Which made me different from more than 60 percent of black children born today.
More than half of black boys have no fathers to do the difficult work of teaching them how to be men. More than half of black girls lack a daddy who's present, accounted for and committed to their mothers and to them. Some have able father substitutes; most don't.
In recent months, Bill Cosby has blasted critics who complained when he upbraided low-income blacks.
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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Eugene Kane attended the same Philadelphia high school and college as Cosby -- and reamed him for his comments in May. Afterward, Kane received a call from Cosby, who invited the columnist to join him in Newark, where he'd arranged a meeting with gang members of the Crips and the Bloods.
As Cosby spoke, "the room got real quiet," Kane recalled. The men, resplendent in gang colors, were rapt as the comedian pressed them about personal responsibility and reminded them he was speaking that way because he loved them.
"If it had been Chris Rock or somebody, the response might have been different," Kane said. "But Cosby took on this fatherly, even grandfatherly role." Men who are like the gang members "don't care about pretending. . . . They seemed to crave that kind of discipline and chastising."
Of course. That's what loving fathers and grandfathers -- whose influence many of these gang members clearly lacked -- provide.
Conservative commentators -- who, to some black folks' horror, reveled in Cosby's "telling the truth" about poor blacks -- have demonstrated little love for African American men. So these pundits' misplaced delight didn't disturb them. Cosby's proven affection, and his status as a man whose own beloved son died violently, earned him the right to criticize.
Noted psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint, who was a consultant on "The Cosby Show," believes that Cosby would never purposely stereotype African Americans.
"He had me go over every script to take out stereotypes," Poussaint said. Rather, the comic "has projected his love for black people for decades -- through his philanthropy, by hiring young, black TV writers, by almost going broke giving scholarships."
Black people's history in America, Poussaint said, "isn't just surviving against the odds -- it's succeeding against the odds. [Cosby] feels some people have lost some of that spirit. . . . He doesn't want people to be steamrolled by these awful statistics."
Neither would their crotchety grandpa.
