This is the first of a series of sad but true stories of what happens when those who represent the minorities of America feel that they've made some accomplishments, which results in them blaming the majority of those who've suffered from structural racism and White supremacy in America as "inept" and "inferior".
I begin this series with
Bill Cosby, or
Dr. William H. Cosby, sorry for my blatant disrespect. Somehow this man keeps popping up in the media, beit corporate or the Black media, with the usual rant about how poor Blacks(note his rants are against one section of people) are not holding up their end of the bargain, or selling short on the Civil Rights movement. It's gotten to a point where I cringe everytime I hear or see this man's name, because I know it's not going to be good, because it's obvious that Bill, or Dr. Bill has a serious connection problem with lower class Black people.
Growing up I watched
Fat Albert and The Cosby Kids religiously, as well as
The Cosby Show and
A Different World in my later years. Like most people, I didn't know then what I know now, which is the fact Dr. Bill is participating in a sinister war of various implications, not just on race relations, but a class war as well. How is that you ask? By not honing in on society's ills which affect its constituency, and ranting on and on about personal behavior issues, Dr. Bill, like others who feel that Blacks have
progressed, places the blame solely on the individual, or in this sense, since we're talking about Black people we have to discuss the "group collective" or the double-standard that we place on each other that the actions of one or even a few Blacks represent THE WHOLE RACE.
I didn't know the hidden subtleties that were inserted inside these shows, such as the lack of racial identity or the lack of approaching social issues that affected Blacks. Bill, oh sorry, I mean Dr. Bill, did not want to have a show which reflected the usual racial stereotypes as he put it, meaning The Cosby Show was not to reflect the realities of America then and now, which is why we never saw an episode where neither Theo or Elvin were profiled by the police, nor any of the kids being ridiculed about their hair, race, nor in any instance did we see any poor Blacks on his show, except the time when
Elvin and
Sondra leaves school and try their hand at owning a wilderness shop. Eventually Elvin comes to his senses and decides to re enter college...Ho hum...
That was another subtle theme that was inserted in these shows, this need to go to college in order to guarantee oneself a job in the mainstream. We were pummeled with these scenarios from Elvin and Sondra leaving school, only to come to their senses to
Denise leaving school, going to Africa and getting married, only to come back to school in the end. The series ended with Theo graduating from college, overcoming his dyslexia and his slackness in his youth. To this day this idea is still being pushed into the minds of Black youth as the salvation of the race, although White students are growing more and more frustrated with the rising costs of tuition, the never ending student loan issue, which is now in the billion dollar range, and the lack of jobs one discovers after they've graduated. But Bill, I mean Dr. Bill and others in the Black middle class swears by this notion that a college degree will guarantee you a slot somewhere in the American Dream. Even if his doctorate degree was the result of simply submitting a thesis about the importance of using
Fat Albert and The Cosby Kids as a learning tool...whoopee...
Is this a subtle hint that being poor and uneducated is attributed to attitude or drive? Of being of inferior stock? So poor people are not dignified in any sense? This was the ultimate exhibition of Black middle class fantasy, in which the cries of the poor, downtrodden and destitute are completely ignored, as well as propagating the notion that the Civil Rights movement was the right course for African Americans to take, to not rock the boat and ask for justice and independence, but to ask to be included in a system that became rich from theft, exploitation and oppression. As usual with these assimilationists, a tribute was given to
Dr. King, which symbolized assimilation and intergration and so called nonviolence, but not to
Malcolm X or any of the Black Power movement participants.
All of this was being broadcast during the height of Reaganomics and the Bush era, when social programs were cut, Black women were being targeted as welfare queens, drugs all of a sudden started appearing in the hood, wrecking families and communities, sending families scurrying in different directions, most of them having a negative end with either death or prison being the end result. Then you had the Iran/Contra scandal, with Reagan disavowing any knowledge of the issue, jobs were cut, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. You will be hard pressed to find a Black Democrat who will disagree with this notion, so how is it
now easy to believe this man's tirades about people who were the victims of these dilemnas?
Now A Different World was different in that it somewhat spoke of the issues facing a so called Black college, but it was not really a different world when you look at it more closely,
Dwayne Wayne, a homeboy from the streets of New York falls in love with a light-skinned, gentille southern Belle name
Whitley Gilbert, who was materialistic to say the least, yet in the end she gets her way, anyone who represented the counterculture was mocked, whether it was
Freddie the hippie,
Shaza Zulu, the pseudo Afrocentric who can't seem to graduate, to
Terrence Taylor, who becomes Muslim, but you don't really know what he believes, due of the ambiguous way the teachings of Islam were handled by the show. It gave you the impression that to be a Muslim was all about freeing oneself from the oppression of the White man, ala the
Nation of Islam, but I won't get into specifics with this right now. In the final season, Freddie gets rid of the hippie look, straightens out her hair, and joins the system and tells
Lena(played by
Jada Pinkett Smith) that she's going to assimilate into the system with the hopes of
changing the system....Such delusion...Again this show gives a tribute to Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement, and pushes the constant barrage of vote, vote, vote, even with Rev. Jesse Jackson making an appearance on one episode.
