LOL @ 'civil rights reenactors' (as opposed to 'civil war reenactors')

That's a great idea for a Chapelle skit....'The Civil Rights Reenactors'

...A brother sits in the front of a city bus in 2004, daring the other passengers to force him to move to the back..problem is, nobody even notices him--everybody just goes on about their business (LOL).

I'm afraid Suave has a point. I don't really disagree with all of the historical/structural arguments that the critics of Cosby's remarks are making--I'm well aware of all that.

However, the line of thinking that gives primacy to a historical/structural view of the problem is dependent upon a *moral* argument--essentially, it requires that white people are going to have to acknowledge the role that America has played in contributing to black people's predicament, and make amends.

Sadly, even the reparations activists, with all of their vitriol about the 'white man' and what he has done to us, are implicitly making themselves dependent upon that same white man, because at the end of the day, if they don't decide to *give* blacks reparations (either through judicial or legislative means), that idea is going *nowhere*. Essentially, this approach requires that you induce deep sympathy (if not guilt) in people in order to obtain the desired result.

This was the primary 'weapon' used by Dr. King and others in the Civil Rights movement to bring about change. Without the idea of moral suasion, the movement would have fallen flat on its face.

The problem with this approach in the modern context is that the ignorant/belligerent/self-destructive behavior of some of our people has enabled white America to clear its conscience when it comes to us. Our enemies are well aware of this, and this is part of the reason why our public image, projected in film, music and television, is largely that of ignorant, shiftless thugs.

I think that in the eyes of a lot of whites today, many blacks are not doing the best they can for *themselves*, even when one considers their limited means and difficult overall situation. Under these kinds of circumstances, they are unlikely to be very sympathetic to us. Keep in mind that I am well aware of the fact that the situation is much more complex than this, due to historical/structural issues, but the *perception* of whites is the key here.

I don't think that Cosby is saying that structural/historical factors are irrelevant to black people's current situation. I think that he is much too old, and has seen too much in his time, to be that naive.

I think he is saying that if we don't do what we can to straighten ourselves up as a group *first*, all of the moral arguments in the world about how we have been screwed are going to fall on deaf ears. I think that the only way that we can rectify many of the historical/structural aspects of the problem will be to *force* this nation to look at and deal with the issue, and we can't do this in our current condition, for a variety of reasons.

We cannot *force* white people to look at their history differently, or to come out of their mass denial when it comes to us and our history. However, we *can* (and should) do much, much better for *ourselves*--and I think that this is Cosby's point.