The Hemmer-Beaumont Family Blog

A response from Bill Cosby himself regarding his recent comments during a speech at Consitution Hall. Go Bill!

... And the Rest Is Up to the Parents
For youths' sake, build on civil rights progress

By Bill Cosby, Entertainer Bill Cosby's most recent book is "Letters to the Next President: What We Can Do About the Real Crisis in Public Education."


I'm looking at a gentleman, a black man in his 80s, and he's sitting in a chair outside on a porch in the neighborhood. Now, this man was very important in the civil rights movement, extremely intelligent and well educated. I'm not sure whether or not he knows, at this moment, what is going on in the world.

But then he looks at me and smiles. I hold his hand. I smile back at him. Then he goes away again. I don't know where he's gone, but I do know that this beautiful, beautiful man and his beautiful wife did historically important work for us in the '50s.

Twenty years ago, after his wife's death, when he was still fully aware of the world around him, we talked about things.

"What's going on?" he asked. "I don't understand." He was talking about progress.

It seems that as he grew older, he became more dissatisfied and disappointed about the lack of educational achievements of many black youths.

What can the future hold for us with a 50% high school dropout rate in many urban areas and with a 60% illiteracy rate among inmates and a prison population that's 45% black?

I recently tried to address these issues in a speech at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education. During my remarks in Washington, I made reference to parents whose children had been arrested. And I wondered aloud: "Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18, and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol?"

Now those are important questions, even if they make people angry. Too often, the answer to them — from across the United States, regardless of race, color or creed — is: "I can't do nothin' with him." Teenage girls become unwed mothers while males are allowed to walk away without taking any responsibility.

The incarceration rate of our youth is accelerating with devastating consequences for our families and neighborhoods. Children are being killed by stray bullets in territorial gang and drug wars. Many of us feel shocked and helpless. We don't need to feel passive.

Most of these ills stem from several factors, but an important one is the lack of education of too many of our young people. Studies show a correlation between inadequate schooling and a wide range of distressing outcomes, including early death, a propensity toward violence and substance abuse. Given the high dropout rate at many urban high schools, it is easy to understand why the social fabric has become tattered.

Our children are telling us something. Why are we not listening and paying attention to the messages?

Parent power! Proper education has to begin at home. We must demand that our youth have an understanding of spoken and written English, math and sciences. We must transform our communities with a renewed commitment to our children, and that means parents must show that they value education. We don't need another federal commission to study the problem. Scholars such as W.E.B. Dubois and John Hope Franklin and activists such as Dorothy I. Height have already written eloquently on the subject. What we need now is parents sitting down with children, overseeing homework, sending children off to school in the morning well fed, clothed, rested and ready to learn.

Some media people or government people, who are already ethnically insensitive, cannot hurt us if we begin to address and act on what is already epidemic. We will then be empowered.

Change can only be set in motion when families and leaders get together and acknowledge that a problem exists. Where are the standards that tell a child: "Stop! There is hope." This has to happen in the home. It reverts back to parenting.

Parent power! Guaranteed to induce self-empowerment. Parents, including foster parents, stepparents, older sisters and brothers, neighbors and, sometimes, the younger siblings. It starts and finishes in the home. That's the one place I know where children can find respect, guidance and love. We need to be one big extended family, once again as expressed in the anthem "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

That gentleman, my friend who did so much to change the world, did his part. Now it's up to families to finish his work.

An interesting article in the Post today about how we speed through life and a movement to slow down. I am a big fan of the "simpler is better" philosophy, although Gretchen says that we do not practice voluntary simplicity to the extent that we should. I do feel as though I do many things that create stress on my life. However, I also feel as if multitasking (such as I am doing now, writing this entry and working on two other projects in my office at the same time) while producing stress, saves me time in the long run to do the slow down things that I really enjoy such as playing frisbee with the kids or gardening (there is NO way to speed up weeding). All in all, not much to say about this other than I wonder what is going to happen to our average lifespan if we keep at this pace. At this point, the median age has increased largely because of the great advances in medicine that were made in the 20th century. Can our bodies handle the larger amounts of stress that we place on them with the continued "speed up" of the world?

