quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
No doubt his rights were violated, it has to be done, regardless if he's a perv, can't have governments disregarding peoples rights to justify a conviction, lest we all want to give up those rights...

quote:

The Pound Cake Speech

The Pound Cake speech was given by Bill Cosby on May 17, 2004 during an NAACP Legal Defense Fund awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision.

In the speech, which was subsequently widely disseminated and analyzed, Cosby was highly critical of the black community in the United States. He criticized the use of African-American Vernacular English, the prevalence of single-parent families, perceived emphasis on frivolous and conspicuous consumption at the expense of necessities, lack of responsibility, and other behaviors.


The speech is often referred to as the "Pound Cake" speech because the following lines of the speech make reference to a pound cake, contrasting common criminals with political activists who risked incarceration during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s:

But these people, the ones up here in the balcony fought so hard. Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! And then we all run out and are outraged, 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else, and I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said, 'If you get caught with it you're going to embarrass your mother.' Not 'You're going to get your butt kicked.' No. 'You're going to embarrass your family.'

Bill Cosby also covers the issues of drop-out rates and young people going to jail. He blames lack of parenting for these issues within these communities:

In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. In the old days, you couldn't hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye. And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had on and where you got it from. Parents don't know that today.

In the speech, Cosby says that African Americans should no longer blame discrimination, segregation, governmental institutions, or others for higher unemployment rates among blacks or the racial achievement gap; rather, they have their own culture of poverty to blame.

In the same speech, he had praise for the efforts of the Nation of Islam in dealing with crime in the cities, saying:

When you want to clear your neighborhood out, first thing you do is go get the black Muslims, bean pies and all. And your neighborhood is then clear.

After that statement, he pointed out the police's inability to resolve the crime problem:

The police can't do it.

He then had critical remarks for black Christians' seeming inability to create positive social change for the urban population to which he was referring:

I'm telling you Christians, what's wrong with you? Why can't you hit the streets? Why can't you clean it out yourselves?

Cosby also attacked black naming conventions, saying:

We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a damned thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap and all of them are in jail.

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Originally posted by bigwagon:
Lots of scumbags get off on "technicalities," but those technicalities are what hopefully sets a fair justice system apart from kangaroo courts.

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Originally posted by Hound Dog:
So, he did the crime he is accused of, but is getting off because of a technicality. . . At least he served SOME time, and his reputation is still in the crapper. He should still be worth millions, but he can't show his face in public without a SEVERE backlash, few (if any) of his previous friends and associates will (likely) want anything to do with him, and he'll be paparazzi bait for the rest of his life, so it's not all wine and roses for the rapist. In many ways, he will remain a 'prisoner' until the day he dies.

I don't like it, but I agree it must be done. This is why it is SO important for the prosecutors to do their due diligence and NOT screw up due process.

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Originally posted by Hound Dog:

So, he did the crime he is accused of, but is getting off because of a technicality. . .

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Originally posted by cparktd:
He did get pretty close to serving the minimum of his sentence did he not?

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Originally posted by Hound Dog:
..his reputation is still in the crapper.

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Originally posted by cparktd:
He did get pretty close to serving the minimum of his sentence did he not?

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Originally posted by Sig209:


he was one of the biggest stars of the 80s.

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Originally posted by Sig209:


will be interesting to see what happens next.