Bill Cosby Should Be Leading NAACP
July 19, 2004
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by Doug Patton
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Comedian Bill Cosby’s recent public statements about the condition of blacks in America have set him apart from the conventional thinking of the nation’s current black leadership. And while he has not specifically targeted Chairman Julian Bond or President Kweisi Mfume of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, it is a short leap from his stinging rebuke of black parents to an all-out indictment of the failed leadership of these two media hounds.
Bond and Mfume are, without question, the two most radical partisans ever to lead the NAACP, the nation’s oldest and most distinguished civil rights group. Both are former Democrat office-holders—Bond as a member of the Georgia Legislature, Mfume as Congressman from Maryland—and both have brought a decidedly liberal agenda to their current positions in this venerable organization. As its two top leaders, they have allowed their hatred of the **** to take their rhetoric to new lows during this election season.
Julian Bond has equated President Bush and the Republican Party with Nazis and the Taliban. He has made outrageous statements, such as, “Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side” and “they appeal to the dark underside of American culture, to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality.”
At this year’s NAACP convention, Mfume ridiculed conservative blacks, comparing them to “ventriloquist’s dummies” who “sit there in the puppet master’s voice, but we can see whose lips are moving, and we can hear his money talk.”
And these two wonder why the President of the United States (who has appointed a black Secretary of State, a black National Security Advisor and a black Secretary of Education) wants no part of addressing their organization this year. I’m fairly certain that the vast majority of Americans of any color would take great exception with the characterization that a highly decorated, retired four-star Army General like Colin Powell is a “puppet,” or that a brilliant scholar like Dr. Condoleezza Rice is a “****.”
The venom oozing from Bond and Mfume is a testament to their obvious desire to torpedo any possible dialogue that might have existed between the White House and the NAACP. Like so many of the charlatans in the highly lucrative “civil rights” business, Bond and Mfume have exposed themselves, to anyone with an open mind, as total frauds. In their world, if you are black and dare to wander off their liberal plantation, you lose all credibility. It is that kind of non-leadership that has brought about a 75 percent out-of-wedlock black birth rate, a skyrocketing black prison population and a black unemployment rate twice the national average.
That brings me back to Bill Cosby. Although he is a liberal, Cosby’s celebrity, his Doctorate in Education and his willingness to tell black America the truth qualifies him to replace both Julian Bond and Kweise Mfume.
“I'm talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit,” Cosby said, speaking of fifty years of squandered opportunities in the black community. “Where were you when he was two? Where were you when he was twelve? Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you don’t know he had a pistol?
“I can’t even talk the way these people talk,” Cosby railed. “‘Why you ain’t?’ and ‘Where you is?’ I don’t know who these people are. 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. What the hell good is Brown vs. the Board of Education if no one wants it?”
Now that’s what I call leadership.
Although I am not going to comment on Patton's criticism of Julian Bond and Kweisi Mfume, I think he raises a couple valid points elsewhere.
It is time for some honest dialogue about what kind of challenges we are up against, and we have to do it without worrying about who's feelings will be hurt. There can be no change until people are willing to accept the fact that change is needed.
We are in crisis, and when you are in crisis, you need to hear the truth, not just what is comfortable. It is true that educational opportunities in the US are falling off, and we are disproportionately affected. Some, by circumstance, others by choice.
Many people who can receive an education choose not to receive it, others who would like to receive it don't have the ability because of poor schools. Crime, also, is a problem... once again, some by choice, some by circumstance. We need to acknowledge and combat both. What is the value of toiling to build an effective public school system if the majority of the people it serves refuse to take advantage of it?
A lot of politicians and outspoken persons are content with proposing half-solutions which gloss over the problem while allowing it to continue. This is why you see proposals such as those in Florida and Texas not to seriously address the mediocre education that those students are receiving, but rather simply to reduce the qualifications needed to graduate. What a pathetic insult of a solution! However, the people are buying into it because it delivers the answers that they want to hear... that their son or daughter will graduate.
This type of mentality assumes we are not capable of anything better. It assumes that we are pre-destined for failure, and we are incapable of raising productive families and strong citizens. The honest truth is that many of our "leaders" are failing us, and those who dare speak up about it are immediately censored by the powers that be.
You can paper and paint over a hole in the wall, and it may even look good, but it will not hold any weight. The only solution here is a hard one, and people don't want to accept the fact that accountability is key. Until we begin training people to do whatever it takes to be successful, we will find ourselves in the same leaky old boat that we have been accustomed to. Holla!
