Bill Cosby vs. Barack Obama: What's The Difference?

Rage for Order

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Wed Jun-18-08 07:08 PM
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Bill Cosby vs. Barack Obama: What's The Difference?

Edited on Wed Jun-18-08 07:09 PM by Rage for Order

Bill Cosby gave a speech in which he called out the absent fathers in the African American community, and he decried the lack of importance placed on education in parts of the African American community, and was subsequently blasted and berated on DU. People called him an Uncle Tom, self-hating racist, bigot, etc. However, Obama gave a similar speech on Father's Day, yet the reaction here was quite different. The message did not change; only the messenger changed. So I ask you, what's the difference between Obama's message and Cosby's message? Why applaud one and loathe the other?

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stateupdates/gG5nFK

"But if we are honest with ourselves, we�ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing � missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.

You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled � doubled � since we were children. We know the statistics � that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.

How many times in the last year has this city lost a child at the hands of another child? How many times have our hearts stopped in the middle of the night with the sound of a gunshot or a siren? How many teenagers have we seen hanging around on street corners when they should be sitting in a classroom? How many are sitting in prison when they should be working, or at least looking for a job? How many in this generation are we willing to lose to poverty or violence or addiction? How many?

But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child � it�s the courage to raise one.

The first is setting an example of excellence for our children � because if we want to set high expectations for them, we�ve got to set high expectations for ourselves. It�s great if you have a job; it�s even better if you have a college degree...

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/billcosbypoundcakespeech.htm

Ladies and gentlemen, these people set -- they opened the doors, they gave us the right, and today, ladies and gentlemen, in our cities and public schools we have 50% drop out. In our own neighborhood, we have men in prison. No longer is a person embarrassed because they�re pregnant without a husband. No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child.

Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle economic people are not holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. In the old days, you couldn�t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye. And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had one and where you got it from. Parents don�t know that today.

I�m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. 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? And where is his father, and why don�t you know where he is? And why doesn�t the father show up to talk to this boy?

Fifty percent drop out rate, I�m telling you, and people in jail, and women having children by five, six different men. Under what excuse? I want somebody to love me. And as soon as you have it, you forget to parent. Grandmother, mother, and great grandmother in the same room, raising children, and the child knows nothing about love or respect of any one of the three of them. All this child knows is �gimme, gimme, gimme.� These people want to buy the friendship of a child, and the child couldn�t care less. Those of us sitting out here who have gone on to some college or whatever we�ve done, we still fear our parents. And these people are not parenting. They�re buying things for the kid -- $500 sneakers -- for what? They won�t buy or spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics.

Now, look, I�m telling you. It�s not what they�re doing to us. It�s what we�re not doing. 50 percent drop out. Look, we�re raising our own ingrown immigrants. These people are fighting hard to be ignorant. There�s no English being spoken, and they�re walking and they�re angry. Oh God, they�re angry and they have pistols and they shoot and they do stupid things. And after they kill somebody, they don�t have a plan. Just murder somebody. Boom. Over what? A pizza? And then run to the poor cousin�s house.