In May 2004, Bill Cosby made the following comments in a speech to a predominantly black audience in Washington, DC:
People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around ... The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting.
I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18, and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol? And where is the father?
People putting on their clothes backward ... isn't that a sign of something gone wrong? People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up ... and got all types of needles [piercings] going through her body? What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans. They don't know a thing about Africa.
We have millionaire football players who can't read. We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua, and Mohammed, and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail. Brown vs. the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back. They are standing on the corner and they can't speak English.
People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different husbands, or men, or whatever you call them now.
The idea is to one day get out of the projects. You don't just stay there.
We as black folks have to do a better job. Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.
The incarcerated? These are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola ... We cannot blame white people.
