The writing below is by a Black Woman, a Black Mother that I have never met by the name of Ms. Gloria Dulan-Wilson.  I came across it in a chain of forwarded emails from which I could not determine its origin other than the fact she signed it with "Luv", which alone drew a tear...Kelli

 

                  Afrostocracy, interesting reading...A Stinging Truth!!

 We are indeed a sad group of people -- we Black, African American,  Negro, Hoodie, N-Word, and all the other names that have been appended to us over the past few hundred years. 
 
We just won't admit that Bill Cosby is absolutely correct in his recently made and overly-vilified NAACP speech.  It's amazing, my education of the 50's and 60's is a thousand times better than the current education received by our youth.  Our parents were a thousand times better, and more responsible than those of the present day.  You could actually walk out of my school in Oklahoma City with a High School  diploma and get a better job than what these kids can get with their current level of education. 
 

Cosby has lived long enough to be able to see what's going on.  He deliberately returned to college and got a PhD in education because he was interested in making a contribution to the people he entertained. 
 
I think it's deplorable that the vast majority of our young females exhibit behaviors that make one wonder whether the derogatory terms are actually true.  The fact that "Shaniqua" -- a made up africazoid name proliferates in the poorer communities because they never received the appropriate education to learn about the origins of their heritage, is sad indeed.
 
As a "bourgeois" Black, who grew up proud of her African Heritage, we were taught Black history in school and in our homes from pre-school all the way through high school.. And this  was in a segregated school.   All of our teachers were Black.  We were also taught manners, respect, articulation, and all the things one needed to have to succeed as much as possible in a racist society.  That society has not changed.  But the principles by which Black parents raise their children appears to have been drastically altered.  And I find it  distressing, disgusting, deplorable, disturbing, discouraging, disheartening. 
 
It's not about hate.. Cosby does not hate his people. He hates what's happening to them -- and by extension -- what's not happening to them The tragedy is that we have become so fragmented in our own thinking, so weak in our own underpinnings, that we don't get it.. We more echo liberal whites -- who say we're "doing the best we can under the circumstances" than following the determination and guts our forefathers had in pushing for education and freedom by any means necessary.
 
Our priorities are so screwed up that we don't even see a wake up call when it hits upside the head.  And Coz gave us a wake up call.  He makes generous contributions to our institutions of educations, because by and large the rest of us don't.  He tries to put forth a positive example because the broad based support for negative imagery is so overwhelming.
 
So My question to the author of this little tome is what is your point really?  Are you pushing for the status quo, where our kids continue to denigrate themselves?  Are you saying it's all right for our kids to continue being hostile, surly, disrespectful, ignorant, foul???? 
 
Are you saying it's okay for them to continue being marginalized because the educational equality we fought so hard for has so far eluded them, and no one seems to be really working on bringing them up to parity?
 

You seem to have a problem with the middle class because they have done what 's necessary to move beyond the level of ignorance that the mainstream has tried to relegate them to? 
 
No, intelligence and education might not stop a bullet, or prevent an ignorant racist cop from harassing you, but what it might do is make it possible for us to stop killing, maiming and disrespecting each other.  And that to me is even more important.  I refuse to live in a neighborhood where the people hate themselves and each other.  I refuse to accept that it's all the fault of whites.  We have dropped the ball.  The principles we were raised with are timeless -- but we have the audacity to say they are old fashioned and have gone out of style. 
 
I'm one of those terrible parents who would not let her children hang out on the corner with the rest of the kids because they were out of control.  I am one of those parents who insisted that their children watch PBS, not Def Comedy Jam in my home.  I'm one of those parents who insisted that my children learn to pronounce their words correctly, rather than playing the ebonics game.

  
I am one of the parents whose kids had to earn their name brand sneakers by getting good grades and helping me around the house.  I am one of those parents who did not feel guilty if they didn't have what all the other kids had -- they have an education, they have dignity and respect, they have a vision, and they are still alive.
 
You need to check out what Bill Cosby is really talking about before you and the NAACP level any additional castigations in his direction.  If you live in an area where you have to dodge bullets, where you can hear people yelling out the windows the kinds of words no young child should hear; if you are watching a young girl with a skirt hiked half way up her behind, you cannot conjugate a proper sentence, but knows how to go down on a man, a young male who wears his hat turned to the side like Huntz Hall of the Bowery Boys, and yet thinks he's hip -- an original gangster (OG), you have to agree with Coz -- the Black power movement, the cultural awareness, the Black love, the quest for education -- have either been derailed, or sidetracked. 
 

What we need to be doing, instead of trying to beat up on Cosby, is to come up with a new plan for a mass re-education of our people who have fallen through the cracks.  Think Carter G.  Woodson -- Mis-Education of the Negro -- It's over 70 years since it was written, still hits home. Time for a review.
 
Interestingly, we now know that the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas had its place.  It opened up schools to those who had been blocked out.  But, think about it, Mary McLeod Bethune started Bethune Cookman College by sitting on church steps and reading to the kids in her neighborhood.  She sold sweet potato pies.  Frederick Douglass was taught to read at time when it was illegal, punishable by death.  A great many of our turn of the century Blacks got better educations in little one room class rooms, with a tablet and some chalk, than these kids are getting today.  The parents were more committed to their children getting an education.
 
Brown vs.. Board of Ed did not mean that parents could abrogate their responsibilities; it did not relieve the rest of us from the requirements of contributing to the schools in our communities -- whether we had children there or not. 
 
If you want the best, you had better be prepared to give your best.  We stopped doing that somewhere along the line.   We have come to accept mediocrity and make excuses -- We have come through the so-called Black power and Civil Rights Revolution to Ghetto and Hood mentalities.  I don't know who or what is to blame for this... It's kind of a collective downfall...Africa, the Caribbean (esp. Haiti) and other places where we are prominent, are also in turmoil -- makes you want to go hmmmm?
 
But if any group should certainly be in the forefront of making a singular mark for independence,  it definitely should be us.  We more than any group have intimate knowledge of our enemies.  We also have the most resources.   But like the ten talents, we've either squandered ours or hid them under a rock.   WE deplore those who use them, or we envy them and try to undermine them like the proverbial crabs in a barrel.  Other ethnic groups work together and supplant each others weaknesses with their strengths.  
 
WE used to do the same for each other.  We were each others' means of survival.  We could not have made it had we not joined together and protected each other.  After all, the saying "only the strong survive" came about because of our predecessors who survived the middle passage.  What must they be thinking of us at this point?  What must those who have made major sacrifices for us, think of us now.  We are moving backwards.  Yes we have the "bling-bling" but we have set the stage for others to come through and surpass us -- reaping the benefits of what we have begun.  It's time for us to wake up, buy a clue, get off the late show. 
 
Cosby is no joke.  He was totally correct.   To paraphrase Malcolm X, "He's not here to say what you like -- what pleases you, what makes you feel good.   He's here to tell you the truth.  You might not like it, but you need to hear it just the same. 
 
Luv ya,
Gloria Dulan-Wilson