Bill Cosby's Rise to Public Intellectual

           Bill Cosby is one of America’s favorite and most well-known family men. Stand-Up comedy, Fat Albert, The Cosby Show, Kids Say the Darndest things – Cosby has done it all. A human experience that he cannot identify with and make comical does not seem to exist. Ultimately, Cosby becomes much more than a comedian and encompasses all roles a man can assume in his life: a father, husband, friend, and mentor. Over the past forty years, America has had the pleasure of growing up or growing old with Cosby.  As of late, though, Cosby has added one more title to his repertoire: advocate.  In recent years, Cosby has made it clear that he is not only America’s funny man; he also cares deeply about education and the advancement of the black community. Though few could predict a shift in his role as a comedian and all-American family man, Cosby has transformed into a public intellectual.

            As defined in the blog post “The ‘Decline’of Public Intellectuals?” by Steven Mack, a public intellectual is a social critic who has accumulated an audience. This audience may have been accumulated though classroom, stage, or other means. Once the public intellectual has an audience, the individual must have ideas to convey. Ideally, the public intellectual would not have anything prohibiting his or her speech, such as a position in a governmental office. Though those holding a government position or a different type of office may seem like perfect candidates for consideration as public intellectuals, they often have imposed agendas – whether covert or overt – that they must abide by.  However, the public intellectual is at his or her best when uninhibited and therefore able to speak freely about what he or she finds necessary for an improved society.

            Going by the standards of the definition provided above, one less familiar with Cosby’s most recent works may wonder how he qualifies as a public intellectual. To understand this, one must also understand the chain of events in Cosby’s life that led to his rise in notoriety.  Coming from humble beginnings, life began to pick up for Cosby when he joined the navy, where he ran track. As a result of running track, Cosby received a scholarship to Temple University. While attending Temple, Cosby worked as a bartender at a coffee house, and telling jokes at the coffee house eventually led to performances in New York. In his earliest performances, inspired by comedian Dick Gregory, Cosby gave his audience a taste of his thoughts on race. However, Cosby eventually decides to stick with topics he believes are more universal, such as family and dating. With his appearance on The Tonight Show in 1963, Cosby began to accumulate a broader audience, and the rest is history.

            Outside of comedy, Cosby has had extensive experience within the education system. In 1976, Cosby earned a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Cosby’s doctoral thesis was entitled "An Integration of the Visual Media via Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning."   Just as the name implies, Cosby’s thesis explores the worlds of education and entertainment, two worlds in which he had experience and success in. In his dissertation, Cosby addressed two fundamental issues: the need to eliminate institutional racism and the need to develop a curriculum that will best help elementary school students reach their full potential.

Although Cosby qualifies as a public intellectual through the combination of his broad audience and his concern for America’s education system, he has endured much criticism of his intellect. One of the primary reasons for this criticism lies with a speech Cosby gave at the NAACP’s celebration of Brown v. Board of Education’s 50^th anniversary.  This 2004 speech has gone down in infamy as the “Pound Cake” speech, a result of Cosby discussing a young African American male who stole a pound cake and was shot in the head by a police officer as a result of the crime. After mentioning a tragedy like the one above, the speaker’s typical and expected response is outrage with the officer and the system as a whole. Cosby, on the other hand, took a drastically different stance. In the speech, he questions why the young man stole the pound cake in the first place. This question wasn’t asked out of sympathy for the young man, but instead out of anger that this man stole in the first place. The entire speech continues in this vein, forcing Cosby’s listeners out of any congratulatory mood they had been in and slapping them in the face with what Cosby perceives to be the reality of the black community.

One of the aspects that makes Cosby’s speech so interesting is that much of what he said would be perceived as racist if it flowed from white lips. In fact, a major critique Cosby received after the speech was that he had forgotten where he came from and how systematically difficult life is for young black men, especially. Instead of taking Cosby seriously, many discounted Cosby’s speech because of his age. The speech was perceived as the ramblings of an old man as opposed to a well thought-out critique on society. Many of those who did take Cosby seriously called his speech inappropriate and insensitive. Cosby was asked to speak in honor of Brown v. Board of Education and instead of congratulating America on our progress as a nation, he chose to single out the black community and blame them for their current plight. One may easily see how Cosby’s speech could be interpreted as off balance, inappropriate, or just plain wrong.

