We're still working with the disappointing clip in the previously post. I actually hesistate to go into this part. I may accrue levels of hateration from Black folks far exceeding any I've reached before. But Dr. Cosby called for the free discussion of dirty laundry, so let's pick up with Meet the Press asking...

MR. RUSSERT: Those are numbing numbers. They truly are. What can we do?

MR. COSBY: Let’s deal first with what people call the systemic—the, the racism that exists in this country, which is absolutely for real. But people just say it. They say, “Well, there’s systemic and institutional racism.” “What do you mean by that?” Well, what I mean is that the power structure can stop a person from getting a better education. It can stop them from living in better conditions. It can stop improvements from being made. For instance, if you have a slum landlord, if you’re lower, lower economic, to get that fixed, to bring the law in on this person, it, it just doesn’t happen. If police decide to ride in and arrest, if laws are made to go against you, I mean, this kind of thing is very, very hurtful. And then we move into areas of health, health care, where racism can stop a person from getting immediate attention...

DR. POUSSAINT: Hm.

MR. COSBY: ...in times of need, etc., etc. So when you look at education, it is my belief that it is there with a very ugly head.

There was a brief periond in Blogland where progressives that wanted to be centrist applied liberal [sic] doses of Anti-Troll Pixie Dust over their articles...lots of statements added to deflect the trolls that jumped them the last time they made such a statement. You can tell when a statement is Anti-Troll Pixie Dust when is it said, gotten out of the way and never referred to again.

MR. COSBY: However, it is also my belief that this is not the first time my race has seen systemic or institutional racism.

I disagree. It IS the first time we've seen systemic or institutional racism. It has never gone away...the original process continues in modified form (there go the white progressives).

MR. COSBY: There were times, even worse times, when lynchings were acceptable. Sure, the newspapers wrote about it, but it happened. Juries were set and freed the, people who did the, the lynching.

This sounds like almost every police shooting I've ever heard of. New York City actually budgets for police brutality claim settlements.

MR. COSBY: Therefore, we knew how to fight, we knew how to protect our children, protect our women.

Therefore?

This is where Black folks get mad at me...I want to know when this magic time was. Give me a decade, I don't need more specificity than that. I want to know who was feeling all warm, fuzzy and safe at that time as well. Because the community's behavior in that timeframe is the model he's calling on...and there was considerably more involved in keeping your wife and kids safe.

MR. COSBY: Therefore, we knew how to fight, we knew how to protect our children, protect our women. Today, in lower, lower economic areas, some people—not all—some people are not contributing to that protection.

See, things HAVE changed...and if you're really going to push this, you'll see the mainstream become MORE frightened. Do you think white folks in general would rather go into a neighborhood patrolled by dealers or the Fruit of Islam? At least with the dealers they can score...

And how do you think the cops will respond to a bunch of Black guys who feel they own the neighborhood? That will keep an eye on them as well as the criminals?

MR. COSBY: Therefore, when you see these numbers, you see, you see numbers and the character correction has not happened.

Therefore? Character correction?

MR. COSBY: Many times it’s the TV set, a BET or, or videos played, kids look at it and they admire it. It’s the proliferation of drugs into the neighborhood.

DR. POUSSAINT: And guns.

MR. COSBY: Drugs work. Drugs work. It—there’s a domino effect that the dealer—and we’ve heard this over and over—feels, “Well, what else, what else can I do? I might as well do that.” But I don’t think people draw enough to the reality that “I sell you, you use it.”

DR. POUSSAINT: Mm-hmm.

MR. COSBY: That knocks you out of any wanting to become anything other than a user. If I give it to a woman, that knocks her out of doing anything other than being a user. She also can become pregnant, and this goes to her child, better known as crack babies. There’s something that’s still going on when the child is born, in the physiological part, so we don’t know what is, is happening with the child like this. But the more we see it in neighborhoods, the more we will accept it that we can’t help it.

Hate me. But drugs are not automatically terminal. And the concern over crack babies just shows how long he's been off the block. Crack heads are either dead or non compos mentis for years. You will see no new crack problem in the Black community. Nor, having learned a lesson from crack, will you see a crystal meth problem in the Black community.

MR. COSBY: And what we need to do is give people more of a confidence that they can. They must realize that the revolution is in their apartment now. The revolution is in their house, their neighborhood, and then they can fight strongly, clearly the systemic and the institutional racism.

This is my problem with this purely punitive approach. If you talk to the "lower, lower economic," you will not hear a single problem that can be solved by mere confidence.

So what do I do with this? I hear your problem. I'm not even beefing with the Doctors leaving out any real consideration of systemic racism. I can get with a proper division of labor in developing the ideology. There is just so much wrong here in our new, official, "Meet the Press Special Edition"-delivered national racial outlook that I find it truly troubling.