Why does Bill Cosby have to cause a rift between the younger generation of African Americans and the older generation when we need unity more than ever?
I understand this in a small way, in the rejection of my entrance into ‘popular’ culture by older Koreans, who didn’t accept the fact that I was not playing classical music, didn’t have dignity as much as a chip on my shoulder, was not fragile, ladylike, quiet, nice – or anything that my culture would have wanted for a representative. Unapologetically myself, it has taken decades to even receive a small pittance of acceptance, a reluctant nod thrown my way, as if to say – “at least you survived.â€
I am the 50 Cent of my age, a straight up thug from the streets with a long roster of beefs with older Korean journalists and community leaders, who shot at me not with bullets, but disapproving looks and disparaging press. It has been to my advantage, in that it made me impervious to criticism, and I am flak-jacketed and indestructible.
Why do we ravage our own fledgling minority culture’s efforts to grow into ourselves, when we have to fight the greater society as a whole? This leaves us in a double handicap situation, and who can expect to win, but the strongest and the hardest?
Bill Cosby’s anger and dismissal of the Hip Hop Generation’s use of language and poetic wordplay is hypocritical. If you watch even one episode of the animated series “Fat Albert,†you will find it is practically the Rosetta Stone of modern day ebonics. It was not that long ago that unintelligible character with a mollusk looking hat covering most of his head was spouting a “Whabba Beebe Habba Fabba Abba!â€
Just because Cosby truly was a revolutionary in his own way, creating the American identity of the upper middle class Black family, that doesn’t mean he now has the responsibility or the street cred to speak for the state of the race in such a disrespectful and disdainful manner. His elder statesmanship gives him much respectability, but it also gives him a measure of the Man, and makes him easy to dismiss. If he had the Jello Pudding Pop compassion for kids that he seemed to have in the past, perhaps his message would be softened, like the pudding itself will melt in the mouth, pleasingly, and not bitter and chalky.
Perhaps some would say I have no right to comment on Black culture, because I am not Black myself. I argue that, because even though my skin color is different, I am a card carrying member of the Hip Hop Generation. It is my music, the beat that has been booming throughout the soundtrack of the epic movie that is my life. Of course other music has played a major part in my dramas, but hip hop never failed to be there for the intense, vibrato highs and rock bottom lows. Its vernacular speaks to the isolation I have always felt. Public Enemy lit a political fire in me, that burns brightly to this day. It is American music, which has bounced back from all over the world, with the whirly beats of Dizzie Rascal to the dancehall manic FED EX man speedy rhymes of Sean Paul. The continual change and diversity within the genre shows the pure power of revolution, how once unheard voices can resound loudly across miles of ocean and misunderstanding.
Bill Cosby can say what he likes, say what he means, but why does he have to say it so mean?