The Redhunter

What Cosby and Poussaint do not do in the book is prove through a mass of statistics and academic data that the black community is in trouble. This is taken as a given. Nor do they spend their time relating the history of black people in America, and how we got to our current situation. Rather, this is more of a self-help book than anything.

Cosby and Poussaint do not deny that racism plays a role in America today. To do so would be unfactual, and they would lose all credibility. But neither do they dwell on it. Racism gets a few lines here and there, but their message is clear: Most of our ills are not the result of racism, and are things that we can and need to set right ourselves.

The intended audience for Come on, People! are the very people that they are trying to help; black people who are caught in a cycle of poverty and violence. They are also trying to reach black community leaders who can turn things around.

As such, much of the book consists of common-sense advice for black people. There are chapters on prenatal care, parenting, eating properly, managing your finances, how to get a good education and use it to seek gainful employment, and much more. Here is a small sample taken at random:

Go to a doctor early and often for prenatal care

The best way to avoid diabetes is to keep your weight under control.

Intersperced throughout the book are "call outs"; most of which are brief stories of black people who faced overwhelming odds yet made it. Others are those of successful black professionals who have useful advice. All are valuable and interesting.

The overwhelming message is that values matter. Come On, People! reminds me as nothing so much as Laura Ingraham's Power to the People, in which she discussed various social ills that are the result of bad value values.

Cosby and Poussaint are all about advancement through education. Unlike too many elies, who obsess over how many CEOs or professional football coaches are black, they look to action that will help the average black person. High profile black success stories in sports and entertainment world are simply not meaningful to the average person, as the chances that he or she will achieve such fame and riches are slim. As such, their advice, as illustrated in the above list, is designed to move people toward obtaining basic degrees at average colleges (they especially stress community colleges) that lead to concrete careers.

I'm not quite sure how much Cosby's message has resonated within the black community, as surely he has faced much resistance from elites for refusing to blame everything on white racism. Yet he and co-author Poussiant are not alone in their quest. For example, NPR Senior Correspondent and Fox News contributor Juan Williams, a black man with impeccable liberal credentials, wrote Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure that are Undermining Black America, and What We can Do About It in 2006, and between the three of them perhaps they can turn the debate around.

Cosby, Poussiant, Williams, and for that matter Ingraham, have picked up on the fact that there is only so much the government can do. Ending blatant racism was good and a must, but clearly this isn't enough to truely liberate black people. Create all the enterprise zones you want, Jack Kemp, but until you change values and attitudes you're whistling dixie.

To me, the question is not whether Come On, People! is a useful book. It is. The question is how to get it into the hands of the people who need it the most. I suspect that many or even most of the people who buy it are people like me; white guys who live comfortably in the suburbs. I'd buy a hundred books and donate them to a black church uptown if I thought they'd hand them out, but such an act would be seen as condescending, I suppose.

Much of the solution, then, is going to have to come from within the black community itself. But there are things that we can do also, like stop buying "gansta rap" music, and cleaning up our own culture. Because ultimately we're all in this together.