A Tale of 'Whoa!' (washingtonpost.com)

Let me start this by saying that if I have offended you, Elise, or anyone else for that matter, I am sorry. The intent of this essay was not to discuss whether one form of family is better than another or whether one parenting style is better suited to raising children. The intent of the original essay was to discuss Mr. Cosby’s statements that families in Black America are not taking the responsibility for raising and instilling values in their own children. I then extrapolated a bit further to suggest that this problem was not localized to one economic or ethnic group, rather that as a nation we are more likely to blame someone outside of ourselves for problems that are essentially our own responsibility. That being said, I enjoyed your response, and thought it brought forth some very salient points, some of which I would like to discuss.

I was not knocking two income families. Many people have this lifestyle either because both partners have careers that they want to follow or because economically, the income from two jobs is necessary. What I am against is a two income family that is two income solely for the purpose of having more "things". In other words, I know that there are some families who put collecting material things (e.g. cars, second homes, etc) above raising their own children. That they work like dogs to the detriment of their families so that they can have a pool in the backyard.

Socialization is an important step in a child’s development. It allows them to see what other children do and don’t do, as well as forms a way for them to relate to the outside world. Day care can provide this solid introduction to the outside world for children. What bothers me about the modern day care scenario is that parents are relying more and more on these outside forces to teach the values that had previously taught by the parents themselves. When the values are not passed to children or when differing values are passed, the outside care providers are blamed. As an example, look at the debate about sex education that has been going around the education system for decades. [Editor's note: Reading this for a final time before I post it, I feel the need to say that I DO believe in Sex Education in schools. However, I also feel that an important component to sex education is the frank discussion of the moral and ethical implications that can only come from the parent's core beliefs.]

As far as parenting style goes, I did not mean to come out against “cool” parents. In fact, someday I hope to be one. I do have problems with parents who don’t set boundaries for their children. I understand that there are those who think that it is wrong to ever say “no” to a child. I just happen to think differently. We do whatever comes to us naturally as parents, and if that is what works for some parents, then fine. What I am speaking about in the essay is the fact that in my experience, many parents would rather take the easy road than the hard. That they set a boundary and then fold when pressed on the issue (over and over again). Kids eventually realize that nothing their parents say to them will stick provided that they are persistent. Eventually, the kids stop listening altogether. In my limited experience, it matters more to be consistent than right.

Divorce. Divorce is the hardest choice that a couple can make. It is a rending of the family fabric that has been woven over years of hard work (and for those who think that marriage isn’t hard work...) Growing up, I saw what divorce did to families, both good and bad. For while the process is difficult, the result is often much better than had the family stayed together. In many instances they do need more support than other families, especially if they are coming away from an abusive or dysfunctional structure. What I was addressing in my essay was the difficulty these parents may have and the problems that they face. That often, the parent who is left as the primary caregiver cannot handle the stress of handling two roles and will therefore revert to not even doing one. That being newly single does not abdicate you from the responsibilities of being a parent. That because of situations, that caregiver may need counseling not just for themselves, but for their families in order to adjust to this new lifestyle. I have known many families who have successfully (but not easily) made this transition and I know that their family structure is stronger because of it.

In conclusion, we know that raising a family is difficult and demanding work. It is also some of the most rewarding stuff we will ever do with our lives – passing our knowledge and values on to another generation and into the future. Although I do tend to be judgmental (know thyself), I am not placing one parenting method over another, as I understand that people and situations are different. I am not a perfect parent and I’m sure that there are many things about my parenting style with which others disagree. Some I’ve heard directly, others, less so. It matters not to me, because this is the way that we are raising our children. What I am saying is that I feel that it is a parent’s responsibility, no even stronger than that, it is the parent’s obligation to society to ensure that their children are taught the core values of their own family, whatever they may be. It is not the responsibility of the church, school, day care, nanny, or whomever else to teach these things. While children may end up making decisions that go against these values, at least they would have the moral background against which to weigh these decisions (hopefully) before making them.