Who’s Wrong: Bill Cosby Or Michael Eric Dyson?

“Are there two black Americas?” asked Amistad Books editor Dawn Davis on Saturday at the Harlem Book Fair, introducing a panel called “Renouncing Blackness: The Class Divide in Black America.” Panelists included Fortune magazine staff writer Cora Daniels, author of “Black Power Inc.: The New Voice of Success” (John Wiley & Sons) and USA Today national correspondent Charisse Jones, co-author of “Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America” (HarperCollins).Crown editor Chris Jackson, who moderated the panel, placed the topic in historical context, mentioning other discussions within the black community, such as those over W.E.B. DuBois’s concept of the “talented tenth.” The class divide, he said, is a subject “flooded with a lot of emotion today.”A central point of reference that afternoon was Bill Cosby’s NAACP speech last year, in which he created a firestorm of controversy when he cited parental failures and criticized dress, language, and promiscuity among poor blacks.Michael Eric Dyson, author of “Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?” (Basic Civitas Books), was the most outspoken panel member. He took aim at Mr. Cosby’s remarks: “Why start with those most vulnerable?” he asked. Mr. Cosby’s remarks, he said, refused to make demands of the dominant culture and ignored “structural features” that have also held blacks back.He acknowledged that as a comic, Mr. Cosby was a genius, but said that as a social critic, he was misinformed. He chided Mr. Cosby not only for being sloppy but for speaking nationally. Mr. Dyson offered an analogy of the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s about the choice of offering a shovel or a rope to someone stuck in a hole. “I think Cosby threw down a shovel,” he said.“Let’s not say that because you wear low-slung pants, you are automatically unintelligent,” he said. Black dress has been a politically charged issue for many years, he said. At one time, blacks were accused to of dressing “too sharply” and challenging the social status of whites by dressing too well. He said at Howard University he met a student with a tattoo – the writer of the religious hymn “Amazing Grace,” the word become flesh, so to speak. The man was getting a Ph.D. in criminology. “I’m not saying that all people wearing tattoos are getting Ph.D.s,” he said to audience laughter. The audience applauded when he went on to say, “Some people in suits are a problem to us.”About promiscuity, Mr. Dyson joked, Thomas Jefferson put on “Luther Vandross tapes” at night. He was referring to the third president’s relationship to one of his slaves, Sally Hemings.Janis Kearney, author of “Cotton Field of Dreams: A Memoir” (Writing Our World Press), offered a more personal response to Mr. Cosby’s remarks. She said she felt hurt by them. She said they also offered a scapegoat.She said she had loved Mr. Cosby on television in the series “I Spy.” Ms. Kearney grew up on a cotton farm in Arkansas as one of 17 children.She added, “I can’t say I watched ‘The Cosby Show,'” the hit sitcom about an upper-middle-class black family, which ran from 1984 to 1992.The audience broke into laughter when she added: “My white friends watched it. I figured there wasn’t much in it for me.”* * *NADIA’S NIGHT Soheir Khashoggi and her novel “Nadia’s Song” (Forge Books) were feted at a party Thursday at Jean-Luc on Columbus Avenue. Set in Egypt and spanning 50 years, the historical novel centers on a mother-daughter relationship. In the book, the mother, a servant girl, falls tragically in love with the plantation owner’s son.At the event, the Knickerbocker learned that Michael Mailer has optioned the author’s first novel “Mirage” to be a film. At the party, Ms. Khashoggi enjoyed an evening of conversation with relatives and friends, who have been important to the Egyptian-born author after her more than 20 years living in America. A member of a prominent Saudi family, the author is the sister of Adnan Khashoggi.The book is dedicated to her late nephew, Dodi Al-Fayed, who died in the car crash with Princess Diana.Seen were Ms. Khashoggi’s editor at Forge, Paul Stevens; cotton importer Martin Rodriguez; Egyptian artist Ludvic Saleh and wife Lauren; Pamela Fiori, editor of Town & Country; socialite Laura Hunt; Ann Jones, who is the mother of DJ Samantha Ronson; hairstyle guru Dov; Canadian socialite Sonja Donald; and plastic surgeon Dr. Eric Sadeh, who is in love: He said his wedding day would likely be on the first anniversary of the day he and his fiancee first met.

Who’s Wrong: Bill Cosby Or Michael Eric Dyson?

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