Spike Lee, Cosby, and the Dangers of Dumbing Down

by Liberty and Power

Apparently, Bill Cosby has started a small trend. Here is what Spike Lee has to say :

"We cannot have a generation of young black kids growing up not being able to read and write.....Intelligent kids dumb down because they don't want to be ostracized. They don't want to be called a white boy or a white girl. Or a sell-out. Or an Oreo. Somehow, they equate ignorance with being black and being real and being street. The ghetto has become a badge of honor. And that's more than insane. That's bananas."

This rhetoric is encouraging but how does it translate into action? What are some of the specific actions that Spike Lee, and others who have chimed in to agree with Cosby, propose to reverse this trend?

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Jonathan Dresner - 8/22/2004

It's hard to translate a call for wholescale cultural change into specific policy without degenerating into nanny-statism. Their complaint is mostly aimed at parents who perpetuate a culture of failure.

If I were to suggest policy, though, it would be a radical reinvestment in urban infrastructure, including schools, which would both demonstrate strong social support for education and healthy urban life as well as making urban economic growth more viable.

Jonathan Dresner - 8/22/2004

Lee's comment contains what I have to assume is unintentional humor. "Banana" is the Asian-American equivalent term, with equally negative connotations, to the African-American "Oreo"

Justin Stoddard - 8/22/2004

David T. Beito asks:
"What are some of the specific actions that Spike Lee, and others who have chimed in to agree with Cosby, propose to reverse this trend?"

Spike Lee and Bill Cosby have done quite a bit already. Though I don't agree with many of Spike's politics, his movies are some of the most literate, masterful events ever to hit the screen (in my opinion of course). And, Bill Cosby has undertaken numerous projects to steer youth in the right direction, as it were.

-Justin