Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?

Nothing exposed the class and generational divide in black America more starkly than Bill Cosby's now-infamous assault on the black poor when he received an NAACP award in the spring of 2004. The comedian-cum-social critic lamented the lack of parenting, poor academic performance, sexual promiscuity, and criminal behavior among what he called the "knuckleheads" of the African-American community. Even more surprising than his comments, however, was the fact that his audience laughed and applauded. Best-selling writer, preacher, and scholar Michael Eric Dyson uses the Cosby brouhaha as a window on a growing cultural divide within the African-American community. According to Dyson, the "Afristocracy" -- lawyers, physicians, intellectuals, bankers, civil rights leaders, entertainers, and other professionals -- looks with disdain upon the black poor who make up the "Ghettocracy" -- single mothers on welfare, the married, single, and working poor, the incarcerated, and a battalion of impover