Bill Cosby Slammed for Comments in New Orleans
At a rally attended by Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton on Saturday, comedian and actor Bill Cosby urged residents of hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, Louisiana, to “cleanse” themselves from the city’s history of crime, violence, drugs and teen pregnancies.
Cosby has come underfire by the civil-rights establishment for comments across the US in which he’s told young blacks to turn away from influences in rap music, stop violence and underage sex, and focus more on education and morality.
Cosby told the crowd, “It’s painful, but we can’t cleanse ourselves unless we look at the wound. Ladies and gentlemen, you had the highest murder rate, unto each other. You were dealing drugs to each other. You were impregnating our 13-, 12-, 11-year-old children. What kind of a village is that?
At the rally in N.O. — a city devastated by Hurricane Katrina last August — Cosby told 2,000 people in front of the Convention Center of his desire for the city’s society to have an “extreme make-over.”
As is usual, Cosby is being slammed by most civil-rights leaders and black pundits who claim his comments hurt “the cause.” They’ve attacked his speeches as being insensitive and wrong.
“They don’t like it when [Cosby] puts the blame on pathological behavior in the black community rather than the shop-worn tactic of blaming “whitey” for the problems in black neighborhoods,” claims Mike Baker a political analyst.
“The crowd and the speakers expected the usual ‘George Bush’ bashing and racism allegations. Cosby gave them a mirror and they didn’t like what they saw.”
According to the latest crime statistics for the embattled city, violent crime is on the rise once again. Some can be attributed to illegal aliens coming to New Orleans for jobs or outsiders looking to exploit the still chaotic environment, but much of the crime is occurring within the black community.
While people such as Rev. Jesse Jackson has voiced concerns over Cosby’s speeches, in the past Jackson himself has chastised African-Americans in poor neighborhoods for what came to be known as “black-on-black crime.”
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Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he’s a staff writer for the New Media Alliance. He’s former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed “Crack City” by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He’s a news writer for TheConservativeVoice.Com. He’s also a columnist for AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he’s syndicated by AXcessNews.Com. He’s appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc.
April 6th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
I wouldn’t expect any responsible “leader” of the black/african-american/people-of-color community to agree with anything Cosby says. After all, he’s just a token who is more whitey and “Tom” than anything else. He has to be - why else would he be saying all those mean and nasty things about the poor, exploited children of slaves?
When that community starts listening to Cosby and others like him, then they will start pulling themselves out of their depths, and, by God, I’ll be there helping. I would presume to think so will a lot of others that won’t give a moment’s notice to the Sharptons and Jacksons today.
April 6th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
The personal responsibility deficit will be anyone’s own undoing, no matter what color they are.
April 6th, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Illegal immigrants are pouring into New Orleans for all those good construction jobs, requiring little background checks, and wages paid in cash. These people running this rally, who are leaders supposedly representing millions of US citizens, cannot get off their butts to say anything about this problem dragging down the wages of those lower class jobs. These black leaders and the leadership in both parties of Congress are crazy to chase this myth that they can capture the Hispanic vote by being nice to non-citizens and letting another 20 million Mexicans sneak into this country.
Mexicans won’t vote for you, Al Sharpton.
April 17th, 2006 at 8:49 am
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