So while The Cosby Show stayed away from racial politics of any sort, A Different World grazed those issues, but in an assimilationist fashion.
So in reality both shows were just as much propagandist in nature as any other show on television. This time it was for middle class Blacks. And in many cases it worked, due to the lack of approaching racial politics among everyday life for Blacks, especially the ones who don't make it to college for whatever reasons. But in tap dancing around those issues, it created the sense in White people that White supremacy and privilege doesn't really exist, and Blacks are just victimizing themselves, asking for handouts.
Then there's the issue of
Dr. Alvin Poussaint, who acted as the consultant for the two latter of Dr. Bill's shows, as well as co-written a book with Dr. Bill entitled
C'mon On People...aimed at who? Poor Blacks of course. But just who is Dr. Alvin Poussaint? Well he's a psychiatrist from....
Hold up...Hold up...HOOOOOLD UPPP!
Dost thou not smelleth something fishy in thy nostrils?
What's the relationship between a psychiatrist and a sitcom? There shouldn't be any, at least until you read the book
The Hidden Persuaders by
Vance Packard, and begin to make the connection.
The symbol manipulators and their research advisers have developed their depth views of us by sitting at the feet of psychiatrists and social scientists (particularly psychologists and sociologists) who have been hiring themselves out as "practical" consultants or setting up their own research firms.
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Dr. Poussaint's take on the working relationship was that he was commisioned to go through the scripts, because the majority of the writers were WHITE, and make sure that there were no nuances or hints of racial stereotyping in the script. Sounds pretty decent right? Dr. Poussaint has openly admitted that many of the Whites in Hollywood are racist, but he only says that within the confines of other cohorts who make that claim as well. I don't recall any real discussion on any major network, including Dr. Bill's favorite network,
NBC, about the racism in Hollywood. In a discussion entitled
Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood and Corporate Power, he had this to say:
I worked in media and often I was surprised. Sometimes very intelligent, mostly white writers, college graduates, held stereotypes about a lot of people. When they wrote them into stories they would write it in a stereotypic point of view. It's like they didn't know any other way to write it. Because frequently they were not involved in a social personal way with Blacks, Latinos or Asian-Americans. And so when they had to write something about them, they had to draw on what they knew and frequently what they knew was what they picked up from the media and frequently that was stereotypical.
Regarding the Disney cartoon moive
Tarzan: ...
Kids in Africa see it. They see a white man in African who is superior, swinging from trees to trees, they see no Africans. They see gorillas being the ones they relate to. What does it mean to an African child? Is it promoting white supremacy to these Black African children who watch Tarzan in a movie theater in Africa? Of course it will, and it might be promoting it around the world.
So basically you have this actor who realizes the power of the media in brainwashing and mind manipulation, so much so that he would employ a Black psychiatrist to check the scripts and red flag any nuances that may refer to racial stereotyping, but yet his books and public tirades are hurled against the Black victims? Why do the both of them continue to work together and write books together slamming the actions of the victim, but not notate in public the actions of the aggressor? Do you see my point?
The only time I heard him rail against any actors were against the likes of
Martin Lawrence and
Jamie Foxx for their impersonations of
Shenehneh and
Ugly Wanda, but now I don't even hear that against the likes of
Tyler Perry and his
Madea impersonations, and Tyler CONTINUES to use this schtick, which has helped make him into arguably the most successful Black male actor/producer in history, but yet there's no tirade against him? What's the deal, Bill? Why not speak against the actors of today? Why not speak against Lupita's role in
12 Years A Slave, or any of these other roles that were meant to demean and stereotype Blacks, like you did
Lisa Bonet when she did
Angel Heart?
Surely they are educated enough to know the sordid history of Hollywood and the Academy Awards.
http://realquwwa.blogspot.com/2014/03/my-baloney-has-first-nameits-o-s-c-r.html Isn't it obvious that these two men, who strut around wearing their doctor titles and claim to be educated, should know that the actions of the poor Blacks are no different than those of Whites during the Depression.? Were they not fighting over alcohol? Were there not White gangsters during that time? I mean
Al Capone wasn't Black to my recollection. And the likes of him were ABOVE THE LAW. Where is it written that the actions of Whites during the Depression were any different? Was crime lesser with them? Where is their evidence which points to the discrepancies among poor Blacks as opposed to poor Whites? Were domestic abuse and prostitution any less with them? Didn't they use dance marathons, drugs, movies and gambling as a means of escape as well? Were the spending habits of poor Whites any different? If so, then why would an executive make this statement, also contained in the book
The Hidden Persuaders:
"We can sell these people refrigerators. They may not have room for them, and they will put them on the front porch. They will buy a big automobile and all the luxuries, but they never move up the scale."
—Chicago ad executive, at a forum on lower-class buying habits
Surely both men should know these things, unless their degrees are only symbolic, or they are playing the role of "not biting the hand that feeds them", or they are willingly playing a game with people's minds, and engaging in engineering consent of genocide and elimination of the poor and downtrodden masses of Black people.
Now there's word of a new sitcom starring this man slated for possibly the 2014 fall season. One only knows what type of tricks this man has up his sleeves now. My best suggestion is that he quits while he
thinks he's ahead.
