Cosby's barbs could do more harm to blacks

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About this Cosby controversy: Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

It's one thing to point the finger at someone more vulnerable and less fortunate, but it's more productive to give them a hand while you are pointing out the better way.

Surely everyone has heard actor Bill Cosby berating poor black folks by now. His disturbing diatribes -- which don't need to be repeated here because they have been replayed so much by the mainstream media in recent days -- sound like a serious racist soundtrack from a KKK rally (or Fox-TV).

Poor blacks are shiftless, lazy, illiterate, uneducated, uncouth and they are all unwed mothers or abusive husbands, or so the harsh litany goes. "Those people" are the product of their own irresponsibility and lack of initiative, he says.

If you believe all that nonsense, I feel sorry for your ignorance.

Poor black people hardly have an exclusive claim to bad behavior. They just make easy targets, especially for folks who already believe the hype and don't really want to help them out.

Survive a day in their shoes walking in horrible environments not entirely of their own making with few resources and little hope, then pass judgment.

Generalizations always miss the mark, particularly when they are dished out with a platinum-plated forked tongue. Children learn by example, and they have been bombarded with poor role models in adults of every hue.

Still, it's all right for Mr. Cosby, or Cliff Huxtable, "the father of all fathers," as one Northeast man calls the comedian, to indict poor blacks en masse because he is, after all, black; just not poor anymore.

I heard one white radio caller tell the listening audience that Mr. Cosby's remarks now give license to racists who can hide behind the comedian to say publicly what they have been saying privately all along.