Posted by
Tracy Robertson on Tuesday, November 06, 2007 12:45:47 PM
When Bill Cosby was on Larry King he said some things that were surprising, disrespectful and unhelpful to his cause. The conversation went like this:
KING: Judge Clarence Thomas, the conservative black judge on the United States Supreme Court, Bill, says that he went conservative because he thinks that the black responsibility is to himself. He doesn't need any help. He doesn't want any help. He doesn't need that pick me up.
COSBY: And he doesn't want to help anybody.
KING: He doesn't need affirmative action.
COSBY: And he doesn't want to help anybody.
POUSSAINT: But he got affirmative action.
KING: He got affirmative action.
COSBY: Plenty of -- he got a whole lot of help and now he doesn't want to help anybody.
KING: Do you think he's hypocritical?
COSBY: He doesn't want to help anybody.
KING: I know it.
Do you think he's...
COSBY: He doesn't want to help anybody.
KING: All right.
But he says blacks don't need help, they can do it themselves.
And that's partially what you're saying, isn't it?
COSBY: Well, that's not -- yes, see partially is where you get into trouble if you're trying to put me in the room with Clarence Thomas, the brother lite.
(LAUGHTER)
KING: Brother lite.
COSBY: Larry...
KING: I'm just asking.
COSBY: No, no, no. I understand. I'm trying and Alvin is trying to reach those people who feel abandoned, who feel for so many years -- generational, whatever -- that they can't do it.
Cosby’s statements are a direct example of why Justice Thomas believes that Affirmative Action is a detriment and not a help to blacks. When Cosby said “he got a whole lot of help and now he doesn't want to help anybody”, he is implying that Thomas’s achievements were due to Affirmative Action and not the hard work and perseverance that was actually required not to mention the constant personal attacks that he has endured over the years. Justice Thomas does not want other blacks to be discounted in such a way and, therefore, does not support Affirmative Action.
It is also apparent that Cosby has not read Justice Thomas’s memoir as he would have understood that although Thomas was admitted to Yale via Affirmative Action he could not get a job after graduation primarily because employers did not believe that he was well educated but had been graduated solely based on his color. That is the affect of Affirmative Action.
However, the statement that really surprised and bothered me is the “brother lite” comment. Calling names has never helped a cause. It is immature and ignorant. When someone calls names it is because they have nothing more intelligent to say. I was surprised that Bill Cosby would stoop to the level of such people as Jesse Jackson as when he said that Barrack Obama was not black enough.
Cosby said that Thomas “doesn’t want to help nobody.” Exactly what does he want him to do? Does he want Thomas to fight for more welfare for blacks so the government can continue to control their lives by telling them where they can live, what they can buy, when they can buy it? Would he like Thomas to fight for more Affirmative Action so that when a black person graduates from an Ivy League college or gets a top level job at a fortune 500 company people can say, “it was only because you are black”? Will that help the black people? Or better yet, does he want Thomas to give a job to an unqualified black woman so that she can get her foot in the door to her career? Uh, he tried that once, didn’t quite work out for him.
I am so tired of blacks questioning the blackness of people. If I don’t believe in what Bill Cosby and all the other black people believe in then I’m not black. What does that say about the black community? It says we are all sheep that can’t think for ourselves.
It is time to stop the name-calling, stop the hate and just agree to disagree.