Ignorance is Bliss

Much has been made of Bill Cosby's attacks on the African-American poor, his tough love that was meant to inspire them to think outside of the box and achieve greatness, yet to much dismay ended up making him a controversial figure in his own community. Though well intentioned, Cosby's blunt approach put a lot of African-Americans on the defense as they found creative arguments for everything to denigrating women to calling each other the "n" word, which was supposedly "taken back". My own feelings were mixed, while I was never for denigrating women, even in my youth as an adolescent it was never really that serious to me I had co-opted the "n" word, self proclaiming the ignorance that was cool and chic at the time. It was a reaction to the establishment; not just Caucasians, but bourgeois Blacks I was never completely comfortable around and had a love/hate relationship with.

But times change,and I eventually learned that the word not only was not necessary, but said a lot about my torn psyche. So the other day I am reading "Black Enterprise" magazine and reading the publisher and founder, Earl Graves, defend his pulling the plug on Eddie Griffin's act, a well known comedian known for playing a self-deprecating role on television and film, most notably in "Malcom and Eddie", the one sitcom he starred in. Griffin insisted on using profanity, among other things at an event that Earl Graves was putting on, and so Graves decided to cut it short. His foreword in this issues of the magazine went into depth over his reasons why he felt the need to do so, and how more of us should do so in the future when we come across similar situations.