Last week, we touched upon Bill Cosby briefly in regard to the black family. Bill Cosby was the face of black respectability before the rape allegations came to light in recent times. Bill Cosby has made many remarks as to why the black community lags behind, and he enters into the realm of family. During the infamous Pound Cake speech, he criticized the prevalence of single-parent black families, and he implied that this is completely their fault with no reference to the structure that perpetuates this types of situations. I think that Bill Cosby in both his actual speech and his show to a certain extent embody respectability politics in relation to the black family.

Out of character, Cosby was certainly a man who embodied respectability by essentially saying that the black community needed to pull up their pants, take care of their kids, and get a job. His shows exhibited a similar character. They portrayed the “ideal” black family with two professional parents and kids that were generally doing well and staying out of serious trouble. I think that Cosby uses the model he created to implore black families to “fix” themselves. It seems as though he has the mentality of “if I can create the ideal black family on screen and pull myself up by my boot straps, then you can do it too”. I don’t agree with his view because it isn’t realistic and is deprecating the black family.