Cosby: Bad parenting creates poverty

MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

Bill Cosby took center stage yesterday at the 18th annual Martin Luther King Scholarship breakfast in Chicago and blasted parents for not raising responsible children. This has been an ongoing theme of Cosby's appearances in recent years, and the audience of approximately 2,000 in the Sheraton Chicago Htoel Towers responded warmly to his message.

"What is lost in these people who are living and failing is the most simple, most natural part of parenting," said Cosby. "And that isn't there."

The scholarship breakfast was sponsored by PUSH-Excel, a division of the Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr.'s RainbowPUSH Coalition. Jackson spoke briefly, and Cosby was the keynote speaker at the breakfast that honored more than 150 scholarship recipients. In the past five years, the breakfast has raised $1.8 million, according to officials at Rainbow Coalition.

The focus of the event was educational equality. According to Jackson, a college degree is a burden on many students and their families because of the rising cost of higher education. The MLK scholarship breakfast was established to honor high achievers and help offset college costs. "We must invest in closing the gap," Jackson said.

Cosby agreed, and went on to tackle tough issues facing the black community such as poverty and bad parenting. "People don't know how to parent and they don't care," he said. "Everyone is making excuses for them."

He also touched on the role of community colleges. He said that community colleges are easily accessible to low-income students and that starting somewhere, even at a community college, is one answer o the black education crisis. "We ought to be the champions of graduating from community colleges," he said.

Success was another topic Cosby explored. Defining success as the absence of failure, he said that success stemmed in part from good planning. "From the time [a] young mother finds out that she's pregnant, the two [parents] are already planning your life.that you will go farther than they've ever been," he said. "And they're going to make sure of that because they're going to stay on your case."