‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Oct. 14, 2007

MR. RUSSERT:  ...without beating.

DR. POUSSAINT:  That’s right.  But not beating.

MR. RUSSERT:  We’re going to take a quick break.  We’re talking to Alvin Poussaint and Bill Cosby.  A lot more of our conversation right after this.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT:  More with Bill Cosby and Dr. Alvin Poussaint.  Their book, “Come On, People:  On the Path from Victims to Victors,” after this station break.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT:  And we’re back with Dr. Alvin Poussaint, Bill Cosby.  Their new book, “Come On, People.”

Eugene Robinson, who writes for The Washington Post, frequent contributor on this program, wrote this this week, and I’m going to share it and get your reaction.

“The problem is that we all say we want an ‘honest dialogue’ about race, but we’ve been having the same old arguments for years—affirmative action, inner-city dysfunction, overt and covert racism.” “We seem to be stuck.  We need a new language, a new vocabulary, a new syntax.

“Let’s start by opening our eyes and recognizing that if there ever was a monolithic ‘black America’—absolutely and uniformly deprived and aggrieved, with invariant values and attitudes—there certainly isn’t one now.”

That fair?

DR. POUSSAINT:  Well, what’s he saying, kind of the—presenting of this two different black Americas, two different communities?  People are just...

MR. RUSSERT:  Yeah, you can’t just brand it...

DR. POUSSAINT:  That you—well, no, it’s—the community’s not monolithic.  At the same time, there are things that affect all of us as black people.  If you have a Jena-type incident, even if you weren’t the person—the kids who were, who were given those harsh sentences, you still feel that as a, as, as a black person.  If there’s a lynching of some type, you feel that as a black person, whether you are upper middle class or whether you are lower income.  Of course, lower income people catch more of it.  They’re going to be much more likely to be victims of racial profiling, discrimination in the criminal justice system.  But also, Bill and I could feel some stress and tension around racial profiling because it may happen to us, or it does happen to us, too.  So I think we’re all hooked in, in one way.  I think what separates us is, is kind of a socioeconomic divide, that you have many poor black people now suffering a lot of the things we talk about in this book.  If—you know, if you’re a high school dropout, you’re likely to be poor and you’re likely to go to, go to jail.  That’s not as true for black middle class people.  And in many, many urban areas, you have huge clusters of the very, very poor without kind of balanced communities over class lines, so that there is a separation and sometimes a feeling that the two groups are not communicating with each other.

On the other hand, many people in the black middle class are involved in programs trying to help the black community, from social programs to mentoring programs to financial support for the programs, and I think that’s all very important.  And even organizations like The Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Big Brothers Big Sisters, One Hundred Black Men, Concerned Black Men, these men, most of them in these organizations, have middle class blacks involved in them who are reaching out and trying to do something, particularly for black youth in the black community.

MR. RUSSERT:  Have you received criticism within the black community?

MR. COSBY:  Yes, but you have to weigh and measure who’s yelling what, and, and that, too, can be split on different lives.  Get an awful lot of “yeah, buts.” “Yeah, but the systemic, when it”—well, we know.  If you really understand what Bill Cosby is saying, if you really listen, he’s saying, “Get an education.  Drive your children with love and care, and they will feel confidence when they go to school.  Build a confidence about yourself and what you can control, and then you will be able to fight the systemic and the institutional.  You will care more about what you do and what is done to you.” I’ve said that over and over.

I’ve also said our children are trying to tell us something, and we’re not listening.  You’ve got to listen to these children.  You can’t feel that they’re—that, “Well, it’s the system, and that’s why it”—no, bring your children in.  If you say that “my black child is going to do more time for selling crack cocaine than your white child for selling cocaine, then I’m going to tell my black child, ‘Don’t sell it.  Here’s what’s happening, son.’” It’s the same as warning your kid that the Ku Klux Klan is coming.  Don’t tell me you can’t help it.

When you—when—there’s a, there’s a friend of mine who was in jail.  He is now a pastor in, in Wilmington.  And he talks about a thing called “shakedown.” And in shakedown, you’re in prison, you go to your cell, and all of a sudden they go whoop-whoop!  And they stop the water from flowing into your—and they turn the lights, and you have to take your clothes, and they go through everything in your cell, and you have to stand there, period.  They’re looking for stuff.  And what, and what Pastor Dee says to the people in the church—and I’m telling you, people started cheering—he said, “Shakedown in your child’s room!  Your child didn’t buy that room, your child’s not paying rent.  You’re trying to keep your child from being murdered, from going to jail, etc., etc.  Shake down.  Look under the mattress, make sure your kid doesn’t have a gun.  Look into materials on the wall.  What is your kid talking about?  Is it dangerous?” This is a part of love, and this is what we have to do, regardless of race, color or creed.

MR. RUSSERT:  Michael Eric Dyson wrote a whole book “Is Cosby Right?” saying that he overemphasizes personal responsibility...

MR. COSBY:  Wow.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...and it’s structural and systemic racism that’s the real problem.

MR. COSBY:  Wow.

DR. POUSSAINT:  Well, I—well, I think there’s always personal responsibility, no matter what’s going on in society.  There was personal responsibility, you know, during Jim Crow segregation.  And a lot of black people, their history is succeeding against the odds.  People always make—have choices to make.  If they’re poor, if they’re not poor, things that you can do or not do.  Are you going to take drugs, or you’re not going to take drugs?  Are you going to go to school, are you going to try to learn, or you’re not going to try to learn?  A lot of these are, are choices that people make, that children make, that young people make, but also that families make. Do you want to support education in your home, or you want to ignore it, in fact, do the opposite?  Right?  You, you tell parents support education, and read to their, read to their children, is a big way of supporting their education, even when they’re not yet one year, year of age, you know, when they’re four months old.  And a lot of parents are reluctant to do the simple kinds of things.  We have a HIV-AIDS epidemic in the black community where we’re responsible for 50 percent of the new cases.  Well, there’s behavior, see, connected to all of these things.  Do we have choices around what kind of food we eat?  We have an obesity, diabetes epidemic in the black community. To suggest that all of those problems are due totally and solely to systemic racism, I, I think, is just not correct.  But I think systemic racism should be worked on always.  But if we—we’re a strong people, if we’re a strong people because we raise our children to be strong, they’ll be better activists who can bring about some of those systemic changes, policy changes that are so...

MR. COSBY:  Institutional.

DR. POUSSAINT:  ...institutional changes that are important for the black community.

MR. RUSSERT:  The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, headed by Joe Califano, a statistic that just underscores our discussion today:  If you have dinner with your children five times a week, they are three times less likely to be addicted to drugs, alcohol, smoking and on down the line.

Talking about institutions, Bill Cosby, this was you at one of the callouts talking about participating in our democracy.  Let’s watch.

(Videotape)

MR. COSBY:  Your mayor says that the city is 75 percent black.  Twenty-seven percent of you voted.  Come on, people!  The simplest thing to do.  People will come and get you on the voting night.  Too much apathy.  Too much.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Vote.

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