Bill Cosby's Speech In I Have Been To The Mountain Top?

In Washington, D.C. on May 17, 2004, at a dinner sponsored by the NAACP, Bill Cosby spewed out words of judgment, criticism and condemnation against poor blacks. I was outraged by his words that indicated that poor blacks had betrayed the Civil Rights Movement by failing to do their part. Hearing Cosby’s words provoked my memory of the love spoken through the words of Dr. Martin Luther King in his final speech, I Have Been to the Mountain Top: I would say millions of people in the Negro community who are poverty-stricken – not because they are not working, but because they receive wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the main stream of the economic life of our nation. Most of the poverty-stricken people of America are persons who are working every day, and they end up getting part-time wages for full-time work.
These eloquently spoken, profound and powerful words came from a black man who didn’t use his platform to pass judgment, but to love and promote unity among all men in order that even the poor, would have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” On April 8, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, through compassion and love Dr. King attempted to connect the world to the suffering of the poor working class in America with the …show more content…
According to Dyson, the Ghettocracy, “consists of the desperately unemployed and underemployed, those trapped in underground economies, those working poor folk who slave in menial jobs at the edge of the economy” (p. xiv). Ironically, the Ghettocracy can also include top dollar entertainers and athletes whose behaviors are considered to be unmoral and “uncouth” by the Afristocrats. As with Afristocracy, Ghettocracy is socially bias and based on socioeconomic status and not