It was indeed an interesting and entertaining hour when Bill Cosby came to my school to promote his new book, Come on People!. The book is an attempt to extort the black community to give up on their passive acceptance of their present pitiable conditions and work towards improving themselves. Cosby is provocative inspite of using lot of good natured humour.
Cosby, who has a doctorate in education, repeatedly stressed the importance of education and it resonated with my view that education is the biggest transformative tool available to any underpreviliged section of the society.
During the Q&A session, he was asked a couple of questions about him not showing the positive stories and efforts coming from within the society. These were asked by people who clarified that they were actually working on these problems at the grassroots level. There was a touch of desperation and hopelesness in their voices. But Cosby was not moved and he defended his position. He was clear that unless the black population take on these issues by their horn, nothing significant would occur. I felt that while the questioners were probably working hard on their own but it was important for the greater message ( a kind of shock therapy) to be delivered by someone like Cosby who has the public image to get the attention that this issue deserves.
Cosby, who has a doctorate in education, repeatedly stressed the importance of education and it resonated with my view that education is the biggest transformative tool available to any underpreviliged section of the society.
During the Q&A session, he was asked a couple of questions about him not showing the positive stories and efforts coming from within the society. These were asked by people who clarified that they were actually working on these problems at the grassroots level. There was a touch of desperation and hopelesness in their voices. But Cosby was not moved and he defended his position. He was clear that unless the black population take on these issues by their horn, nothing significant would occur. I felt that while the questioners were probably working hard on their own but it was important for the greater message ( a kind of shock therapy) to be delivered by someone like Cosby who has the public image to get the attention that this issue deserves.
2 comments:
I have read a view that the lack of cultural capital in underprivileged families results in limited vocabulary(less than 800 words) for the child when s/he starts his/her schooling. This gap won't be bridged in majority of the cases. Have you come across any such thoughts?
I haven't come across such a thing though intutively it is quite possible. However, it also doesn't seem to automatically follow that just because they are underprivileged they dont have cultural capital. They just dont have the right kind of cultural capital.
But yeah, this could be a vicious circle and a factor in some cases.
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