| Dr. Bill Cosby, comedian, entrepreneur and social activist and Dr. Alvin Pouissaint, professor of clinical psychology, Harvard Medical School, have co-authored the recently released book, "Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors." The book was the product of research done for the most part by Dr. Pouissaint and "call-out" or listening sessions that they held in several different cities around the country. The book is an expose; on the terrible conditions faced by African Americans and the resultant impact on culture and society. It is a "call to arms" asking, or rather demanding, that African Americans take more responsibility for improving their lives and opportunities for their children. Cosby and Pouissaint have done the television, radio and Internet interview slates and they attended a number of book signing ceremonies around the nation. For the most part, the book has been well received by a broad range of critics, Black, White, Republican, Democrat, the young and the old. The book also has its naysayers. Two of the most prominent of them -- Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, professor of theology, English and American Studies at Georgetown University and Dr. Earl Ofari Hutchinson, professor and social critic at UC Berkeley -- have launched vitriolic attacks on Cosby and Pouissaint. Professor Dyson actually wrote a book, "Is Cosby Right?" that took issue with Cosby's crusade to address the maladies that exist in the Black community. Dyson noted in a New York Times interview that "Cosby's comments betray classist, elitist viewpoints rooted in generational warfare." He added that Cosby was "ill-informed on the critical and complex issues that shape people's lives," and that his words only "reinforce suspicions about Black humanity." Dr. Ofari Hutchinson added to the attack in a piece he wrote in mockery of Cosby's title, "Come on People, No, Come on Cosby." In this essay, which has been posted on his website and discussed publicly in several interviews, he attacks Cosby noting: "He did not qualify or provide a complete factual context for his blanket indictment of poor Blacks. He made the negative behavior of some Blacks a racial rather than an endemic social problem. In doing so, he did more than break the alleged taboo against publicly airing racial dirty laundry; he fanned dangerous and destructive stereotypes." Cosby and Pouissaint have attempted to raise the level of the discussion and put it boldly out in front for all to see and hear. It appears that Dyson and Ofari Hutchinson would rather blame the messengers for delivering a message that few want to talk about. The authors make it very clear that the maladies suffered by the Black community are not new and that they are products of centuries of racism and socio-economic exploitation. The book does not promote negative stereotypes and images in the Black community. It clearly presents statistics and realities that we are all too painfully aware of like the numbers of babies having babies and how lives are ruined prematurely. The fact that African Americans are overrepresented in the penal system while being under-represented in higher education is also not a false stereotype. Nor is the fact that the Black community has been devastated by the scourge of drugs and the downward spiral of crime that it brings in its wake. I agree with Cosby's analysis on the deleterious effects of Gangster Rap, it's exploitation of African American women and use of the "N" word. Cosby noted: "...the bad stuff has become normal " they see it as part of their culture instead of something that's abhorrent ... and hurtful to their lives and their community." Eugene Robinson, columnist for the Washington Post, has rightly been critical of those who have unjustly attacked Cosby noting that "the problem is that we all say we want an honest dialogue about race, but we've been having the same old arguments for years -- we seem to be stuck. We need a new language, a new vocabulary, a new syntax." Cosby and Pouissaint should be lauded for doing the heavy lifting by taking a bold and direct step forward to jumpstart this dialogue. Regarding the harsh tone of his call to arms and some of the "in your face interviews" that he did at the NAACP meeting and in other venues, Cosby noted: "what's happening here is that when I use that language, I use it that way, I'm trying to wake people up, that inertia, I'm trying to move them from that entropy because we're in a stage where we can't take much more.". Identifying real conditions faced by the Black community and calling for individuals to take back control over their lives and their destinies is not a new phenomenon. Cosby and Pouissaint, in doing so, are part of a continuum that extends from Frederick Douglass to Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois right up to the Martin Luther King, Jr., the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements and the Nation of Islam. The attacks by Dyson and Ofari Hutchinson are unfounded and grossly unfair. |
| The Literary Divide/Dr. Paul Barrows Attacks on Cosby-Pouissaint book unfair, unfounded |
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