            If one were to hear or read Cosby’s speech without its conclusion, one could very easily write the speech off as an angry rant or the speech of a man past his prime. However, Cosby ends his speech with the following:

So, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for the award (big laughter) and giving me an opportunity to speak because, I mean, this is the future, and all of these people who lined up and done. They've got to be wondering what the hell happened. Brown V. Board of Education, these people who marched and were hit in the face with rocks and punched in the face to get an education and we got these knuckleheads walking around who don't want to learn English (clapping) I know that you all know it. I just want to get you as angry that you ought to be. …

By stating that his goal is to anger his audience, Bill Cosby does two things: He demands that his speech be looked at analytically and tells his audience that he does indeed know what he is talking about.

            Cosby’s statement of his attempt to anger his audience frames his entire speech. His claim that black youth are lazy and are not taking the proper course of action in order to make the most of the opportunity given them through Brown v. Board of Education no longer seems racist. Furthermore, Cosby’s claims that parents need to be a more active part of their children’s education no longer rings as judgmental or harsh. If one assumes that Cosby is in his right mind and means exactly what he says, then his social commentary now carries weight. His speech no longer presents itself as a rant against the African American community, but instead transforms into a plea from one of its trusted members to do better.

One must also remember the context in which Cosby is giving this speech: Brown v. Board of Education’s 50^th Anniversary.  This context and the speech’s conclusion show why Cosby is enraged. Brown v. Board of Education was a defining moment in America’s social and racial history. This court case determined that “separate but equal” within the school system was a thing of the past and would no longer be tolerated. Through this case, the Supreme Court determined that separate was inherently unequal and equality within a society needed to begin in the education process. Fifty years later, Bill Cosby tells the NAACP, the black community, and America as a whole that the current state of the black community and the performance of young African Americans in school do not reflect the work and progress which went into creating the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

            Though Cosby’s speech is provocative, it does exactly what its author intended: The speech forced the audience out a state of complacency and into action. According to Mack’s standard of the function of a public intellectual, Cosby did exactly what a public intellectual is meant to.

…Trained to it or not, all participants in self-government are duty-bound to prod, poke, and pester the powerful institutions that would shape their lives. And so if public intellectuals have any role to play in a democracy—and they do—it’s simply to keep the pot boiling. The measure of public intellectual work is not whether the people are listening, but whether they’re hearing things worth talking about.

While Cosby’s speech on Brown v. Board of Education has been his most controversial piece of work, Cosby has steadily continued his work towards bettering the black community and encouraging equality of education. Though his social commentary may never be appreciated, he has done to job of a public intellectual: he has given people something worth hearing and worth talking about.

            For decades, Bill Cosby has captivated and entertained America with his humor, capturing a large audience by discussing his life and its funny moments. As Cosby made the transition from mere comedian to public intellectual, discussing the importance of education and the current state of the Black community, his faithful audience continued to listen. Though many members of the audience have not been pleased with what Cosby has had to say, he has been successful at stimulating discussion and “stirring the pot.” As he continues his rise as a public intellectual, there is no way to tell what value his words will have on the future of America and the communities he is discussing today. If his influence continues to grow, the speaker at the 100^th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education the speaker might even say, “Bill Cosby was right. And look how far we have come because we listened.”

Endnotes

Cosby,William Henry,,Jr. (1976). An integration of the visual media via "fat albert and the cosby kids" into the elementary school curriculum as a teaching aid and vehicle to achieve increased learning. University of Massachusetts Amherst). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, , 267 p. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/302825147?accountid=14749. (302825147).

Cosby, Bill, and Alvin F. Poussaint. Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007. Print.

Mack, Stephen. "The "Decline" of Public Intellectuals?" The New Democratic Review. Stephen Mack, 14 Aug. 2007. Web. Sept. 2012. <http://www.stephenmack.com/blog/archives/2007/08/index.html>.

"Bill Cosby Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 14 Sept. 2012. <http://www.biography.com/people/bill-cosby-9258468>.

"Dr. Bill Cosby Speaks." Bill Cosby Speech Transcript. Eight Cities Media and Publication, n.d. Web. Sept. 2012. <http://www.eightcitiesmap.com/transcript_bc.htm>.