The Reverend Jesse Jackson almost never gets upstaged and I had never seen the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson cry in public until last month.

Jackson invited Bill Cosby to the annual Rainbow / PUSH conference for a conversation about the controversial remarks the entertainer offered on May 17

at an NAACP dinner in Washington, D.C. when America ‘s Jell-O Man shook things up

by arguing that African Americans were betraying the legacy of civil

rights victories. Cosby said ‘the lower economic people are not holding

up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting…

They are buying things for their kids. . $500 sneakers for what? But

they won’t spend $200. For Hooked on Phonics!’

Bill Cosby came to town and upstaged the reverend by going on the

offense instead of defending his earlier remarks. Thursday morning,

Cosby showed no signs of repenting as he strode across the stage at the

Sheraton Hotel ballroom before a standing room only crowd. Sporting a

natty gold sports coat and dark glasses, he proceeded to unload a

Laundry list of black America ‘s self-imposed ills. The iconic actor and

comedian kidded that he couldn’t compete with the oratory of the

Reverend but he preached circles around Jackson in their nearly

hour-long conversation, delivering brutally frank one-liners and the

toughest of  love. The enemy, he argues, is us:

“There is a time, ladies and gentlemen,

when we have to turn the mirror around.” Cosby acknowledged he wasn’t

critiquing all blacks. . .. just the 50 percent of

African Americans in the lower economic neighborhood who drop out of

school, and the alarming proportions of black men in prison and black

teenage mothers.

The mostly black crowd seconded him with choruses of Amens.

To the critics who pose, it’s unproductive to air our dirty laundry in

public, he responds, “Your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30

every day.” It’s cursing on the way home, on the bus, train, in the

candy store. They are cursing and grabbing each other and going nowhere.

The book bag is very, very thin because there’s nothing in it.

Don’t worry about the white man, he added. I could care less about what

white people think

About me. . . Let them talk. What are they saying that is so different

from what their grandfathers said and did to us? What is different is

what we are doing to ourselves.

For those who say Cosby is just an elitist who’s “got his” but doesn’t

understand the plight of the black poor, he reminds us that, “We’re

going to turn that mirror around. It’s not just the poor-everybody’s

guilty.”

Cosby and Jackson lamented that in the 50^th years of Brown vs. Board of

Education, our failings betray our legacy. Jackson dabbed away tears as

he recalled the financial struggles at  Fisk University, a historically

black college and Jackson ‘s Alma mater.

When Cosby was done, the 1,000 people in the room all jumped to their

feet in ovation.

We have shed tears too many times, at too many watershed moments before,

while the hopes they inspired have fallen by the wayside. Not this time!

Cosby’s plea to parents:

“Before you get to the point where you say ‘I can’t do nothing with

them’, do something with them.” Teach our children to speak English.

There’s no such thing as “talking white”. When the teacher calls, show

up at the school…

When the idiot box starts spewing profane rap videos; turn it off.

Refrain from cursing around the kids. Teach our boys that women should

be cherished, not raped and demeaned… Tell them that education is a

prize we won with blood and tears, not a dishonor. Stop making excuses

for the agents and abettors of black on black crime. It costs us nothing

to do these things. But if we don’t, it will cost us infinitely more tears.