How significant do you see Bill Cosby's fall from grace as a bad mark against black family values as was depicted by the Cosby Show? Even as the show was running, many black people called it a pipe dream and claimed that such a family was rare in the black community. Can his problems be considered self fulfilling to that claim? I was a child of the 1930s and 40s, and have an opinion based on that period, but I wonder how the younger set sees it. How do you see the legacy of the Cosby Show?
Sadly I also agree that the legacy is tarnished.. but I think that the values and the lifestyle portrayed n the Cosby show were very real for a lot more people of color than many people think. I was always offended by the notion put forth by some.. black and white, that the Cosby portrayal of black life was rare. They were not living the life of Phillip Banks or George Jefferson but both were
professionals and while it was not common in communities of color.. to have a doctor and a lawyer heading the same family, there was a black middle class/upper middle class in communities all across America at the time and many were teachers, city workers, law enforcement etc. Even in the material sense sense the Huxtables always came off as well off but not rich and the product of a solid middle class upbringing themselves.. Just look at any number of neighborhoods throughout New York alone.. since that was the setting for the show, you will find neighborhoods that were predominantly populated by people of color throughout Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and parts of Harlem where the inhabitants were hard working home owning, tax paying, middleclass, upper middle class citizens who did not speak ebonics (they
could ... but they didn't .. y'all know how that goes...
). The notion that somehow most black folks lived lives that were more like that of the Evans family in Chicago and that the Huxtables were a fabrication as opposed to just not as common but certainly not a rarity always made me go hmmmmmmm when I considered the fact that no one questioned the Banks family as being a "real portrayal" of black life.. but were all over Cosby and I always suspected it was because the Huxtables were actually a more realistic portrayal of the black middle class than many wanted to think because it would tarnish that "noble urban savage" image.. and for those blackfolks who criticized the show, they were an example of the same mentality that thinks of speaking proper English as "talking white" .. which is just ridiculous. The Huxtables had more in common with the Winslows as opposed to the Banks family but they all had similar roots.
As far as Cosby himself goes.. If the allegations are true then it is despicable and he deserves what he gets. The very first album I ever bought was Wonderfulness... and I knew the story of The Chicken Heart word for word by heart.. so it is very very sad to me. Where there is smoke there is fire. Plus... I believe that when things like this happen it reflects on black men in general as a whole more than it does on other people with the possible exception of Arabs. I think that many here are under 50 so the recollection may be different as an example for the Simpson case.. but I would be willing to bet that most black men over 50 have a different vibe of that whole affair, especially if they worked in the corporate world in some capacity as it was all unfolding and the verdict was eventually rendered. I remember a very subtle, unspoken but overall very discernible (If you were on the receiving end.. ) hostile vibe that permeated the atmosphere, particularly on the day the verdict was reached. I remember mentioning this to some white friends of mine at the time and they thought I was imagining things but
every black man I spoke to who was close to 30 or older at the time picked up on it as well. I was in N.Y.C. at the time so things were kind of tense anyway then... and my point with that is that when things like this happen the stigma for lack of a better term often gets spread around subliminally.. the old... "There's another one!" thing...