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Cosby was Correct
In Debunking Cosby on Blacks Washington Post columnist Michelle Singletary attacks Bill Cosby for his speech last year to the NAACP.
Poor blacks are bad parents because they waste what little money they have buying high-priced, brand-name shoes, Cosby chided.
"All this child knows is gimme, gimme, gimme," Cosby said, according to a transcript of the speech. "They are buying things for the kid. $500 sneakers. For what?"
Cosby was lauded by white conservatives and some blacks for being brave enough to speak out. But like the price of sneakers that Cosby got wrong, he was incorrect about much of what he said.
...the comedian was rattling off nonsense much like his Fat Albert character Mushmouth.
I was curious so I went to Table 2100 of the Consumer Expenditure Survey and found the following for 2003:
Average income of whites and other races: $53,292.
Average income of blacks: $34,485.
The survey then lists expenditures on a wide variety of goods from eggs and fish to books and televisions; to do a proper comparison we would have to correct for income and other demographic variables but some figures just jump out at you, including this:
Expenditures on footwear by whites and other races: $274
Expenditures on footwear by blacks: $440.
Chalk one up for the good Dr. Cosby.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on November 14, 2005 at 07:18 AM in Economics, Education, History | Permalink
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» Thrift from Asymmetrical Information
Alex Tabarrok's post on Bill Cosby led me to this column in the Washington Post, arguing that Cosby's tirade against underclass blacks is wrong. It smacks of elitism that poor blacks are held to standards that most Americans aren't, Dyson said in an in... [Read More]
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Alex Tabarrok's post on Bill Cosby led me to this column in the Washington Post, arguing that Cosby's tirade against underclass blacks is wrong. It smacks of elitism that poor blacks are held to standards that most Americans aren't, Dyson said in an in... [Read More]
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