According to the latest statistics from the Center for Disease Control regarding AIDS, this disease is spreading at a rate that is nearly 3 times faster among blacks (58 per 100,000) than among Hispanics (20 per 100,000)—a rate that is nearly 6 times faster among blacks than among whites (6 per 100,000). Now, surely the most interesting question on the face of this earth in regards to these statistics is: Why? Why this disparity—not just between blacks and whites, but between blacks and Hispanics. To be sure, the Hispanic rate vis à vis whites is disturbing. But the black rate vis à vis both whites and Hispanics is utterly frightening.
Now, the explanation cannot possibly have anything to do with education. 10 years ago: Perhaps. Now: Not plausible. One would have to live on another planet in order not to know what AIDS is about. And since the disease is both incurable and fatal, only a fool would be indifferent to it. The rate at which AIDS is spreading among whites is sufficiently low that indifference to safe sex practices can only be one among several factors. By contrast, the rate at which the disease is spreading among blacks is sufficiently high that it is difficult not to countenance considerable indifference to safe sex practices as a primary factor, with Hispanics failing somewhere in between.
But then the question becomes: How can it possibly be that blacks are that indifferent to the prevention of AIDS. And this is where Bill Cosby remarks come into play.
Of course, he is an “old” man (b. 12 July 1937); and no doubt he pines for the days when values animated the black community, because the black church stood as anchor of moral virtue among blacks. Those were the values that made the Civil Rights Movement possible. They gave blacks the self-discipline to pull off the unthinkable, namely the boycott Alabama, stunning racist whites, who did not think that blacks had the moral fiber to pull of such a thing.
Now, Cosby chided blacks for abandoning values, with rap music serving as a major instigator in this regard. He thinks that one consequence of this is that self-discipline is not what it needs to be among blacks people—especially among the poor black. Regrettably, Cosby was called vehemently attacked by all sort of influential black people exhibiting the DBU-CWWBR syndrome. Oh what does DBU-CWWBR stand for: “Don’t blame us; cause we want to blame racism”.
Cosby is no dummy. So I don’t think that it ever occurred him to deny that racism still exists in America. Rather, he was advocating the simple point that people should not expect others to do for them what they can do for themselves. Insofar as the charge of racism has come to serve as an all too convenient excuse not to take self-discipline seriously, then the charge, whatever merits it might have, has become a deep part of the problem in terms of well-being in the black community.
So back to AIDS. Next to AIDS simply disappearing, which is not happening any time soon, nothing would diffuse the rate at which AIDS is spreading among blacks like self-discipline among. And one thing we know for sure is that the existence of white racism has nothing whatsoever to do with the absence of self-discipline among blacks. For when racism was far more prevalent and far vicious, blacks exhibited for more self-discipline among themselves. If tomorrow all white were to disappear, AIDS would still be a problem for blacks.
Now, while I attach no validity to them, I understand that there are conspiracies according to which AIDS was a disease invented to rid the earth of blacks. But that is irrelevant from a most important standpoint. AIDS can rid the world of blacks only insofar as blacks do not have the self-discipline to exercise the appropriate precautions. Cosby understands self-discipline to be a moral power that one can rely upon to pass over troubled waters. He also understands that self-discipline is not available upon demand. Rather, it has to be cultivated.
It is unfortunate that those suffering from the DBU-CWWBR syndrome are already too morally ill to see the wisdom of Cosby’s words.
