whasgood blogworld...the following are response letters to bill cosby's now infamous speech at the 50th anniversary commemoration of the brown v. board of education decision...

click here to check his speech


Letter to Bill Cosby 1.1

"God is tired of you."

yeah...most of the time,
it feels that way


Letter to Bill Cosby 1.2

I understand your frustration
your bewilderment
your indignation

certainly, I feel it
too

but saying poor blackfolk are "not holding up their end in this deal" (referring to brown v. the board of education)
is kinda like saying...
Master just offered you food, like real food, and access to nearly human standards of living, and compensation for work that...well can't really be backlogged or compensated for, but compensation nonetheless with even more access to human rights, like real human rights, and finally removed the cannon ball, and
You're not running for the mountaintop?!? WTF

__________________________________________________

you say
poor blackfolk aren't
rejoicing, aren't flocking,
the door is open
poor blackfolk aren't
carrying the torch, (or the Molotov,
the pistol, the crack vile)
pick up
where I left you
I mean when
we left...........you
what happened?
walk through the door negro
god,
"These people are fighting to be ignorant"
tired god, what happened??

...demands more than your diatribe

had you been listening (to the music, to the art, to the fashion),
just maybe you could hear
voices from the periphery
scratched, but decisive

just maybe
the young black
would have something useful, insightful to say about
the young black
who, for whatever the reason--out of anger? confusion? pride?--
you carelessly, mockingly, uniformly
write off as "knuckleheads"
reduce to cardboard stereotypes
as "petty thugs" who "can't speak English"

just maybe our story
would provide some gravity for your consternation

I mean
you can levy blame and contempt
until mushmouth learns proper English
but Bill-ba
as a black professional who didn't graduate high school,
the uninterrupted nerve to call us
'dumb'
is rather astounding
(and to castigate ebonics IN ebonics is one
I don't have a grasp on either ebonics or proper american English to begin describing)

Thank you for starting a dialogue,
overdue and difficult
but...
FUCK YOU
if you are so concerned, if you care now, after forty years in public life
to finally speak
try listening to the knuckleheads first, then talk and be reactionary

I know
young black men
who think about death everyday
and more and more often
I find our decisions, and actions
not based
in bravado, or rap
but
anger and fear
clinical depression
symbolic suicide
post-traumatic slave syndrome

I doubt you've listened
to them
Maybe the slang's too dense
the pants too low
the base too loud

And maybe you can't imagine
what it's like
to be stabbed with an icepick
that removes half your pancreas
and reduces you to a geriatric
At 21
pissing every fifteen minutes
as a constant reminder of
Your
poor decisions
and powerlessness

And maybe you can't imagine
what it's like
to have no black leaders
nobody to believe in (who's not dead, or in jail)
To come of age, and discover politics and the world
when brown v. the board of education, when Medgar Evers and Rosa Parks
and the people and the sacrifices we so obdurately spit on
with fashion and ebonics,
are relegated to black history month (taught by a white person)
and Dr. King is a holiday first
And afrocentricism and self-love are passe

How Mr. Cosby would you make sense of seeing your friends and family murdered
by someone who looks just like you?

Without any context,
Without a larger conceptual frame,
You can't provide a substantial response to your most critical question:

what happened???
space is marked by history
what happened???

we wonder too

We don't rap, and smoke, and shoot,
and die and curdle
In the ghetto
In a vacuum,
We are not isolated (though it feels that way)
as a pathoogy an anomaly
Outside of America in America...
Materialism, gun violence, misogyny, and self-hatred
are not particular to young blackfolk

they suffuse pop culture,
underwrite policy
thread our social fabric

No excuses Bill, but context
No excuses Bill, but critical inquiry
No excuses Bill, but a perspective that allows for
personal responsibility and structural racism,
nuance,
that doesn't yell at someone dying
or trivialize black death, more than it's already trivialized

I mean niggas shoot for pound cake!!
the government shoots for yellow cake
and nobody's listening


listen first