My bi-weekly column has moved to Black Voices. Last week's column dealt with Rosa Parks.
I read a book called CULTURE AND AFRICAN AMERICAN POLITICS by Charles Henry some years back. Due for an update...but one passage struck me. What would we call people who slough their kids of on strangers for the majority of the week, who don't have jobs, and move from place to place with the change in the seasons?
We call them shiftless if they are poor. We call them something else if they're rich.
This is what upset me more than anything else about Cosby and about attacks on the poor in general. The cultural arguments that are used against the poor are based on the fundamental reality that the poor are different because of the way they BEHAVE.
Take away Paris Hilton's last name, put her in a trailer park, would she have her own tv show?
This is one of the best stories I've seen written about the Cosby revelations as they relate to his smackdown quest. And even IT doesn't get the story quite right. Folks forget (xcept for Jimi) that Cosby has a long history of both smacking people around who aren't black like him (see: Eddie Murphy) and a long history of problematic behavior himself.