7753: Cosby Performs At Essence Fest.

From The Times-Picayune…

Bill Cosby gives Essence Fest visitors his old-school views on teen pregnancy, gun violence

By Katy Reckdahl, The Times-Picayune

Before partying and dancing their way through Saturday night, many Essence Festival visitors spent the day listening to panelists talk about weighty education topics. At times, they packed a 5,000-seat auditorium in the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

Comedian Bill Cosby, who drew the biggest crowd of the afternoon, took on teen pregnancy, gun violence and cussing rappers before concluding with remarks about schools.

Like Cosby, local speakers such as parent advocate Karran Harper Royal and Andre Perry, the CEO of the University of New Orleans’ charter schools, also emphasized that successful schools find ways to address the challenges students face outside the classroom.

Perry mentioned a high-achieving student who moved 30 times between birth and graduation.

“We need to see how they cope with stress so that we can teach other students those coping skills,” he said.

As usual, Cosby’s old-school admonitions to parents drew huge applause, as he talked about a man whose 14-year-old daughter had just gone through a pregnancy scare.

Cosby’s advice: Sit down and talk with teenagers who you know are sexually active. “Lay it out to them: ‘You’re out here humping without a rubber, and she’s humping without the pill or a diaphragm,’” he said.

If she gets pregnant, she’s stopping herself “in the middle of the road of life,” he said.

Cosby advised his listeners to talk not only to their children but also to cousins, nieces, nephews and neighbors. “Get into people’s business,” he said. “You’re a taxpayer and you’re tired of picking up the tab for someone’s sexual moments.”

Essence magazine news editor Wendy Wilson asked Cosby about statistics showing that violence — mostly gun violence — is now the leading cause of death for black youths age 10 to 24, killing an average of 16 people a day.

People would “riot in the streets” if that many black children were killed each day by white lynch mobs who pulled them out of their houses and hanged them in the public square, Cosby said.

Ultimately, he holds parents culpable. “Whose fault is it that gun is in your child’s room?” he asked. “Look under the mattress. Say, ‘I’m raising you. This is my job, to raise you.’”

Young black males do have to contend with police profiling, Cosby said. But he quoted Earl Lloyd, the first black player in the National Basketball Association, who said that his mother would question him closely when he came home about where he had been and with whom. “She’d tell him, ‘If you’re not in the picture, you can’t be framed.’”

Cosby recalled speaking at a Newark, N.J., high school that graduated 255 students out of a ninth-grade class that started with750. As he looked at the graduates, he said, he noticed that about 80percent were female. Of the top 13 honor students in the class, only one was male.

All children must be able to envision themselves venturing into the world, graduating from college and earning a living, Cosby said as he mimicked singer James Brown: “Get up. Stay on the scene. Be a studying machine.”