Pound Cake Speech

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Cosby speaking at the memorial service for Tuskegee Airman Lee A. Archer. Cosby makes regular appearances at US Armed Forces awards ceremonies, usually as a recipient. He likes to believe the armed forces like him, they like to believe he likes them and that proves other celebrities do; it all works out

The Pound Cake speech was given by Wikipedia:Bill Cosby in May 2004 during an Wikipedia:NAACP awards ceremony in Wikipedia:Washington, D.C., to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Wikipedia:Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Cosby waxed critical of members of subsets of the black community in the United States, taking aim at the use of Wikipedia:African American Vernacular English, the prevalence of Wikipedia:single-parent families, the emphasis on frivolous and Wikipedia:conspicuous consumption at the expense of necessities, lack of responsibility, and other behaviors.

The speech is often referred to as the "Pound Cake" speech because of the following lines, referencing a particular dessert, Wikipedia:pound cake, apparently for comedic effect, while contrasting political activists who risked incarceration during the 1950s-1960s Wikipedia:civil rights movement with common criminals:

But these people, the ones up here in the balcony fought so hard. Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! And then we all run out and are outraged, 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? (laughter and clapping). I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else (laughter) And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said, 'If you get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother.' Not 'You're going to get your butt kicked.' No. 'You're going to embarrass your family.'

In the same speech he had praise for the efforts of the Black Muslims in dealing with crime in the cities, saying "When you want to clear your neighborhood out, first thing you do is go get the Black Muslims, Wikipedia:bean pies and all. And your neighborhood is then clear." After that statement, he pointed out the police's inability to resolve the crime problem, saying, "The police can't do it." He then had critical remarks for Black Christians' seeming inability to create positive social change for the urban population he was referring to, saying, "I'm telling you Christians, what's wrong with you? Why can't you hit the streets? Why can't you clean it out yourselves?"

full transcript of the Pound Cake speech at Wikisource

External links

• Podcast of Bill Cosby Pound Cake Speech
• "Bill Cosby: Airdate May 26, 2004", Tavis Smiley, PBS.org (interview transcript)