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Is Bill Cosby Right?

Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost its Mind?

by Michael Eric Dyson

The well-regarded social critic Michael Eric Dyson takes on the iconic entertainer Bill Cosby for comments in public forums in which Cosby critiqued the clothing styles, speech patterns, and behavior of black youth. Those comments, which made newspaper headlines, were seen by some as overly harsh and unfair, while others welcomed them, praising Cosby's directness. Dyson acknowledges Cosby's achievements and contributions, and indeed specifically cites a famous 1969 Playboy interview in which Cosby forthrightly addressed race; but, in Dyson's view, Cosby has changed, and has joined what he calls the "Afristocracy," African-American achievers who, in the spirit of W.E.B. DuBois, see their mission as one of uplifting the community. Dyson questions their middle-class value system, and their efforts to impose it on the "ghettocracy." He asks the question in his title, and offers research to refute Cosby's assertions. Going further, he questions Cosby's status as a role model, citing a troubled personal life. As a critic, Dyson is trained to tease meaning out of every speech act. Is Michael Eric Dyson right? Or is he attacking the man, not the message?

Available editions of Is Bill Cosby Right?

	9780465017195, Hardcover, Perseus Books Group, 2005 $1.00 (Good Condition) Other copies of 9780465017195

Publisher Notes

The acclaimed "hip-hop intellectual" exposes the raw nerve of class and generational warfare in black America with this provocative defense of impoverished African Americans

Nothing exposed the class and generational divide in black America more starkly than Bill Cosby's now-infamous assault on the black poor when he received an NAACP award in the spring of 2004. The comedian-cum-social critic lamented the lack of parenting, poor academic performance, sexual promiscuity, and criminal behavior among what he called the "knuckleheads" of the African-American community. Even more surprising than his comments, however, was the fact that his audience laughed and applauded.

Best-selling writer, preacher, and scholar Michael Eric Dyson uses the Cosby brouhaha as a window on a growing cultural divide within the African-American community. According to Dyson, the "Afristocracy" -lawyers, physicians, intellectuals, bankers, civil rights leaders, entertainers, and other professionals-looks with disdain upon the black poor who make up the "Ghettocracy" -single mothers on welfare, the married, single, and working poor, the incarcerated, and a battalion of impoverished children. Dyson explains why the black middle class has joined mainstream America to blame the poor for their troubles, rather than tackling the systemic injustices that shape their lives. He exposes the flawed logic of Cosby's diatribe and offers a principled defense of the wrongly maligned black citizens at the bottom of the social totem pole. Displaying the critical prowess that has made him the nation's preeminent spokesman for the hip-hop generation, Dyson challenges us all-black and white-to confront the social problems that the civil rights movement failed to solve.

Media Reviews

'[An] incisive polemic....Dyson is best when he vaults from particular Cosby comments into a wide-ranging review of current scholarship on black social attitudes....Dyson effectively damns Cosby with his own words."

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