BILL COSBY VINDICATED

My last blog contained Bill Cosby's words of wisdom to the black community whereby he called on blacks "to start holding each other to a higher standard." With his remarks he condemned certain kinds of bad behavior which he blamed on poor or non-existent parenting.

At the time, his remarks were met by a backlash of hateful outrage from a number of black activists. Bill Cosby was villified as an Uncle Tom, as an Oreo (black on the outside, white on the inside), and as a traitor who sold out to the White establishment.

Those purveyors of black victimology would be well-advised to read a recent report written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley for the Educational Testing Service which vindicates Bill Cosby's remarks. Here are some of the findings in Barton and Coley's study:

The out-of-wedlock birth rate among black women under 30 is 77 percent. That means for every 100 black babies of women under 30, a remarkable 77 of them were born out-of-wedlock.

Only 35 percent of black children live with two parents. That means 65 out of every 100 black children live in a single-parent home. An educated guess would be that the single-parent is not the father.

By age 4, the average child in a professional family hears about 20 million more words than the average child in a working class family, and about 35 million more than the average child in a welfare family. Another educated guess would be that most single-parent black families are on welfare.

Only 24 percent of white eighth-graders watch four or more hours of television on an average weekday; 59 percent of their black peers do. How many bad habits are those black eighth-graders picking up by tuning in television programs which portray hip-hop lifestyles?

In mentioning mothers "who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit," Bill Cosby was talking about what will happen to black "knuckleheads" as they reach adulthood. The disproportionate number of blacks in our jails and prisons are locked up, not because they are victims of a racist society, but because of their behavior and the lack of parenting which Cosby pointed out in his words of wisdom.

When Cosby called attention to poor language skills, bad dress habits, unwed mothers with multiple births by multiple fathers, and the absence of parental supervison, he unleashed an angry "shoot the messenger" response. Those who villified Bill Cosby for expressing his views should shut-up and crawl back under the rock from which they slithered forth.

Blacks would be much better served if they would only heed Cosby's words rather than the words of demagogues who keep blaming Whites for all the problems within the black community.