Cosby's Sacrifice
From there he was able to create an essay titled This is How We Lost to the White Man. And through the narrative of Bill Cosby (before his being accused for sexual assault), we begin to understand more about Coates thought process. “The Pound Cake speech,” one of the most known speeches of Cosby (even having its own WiKi page) where Cosby blames the condition of black life on black people themselves. He said things like “[There] are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake,…If you get caught with it [poundcake], you’re going to embarrass your mother” (Atlantic). At first Coates believed those words of Cosby to be those of an “elitist” and thought the best course of action
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Race affects children in ways that many do not notice, happening both on a conscious and subconscious level. To find an example of how race affects a child of color one doesn't have to look far, just turn on their television and look at the news. There are many cases every week about how a child of color is affected due to their color. Each time an African-American child loses his/her father to jail or death that is directly affecting the child. Yes, this happens to children of all races, but specifically in America “African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population” and “African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites” which is a huge a discrepancy (NAACP). In a less noticeable fashion the education system is against non-white students. Most students would agree they focus more in a class if they feel a connection with their teacher, but the problem with that connection is that many students lack that connection due to race. Linda Darling-Hammond said “that the quality of instruction given to African-American students was, on average, much lower than that given white students, thus creating a racial gap in aggregate achievement at the end of first grade” in her essay Unequal opportunity: Race and education. This achievement gap only becomes larger and larger leading to “35% of black children [in] grades 7-12 [being] suspended or
Race affects children in ways that many do not notice, happening both on a conscious and subconscious level. To find an example of how race affects a child of color one doesn't have to look far, just turn on their television and look at the news. There are many cases every week about how a child of color is affected due to their color. Each time an African-American child loses his/her father to jail or death that is directly affecting the child. Yes, this happens to children of all races, but specifically in America “African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population” and “African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites” which is a huge a discrepancy (NAACP). In a less noticeable fashion the education system is against non-white students. Most students would agree they focus more in a class if they feel a connection with their teacher, but the problem with that connection is that many students lack that connection due to race. Linda Darling-Hammond said “that the quality of instruction given to African-American students was, on average, much lower than that given white students, thus creating a racial gap in aggregate achievement at the end of first grade” in her essay Unequal opportunity: Race and education. This achievement gap only becomes larger and larger leading to “35% of black children [in] grades 7-12 [being] suspended or