Complicity of African-Americans in Contemporary

¶ … complicity of African-Americans in Contemporary U.S.

The solution to the issue raised by poverty and its consequences on a community, regardless of its race is still in our debt. Just like the cure for cancer, the fight against poverty has many battles yet to come. The poverty of the black people, within the most powerful country in the world is a subject that has been debated over the decades. The participants involved were people of different backgrounds and various degrees of implication in the matter. Especially today, when the U.S. have a black president and go through a period of economic depression, such a highly disputed matter is giving hard times to all those who dare get or stay involved.

Bill Cosby, the celebrity in showbiz was accused over the time that he avoided expressing anything that could have tied him to the black community any time, at any cost. Some pointed the finger at him saying that all he did in his shows was to tackle "universal subjects," denying by that his own ancestry. These are, of course, some opinions situated in one corner of extremism and they can be easily attacked by everything else Bill Cosby, the person did for the black community, his community, the largest community in the most powerful country in the world.

His speeches and actions that benefited the black community over the years were accompanied recently by his book: Come on People. On the path from Victims to Victors. He teamed up with psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint to write a book that seemed destined to wake up black people all over America. Cosby points a finger at the passive attitude of those who prefer to stand by and watch instead of raise and fight for their right to better life. The grounds for the oppression of the low working class black people are exposed to come from their own lack of action and not from outside. Bill Cosby's book denounces the high degree of illiteracy among the black community, the lack of proper parenting, the extended ignorance and poor means of education and the 50% drop out from school rate among "African-American males in the inner city" (the Brokaw Company). He reminds the black community the case of Brown vs. The Board of Education and what the blacks back then fought for. He considers the basic elements in terms of family and community values, like mutual respect, the awareness than only a better education can get one of the misery and denounces their loss among other values the working classes of the black community adopted to its own disadvantage. Bill Cosby blames exclusively the way of living adopted by the working black people for their poor situation and oppression.

Such ideas like those expressed in the above mentioned book are destined to raise controversies and even violent attacks. One such reaction is that expressed by Michael Erik Dyson in his book Is Bill Cosby Right? (or Has the Black Middle Class Lost its Mind?) Dyson takes every argument Cosby used to denounce the passive behavior of the lower black classes and intends to prove that as long as there is any thuth in Cosby's allegations then there is also truth in a statement indicating that the middle class black community has lost its mind when it comes to tackling the oppression of the working class black people. Dyson calls the former "Gehttocracy" and the latter "Afristocracy" nd exposes their flaws from within, but also their faults in dealing with one another.