Tragedy of Bill Cosby

June 16, 2004

It is ironic that Bill Cosby would be the one to express his disgust at certain distasteful aspects of Afro-American sub-culture that has emerged out of the ghettos of that society.

Bill Cosby, much to the delight of all the anti-black racists internationally, has expressly criticised the trend of black youth to wear bits of clothing backwards, wrong-sided and over-sized, and he wondered loudly where the parents were, when teenagers first began to succumb to the lure of such "fashionable" trends that are indicative of attitudes and values, which he suggests eventually lead to delinquency, anti-social behaviour and violent habits.

Mr Cosby has since then been applauded widely by people from every single imaginary quarter around the world.

Interestingly though, in 2002, in the London Sunday Times, a young African female writer, Nina Saro-Wiwa, took great pains in disclaiming that "n----r/ghetto culture is synonymous with African culture."

In response to her, I ventured into definitions of culture and suggested that the definition I found most apt is the one used by virologists who prepare an environment, called a culture, in which they nurture viruses under varied specific conditions in order to observe, record and analyse growth, transformations, metamorphoses and so on in the interest of determining cures.

But as I said then, viruses are feisty, unpredictable bitches much unlike human beings who by nature are so quick to succumb to zones of comfort and to social conditioning. And I showed how over the years of civilisation the owners and administrators of social capital, who have always been a small minority, have in fact been the major designer of that social conditioning to such an extent that after a while the conditioning works on "auto-pilot."

In this present phase of globalisation it was suggested that the tendency of this conditioning is to reduce the world and all the peoples of the world to a common cultural sameness, to a common denominator that is best exemplified by crass American commercialisation, hence the reason why today so much of the world have found ourselves, almost as a matter of course, raising fully Americanised children.

In rebuttal, much of the most depressed areas of the world have responded to this tendency of global capital with a revival of forms of religious fundamentalisms and variant forms of ethnic nationalisms.

However in my response to Nina Saro-Wiwa, much emphasis was placed on the question of entertainment as a cultural weapon in the process of conditioning. I said then that:

"...We need to understand that the products of the multi-billion entertainment industry, the powerful icons of music and fashion, are the most profitable commodities to the prevailing form of 'Americanism.' Together these two comprise today the foremost conduit through which a value-system is generalised internationally as a platform for sustainable economic networking and control . ."

As concrete example of what was just quoted, the article dealt with the smuggle of the Afro-American jazz artists in the '50s and '60s who wished to set themselves apart and to give particular voice to their authentic cultural manifestation. There was an underlying political and social consciousness to their militancy.

They demanded that their music be deemed black classical music in the same vein as the compositions of Beethoven, Mozart and other European masters. They even marched on the radio stations, just as calypsonians are doing now in T&T, demanding more airplay for their music.

In the end, commercialisation proved their biggest enemy. The only jazz that enjoyed airplay was the watered-down "pop" versions that were devoid of the militant consciousness and spirit.

The Afro-American exponents of the blues suffered the very same process until the white American students rediscovered them and there was a brief respite for the then 75-year-olds such as Mississippi John Hurt and John Lee Hooker.

The spirit of black triumphalism that prevailed in gospel music and which was transported into secular soul music with the likes of Ray Charles and Sam Cooke also met the same fate. It was too distinct and apart. And the popular saying to white Americans that "...you can learn to do the Watsui, but we are the Watusi," may have even been misunderstood and deemed a subtle threat.

The result was the confining of soul music to the category of "R&B" and the projection of meaningless disco and later the insipid pop that now reigns despite the fact that the lyrics and the rhythm never seem to mesh.

The response from below, from the youths in the ghettoes, brought the emergence of "break dancing," "hip-hop" and "rap" in which the power of the rhythmic word was reaffirmed, and the purpose again was to be distinct in cultural expression anal to set apart a particular people.

Well, the moguls of capital have joined and are busying making young black males and females big-time millionaires on terms set by the industry.

In the process all attempts at distinctive departures and divergent creative manifestations are emasculated and reduced to common sop; the conduit is instant wealth, gold-plated mansions, palatial "cribs," glorified trinkets, to turn the heads of these youth artists, compromise their integrity and dull the power of their purpose and message to generalise a consciousness that is counter to the given status-quo.

All who become wise and begin to resist the crass commercialisation are marginalised, left out of the "loop" and are eventually forgotten. And so every day another one of these youth artists crashes into oblivion.

In that very piece in 2002, it was pointed out that, "...When Bill Cosby gave the world a view of Afro-American ghetto life in the animated cartoon series Fat Albert and Friends, conscious at the need to project back presence as positive statement, little did he know that over-sized, hand-me-down garments and high and low-heeled sneakers, the permanent cheap footwear of the ghetto children, would be seized upon by the fashion moguls and be transformed into a multi-billion industry."

Cosby's positive statement, indicative of the realities of the human condition of poverty, was turned around and used as a force against the spirit of the Afro-American revolutionary departure. Fat Albert was translated unto many languages, and made Bill Cosby at one time one of the richest entertainers, black or white, in the business.

Today Fat Albert and Re-Run and others with their over-size clothes and back-to-front caps have returned to haunt Bill Cosby and no amount of effort on his part to recuperate with proper images of Dr Huxtable and family can repair the damage already done in terms of equating Africa secular culture with ghetto culture.

But a whole new group of young black artists are arriving spearheaded by the likes of people such as Alicia Keys and India Arie who are talking about "classical soul" as a new departure. Not surprisingly they are almost all women.