CAN black people take self-criticism?

This is a question that recently came to the fore in America in the wake of some controversial opinions voiced by African-American actor and sitcom star Bill Cosby, who probably set the gold standard for positive depictions of Afro-American family life in the long running, top-rated NBC television series .

Speaking on the 50th anniversary of the US Supreme Court's milestone Brown v Board of Education decision, which effectively desegregated America's school system, Bill Cosby launched into a blistering attack on the state of black America.

But his comments did not touch on traditional accusations of what the white world is doing to black people but rather dealt with what we are doing to ourselves.

I first became aware that Bill Cosby had made a speech that was highly critical of some of the aspects of social life in the black community when he was interviewed on a late night talk show. He made it clear that he was not prepared to step away from his comments, which included criticism of some prominent figures in the black American leadership ? including the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Howard University, the most eminent bastion of higher education in black America.

Still, I did not know how deep his criticisms of the black community were until I read Michael McManus' column , which appears in the weekend edition of .

Although McManus' column focused on the decline of marriage in the black community ? a subject Cosby addressed ? the actor touched on a lot of other issues that could be considered to be having a negative impact on the black community, everything from parents who buy $500 sneakers but are reluctant to put any significant money into something like the Hooked on Phonics education programme to the disgusting clothing fad of wearing one's pants so low that you can see one's underwear (an indulgence that is a favourite among young boys and men), to the black community's failure to take responsibility for high school drop-out rates to unwed mothers and the number of young men in prison.

His criticism of the failure of black parenting set off a particular firestorm in the black community, unused to having its dirty linen on such prominent public display. But if anyone was going to broach this controversial subject, you could not find a better person to do so than Bill Cosby ? well respected and long considered to be an icon in the black community.

He is also one who has put his money where his mouth is. Over the years Cosby has donated millions of dollars to causes that have benefited the black community. Still some of the reaction coming from the black community, according to the comments in McManus' column on the controversial speech, maintain that Cosby went too far in absolving white America and the Federal Government for the ills of the black community.

there is some truth to that but the issues Cosby raised (and other ones he did not) all have their roots in the black community. Certainly no white men would dare broach some of the ills in the black community that could be laid at our own feet, not without running the risk of being labelled a racist.

A distinguished American Senator, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, wrote the famous Moynihan Report which was the first such US work that pointed out the social patterns associated with the black underclass in America.

Moynihan, a champion of progressive and liberal causes, was embraced by many of the leading figures in the black American community at the time. But in retrospect, it seems this was a wrong-headed decision, for the Moynihan Report contained recommendations which laid the groundwork for much of the existing welfare-state mentality that still exists among many American blacks.

In the recent book conservative black writer Shelby Steele had this to say about the Moynihan Report:

1. First, it makes structural intervention by society the contingency on which the resolution of some black problems depend.

2. It always establishes this helplessness among blacks, setting up a third characteristic, what Shelby Steele calls "Specimenisation Research" ? the assertion that larger society is obligated to assume the responsible for solving black difficulties.

Shelby Steele goes on to state: "It (the Moynihan Report) shows blacks as 'in over their heads' ? as lacking the internal resources to be responsible, as demoralised to the point of finding hope only by putting their fate in the hands of others".

Surprising as it may seem to some of my regular readers, I have to admit that I agree with the opinion of this black conservative writer. And could it be that Bill Cosby in his speech essentially was saying the same thing?

At any rate Moynihan's proposed solution to effect a sort of black economic empowerment involved empowering the black woman in the home by putting her on social welfare at the expense of creating job opportunities for the black male.

A condition of welfare applicability was that a man could not live in the home ? only a woman and her children. I don't think that it can be denied that this contributed to the further splitting of the black family. This is the American reality whose consequences, I am sure, have some bearing on what Bill Cosby is talking about today.

But what about Bermuda? As it was in America, so it was in Bermuda. Before the era of so-called racial integration, black people were much more independent in our thinking and in our actions of doing for self and community.

How did we get to the point that, when fighting to end racial injustice and embracing a new social norm ? so-called racial integration ? we gave up our sense of independence and the will to do for self?

We have come to a point where, in some respects, too many of us are content to wallow in victimhood ? while at the same time advancing no real solutions as to how to pick ourselves up and proclaim ourselves truly free.

To begin with we would have to have what I call a free black mind and we certainly would have to draw on the strengths of the past which allowed us to survive slavery and the long period of racial segregation and second class citizenship. We will have to come to the point where we no longer view ourselves as victims of Bermuda's racial past but survivors of that experience.