It's nice to see progressive thinking in the black community. Even if it is a hypocritical statement from Bill Cosby (and I don't think it is), I agree with the message. You don't have to be "God's right hand angel that's a virgin to wrong-doing" to know a thing or two. Let me add a little of my story to this argument.
It reminds me of my brother (not black, by the way). He has done so much wrong to me, my parents, everyone around us, but my dysfuctional parents make excuses for him. I'm held up to a different standard, however. He's the favored firstborn... wreckless, abusive and selfish. And I'm the quiet, unwanted secondborn that avoided doing things wrong because I hated myself and wanted to be liked by my parents. So of course I have hatred for him and my parents.
But what really hits this point home is his whole gansta-rap lifestyle. He calls himself a pimp, listens to underground rap, dresses in all the latest urban fashions, uses all the newest speech impediment-slang fresh from the ghetto... And he's not from the ghetto. The lifestyle makes me sick, and it's not just because he's the one I see it through. As bishoptl succinctly put it, he's willfully ignorant, like his retarded lifestyle. He runs around in denial trying to be like some like rappers, but I see that he's really a loser in denial, wasting his life to get high and party. He lives with mommy and daddy with no job, while I work and live on my own. He concerns himself with intimidating people, but that facade isn't protecting anything. He's just a hallow person.
Some people may adopt parts of that lifestyle, I'm sure, and not be willfully ignorant (though as a life-long music-writer, I can't see how rap is in anyway intelligent). But that stuff (the fashion, the slang, etc.) tends to be rather interconnected to the lifestyle, and the ignorance, IMO. I like to see anyone stand up against it. To me, being black doesn't make Bill Cosby more right when he says that stuff.
One thing my brother doesn't do, because he can't, is blame white people. But I think this lifestyle is so much more widespread in the black community because of widespread racism against white people. My brother doesn't have any black friends. They're all white and one latino. That thug lifestyle is usually used, as far as I can tell, as a springboard to distance the black man from the white man. It's a very ignorance-breeding lifestyle that is perpetuated by a lot of the most 'vocal' blacks in schools and society. The intelligent black people are never nearly as heard, of course, because the ignorant keep them down.
I had a very close friend throughout school who was black, a music-player like me. Really smart, and I considered him my best friend. But he's one of the quietest people I know. I have a feeling there are a lot of people like us in the black community.
