Come On People: On The Path From Victims To Victors by Dr. Bill Cosby and Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint has two distinct aspects: parental pedagogy and political polemic.

The child rearing book is typical of self-help books. There's a statement of principle, a quote from someone who applies the principle and the rules by which the principle is applied. It's a useful pattern; I even see it at work in computer books. And I see little bad advice in the book as a set of theoretical advice on dealing with your child. Black folks have to prioritize our children higher than society as a whole does.

The polemic is the problem for most folks, and this is a problem because the book presents the pedagogy as dependent on it, and it simply is not. The polemic, in fact, depends partly on the legitimacy of the child rearing instructions for its own legitimacy. The balance of its legitimacy depends on its presentation as undoing, rather than as a response to, the legacy of slavery.

Come On People is not a revolutionary book. It assumes a basically stable society which is actively working to achieve its ideals, and its practical advice is so simplistic. In the chapter From Poverty to Prosperity is a section called Take Any Legitimate Job...which is how many people wound up signing commercial rap contracts. And in the chapter It Takes A Community, Mr. Cosby says you must 'Talk To The Police,” and pictures a conversation thus:

Cosby: Wherever [your superior officer] lives, he has a house, wife, and family?

Officer: Yes, he does.

Cosby: A hundred yards aways from where he lives is a drug dealer or dealers. Would he probably do the same thing? [set up a sting]

Officer: Probably, for sure.

Cosby: Then my next question is obvious, isn't it?

There is a smile across the officer's face.

Next, in Mr. Cosby's world, he asks the officer if, maybe, a sting is less expensive in a police officer's neighborhood, such that they would do it there and not in a Black neighborhood. In mine, the cop cuts me off and says, “Are you threatening my family?”

Truly unfortunate is the adoption of racially coded language to deliver the message. The connotations of this language are actively hostile. You literally cannot appeal to the majority of Black people this way. There does seem to be a population that has been waiting for the polemic. A branch of Bill Cosby's web site has been dedicated to discussions within the framework laid out by the book. Its organization makes it difficult to judge its activity at a glance, but it seems more active than Tavis Smiley's Covenant With Black America web site. People are commenting, asking questions and commenting on the questions. The polemic would seem to be unnecessary.

Yet the book sets no new goals and covers no new ground. There is no doubt that your children's chances of worldly success will be greater if raised in the manner the book suggests. Yet the racially coded language turns away those who can most use the advice. There's a lot of knowledge necessary to challenge ignorant interpretation of rules and laws, knowledge upper and upper middle class Black folks use reflexively. Lower middle and lower class Black people, when they assume they can, must them learn how to. Leaving aside the assignment of the ills of the Black communities to the least wealthy among us, its messages can be summed up as Tread Water...It's Your Only Hope.