the more you are not going to let some CD tell your child how to curse and how to say the world '******.' This is an accepted word. You are so hip with '******,' but you can't even spell it," an impassioned Cosby lamented
Whatever happened to 'Black is beautiful?' Well, it was replaced with '****** please,'" he said to laughter.
"Education, ladies and gentleman, respect the elderly, respect for yourselves, respect for others," Cosby said.
"These young girls have no business having sex!" he emphasized as the crowd clapped approvingly.
"We got too many young girls who don't know how to parent, turning themselves into parents. Ladies and gentlemen, our little eight-year-old boys, nine-year-old boys, having erections and only acting out that which they see and hear on some CD. They're acting that out and they don't know the damage that they are doing when they rape some little girl nine years old and what they have done to her whole life. It's time to stop!" an animated Cosby said.
Cosby also took on the pop culture of music, movies and television.
"When you put on a record, and that record is yelling '****** this' and '****** that' and cursing all over the thing and you got your little six year old and seven year old sitting in the back seat of the car-- those children hear that. And I am telling you when you put the CD on and then you get up and dance to it -- What are you saying to your children?" he asked.
"Eight-year-old, nine-year-old boys have no business teaming up to rape a nine-year or ten-year-old girl. And if it's in that TV set, don't bring into your home, if it's on your record player, don't bring it in your home," he said.
"We are going to call each other names of ugliness. Comedians coming on TV [saying] 'I am so ugly, you are ugly, yuck, yuck.' That's all minstrel show stuff. I am tired of it," he continued.
"I am talking about profanity. I am talking about cursing at each other like it's something hip, like it's something that's right. I am talking about people calling each other a name that there are still -- if DNA goes to the Mississippi River-- you are gong to find African blood in there, dead from being called ****** and then hacking them," he added.
Sounding like a motivational preacher at times, Cosby even joked "I can just talk for 12 hours on this and not have a collection."
'Taken care of at home'
Parents have to take charge of their children as part of a "parent power" plan, according to Cosby.
"You going to tell me that you are going to drop out of school? You are going to tell me that you are going to steal from a store? These things need to be taken care of in the home," he said to applause.
"Where did we get so comfortable -- when and who gave us the word that said, 'You don't need to know how to read and write again?'" Cosby asked.
"Before you get to the point where you say, 'I can't do nothing with them,' I am just saying, 'Do something with them,'" he added.
Today's generation of African-American youth does not appreciate or understand the sacrifices of its elders, Cosby said.
"Understand, your children have to know where you came from. And they have to know about those people hanging [during the civil rights struggles] and how when they did hang them on a Sunday, the theme song was "Amazing Grace." That is what they sang when the bodies were hanging. Your children don't know that, your grandchildren don't know it," he said.
"Ladies and gentlemen, it hurts, it hurts, because these children don't know about their poor mothers and fathers, they don't know about how there was no done deal [regarding the civil rights struggle]," he explained.
Too many African-Americans are not motivated to better their life, Cosby said.
"The analgesic of cursing and profanity and standing around and just letting the day go by and wake up the next morning to start your next day of moving this day along -- you'll have no picture that is large enough to take you out of where you going," he said.
'Going nowhere'
Cosby focused much of his attention on African-American youth.
"They put themselves on the train, you know, the buses, and they don't even care what color or what age somebody else is, it's about them and their cursing and grabbing each other and laughing and giggling and they're going nowhere. Their book bags are very, very thin," he added.
Cosby also pleaded with black men to improve their ways.
"Young men and old men, you've gotta stop beating up your women because you didn't find a job, because you didn't want to get an education and now you are [earning] minimum wage. You should have thought more of yourself when you were in high school," he said.
"When you beat up your woman, when you beat up your wife, those little children are watching, it's almost irreparable, you can't get it back what you've done to that child," he added.
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