News Item

CHICAGO (AP) - Bill Cosby issued another scathing critique this week of some members of the black community, telling a room full of activists that black children are running around not knowing how to read or write and "going nowhere."
He also had harsh words for some struggling black men, telling them, "Stop beating up your women because you can't find a job."

Cosby made headlines in May when he upbraided some poor blacks for their grammar and accused them of squandering opportunities the civil rights movement gave them. He shot back Thursday against his critics, saying his detractors were trying in vain to hide the black community's "dirty laundry."

"Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, it's cursing and calling each other n--- as they're walking up and down the street," Cosby said during an appearance at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition & Citizenship Education Fund's annual conference.

"They think they're hip," the entertainer said. "They can't read; they can't write. They're laughing and giggling, and they're going nowhere."

In what has become a recent crusade of his, the comedian-actor, best known for his role as Heathcliff Huxtable on "The Cosby Show" from 1984 to 1992, said black parents should take a more active role in helping curtail the soaring high school dropout rate and pregnancy rate among black teens.

In his remarks in May at a commemoration of the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision, Cosby denounced some blacks' grammar and said those who commit crimes and wind up behind bars "are not political prisoners."

"I can't even talk the way these people talk, "Why you ain't,' "Where you is?' . . . and I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk," Cosby said then. "And then I heard the father talk . . . Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth."

Cosby elaborated Thursday on his previous comments in a talk interrupted several times by applause. He castigated some blacks, saying that they cannot simply blame whites for problems such as teen pregnancy and high school dropout rates.

Cosby also lamented that the racial slurs once used by those who lynched blacks are now a favorite expression of many black children. And he blamed parents.

"When you put on a record and that record is yelling "n--- this and n--- that' and you've got your little 6-year-old, 7-year-old sitting in the back seat of the car, those children hear that," he said.

He also condemned black men who missed out on opportunities and are now angry about their lives.

"You've got to stop beating up your women because you can't find a job, because you didn't want to get an education and now you're (earning) minimum wage," Cosby said. "You should have thought more of yourself when you were in high school, when you had an opportunity."

Cosby appeared Thursday with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the education fund, who defended the entertainer's statements.

"Bill is saying let's fight the right fight, let's level the playing field," Jackson said. "Drunk people can't do that. Illiterate people can't do that."