Ms. Chastain
Russel Hanson
Blog Assignment, Exploring Claim
March 10, 2011
Brown vs. Board of Education
I arrived at my research topic actually from getting an email forward a long time ago with parts of Bill Cosby’s speech at the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education. It immediately interested me and I have always wanted to look further into his claims, but just hadn’t done it yet. Now with this paper I have the opportunity to get to the bottom of Bill Cosby’s topics. His main points were that African Americans fought so hard to earn their children the right to go to public school and get a proper education, and now in African American neighborhoods the dropout rate is 50%. He states the cause is lack of parenting. That parents now are trying to buy their children’s friendship, and aren’t there for them when the kids actually need them. Another thing Cosby says is that people are using god for an excuse. That people are saying “well, god will find a way”, when talking about things such as their children being in jail for shooting someone. People wearing their clothes backwards, sagging pants, etc. are clearly signs that something is wrong with kids, Cosby states. He also touches on how black people shouldn’t be called African Americans anymore, because they don’t know a damned thing about Africa. He talks about how people used to talk a certain way on the corner, and then talk normal when they are back in the house, but now it’s in the house also, and he says how you can’t have a profession using language like that. Also saying that they need to stop blaming white people and authority for things when they are doing it to themselves, for example living in the projects for 5 or 6 generations of a family, when the projects were only made for families to get their feet on the ground and then move out. Also a big topic he touches on is Social Trends such as girls getting onto or making fun of another girl who wants to stay a virgin until marriage, and how ridiculous this is.
