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Tavis: Michael Eric Dyson is a Professor of Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania and a prolific author of books on music, popular culture, and Black history, including best selling books on Tupac Shakur and Marvin Gaye. His latest book takes aim at comments made last year by comedian Bill Cosby. The book is called, "Is Bill Cosby Right or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?" Mike Dyson joins us tonight from Philadelphia. Professor Dyson, nice to have you on the program, sir.

Michael Eric Dyson: Always great to be here with you, brother Smiley.

Tavis: We had Dr. Cosby on this program. As a matter of fact, the very first conversation he had--as you recall--the first interview he did following the release of these comments...-at least the partial release of his comments in the "Washington Post." The first conversation he had about this was on this program. I want to play a piece of that conversation with him in just a second. But one of the reasons I'm having this conversation tonight is because this thing, like I'm telling you something you don't know, has not died down. After Cosby's comments comes a huge debate. Then, into that fray, you come with this book, "Is Bill Cosby Right or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?" And here recently, the "L.A. Times Magazine" has done a feature on this ongoing debate and crisis where Black folk are concerned. So the thing ain't died yet, and I'm glad to have you on the program. That said, let me play a clip first of Cosby, Dr. Cosby, on this program, and we'll jump right into our conversation.

Bill Cosby: 50% drop out...-and I'm not saying all of the 50% are gonna be thugs and criminals, but we've missed the parenting. We've missed putting them in a position where they have to do what we say. This is not about "Hubba dubba dubba dubba." Albert and those boys had parents who parented.

Tavis: That response, the "hubba dubba dubba dubba" part was obviously in response to a question I'd asked him about your critique and criticism even before this book came out. Your critique and criticism of what he did with the "Cosby Kids." So why don't you jump into that first and explain why I asked him that question?

Dyson: Well, Tavis, I think Mr. Cosby has been noteworthy for his assault upon the Black poor and the vulnerable because of their inability to speak the King's English to the queen's taste. My comments and rebuttal to him, first of all, Black English is a very complex linguistic structure that demands intense study and investigation and not just some pop dismissal.

Number 2, that Mr. Cosby himself has reaped an extraordinary reward and benefit from the use of Black English through Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids: "I'm-ba gonn-ba be-buh back-buh soon-bah."

Number 3, what I was suggesting is that James Baldwin, one of the great expositors of the King's English, suggested that, in an essay, "If Black English isn't a language, then tell me what is" that the moral utility and the ethical purpose of Black English is to allow Black people to communicate among themselves in such a fashion to preserve their sanity and their dignity and, especially, their survival in a white supremacist culture.

So I'm suggesting to Mr. Cosby that it's not as simple as people who have dangling participles or who don't know how to correctly communicate. It's a deeper and more ongoing struggle that we're waging here.

Tavis: Once can like or loathe--one can like or loathe the way that Cosby has expressed himself around these issues, just as, I suspect, one could like or loathe your response to what Cosby said. I have to believe, though, that not unlike Dubois --W.E.B. Dubois--and Booker T. Washington, that both of you have expressed whatever you've expressed out of a spirit of love for the welfare, for the wellbeing of Black people. Am I wrong in that assumption?

Dyson: Not at all. You're absolutely correct.

Tavis: All right, so hold the phone. So if I'm right in that assumption, then, why take on Bill Cosby? If he did speak out of a spirit of love, why take him on?

Dyson: Well, because if I'm taking him on in the spirit of love and defending Black people in the spirit of love, love is being spread around a whole bunch, Tavis. As Earth, Wind & Fire would say, "It's all about love." But the reality is this, Tavis. It's not simply whether or not Mr. Cosby is motivated out of love to do what he did. Some people can be motivated out of love and end up doing the wrong thing. So I think that the motivation is clear, but the consequence is not, and I think in this case, the reason I've taken Mr. Cosby on is because I think that he is not properly adjudicated these extraordinarily competing--powerful competing claims about blackness, about poor people, about what it means to exist in a culture where you are being put upon, and, as a result of that, the poverty in which people exist, and, by the way, I don't, like Mr. Cosby, believe that people are poor because they want to be poor.

Of course there are some lazy people, and of course there are some people who don't behave right, but good behavior will never resolve the fundamental social structure issues that prevail in the culture, Tavis, number one. Number 2--Mr. Cosby is misleading people by making them believe that once they correct their behavior and their speech, that there won't be outsourcing and downsizing, there won't be export of capital in flight. Tonight, when you call take-out taxi because you don't want to cook, and you find the person is in Burma and not around the corner from you in Beverly Hills, the reality is is that we're dealing with a global economy that has devastating impact upon poor people who are vulnerable in an economy that continues to hemorrhage resources from the post- industrial urban centers out to suburbs and out to other nations. So my point simply is this: that, yes, we want people to have good behavior. Good behavior, after all, is its own reward, but that will never settle the issues about which Mr. Cosby is so rightfully vexed and that we need to be concerned about.

Tavis: Let me ask you, though--let me preface it by saying this first: the first question I wanted to ask Cosby that night, I didn't get a chance to get to it right away. You didn't see this on this tape. But I couldn't even get my first question out before Cosby first came at me--and I'm paraphrasing here with this: he wanted to apologize to anyone who thought that he was casting aspersion on all Black folk. He said to me up front, before I could even go at him, Cosby said to me, in that conversation you just saw a piece of, that, "I was not talking about all Black people. That said, Tavis, there are some folk in our community who are not holding up their end of the bargain." You can't argue with that, can you?

Dyson: Not at all, Tavis, but here's the point: if it's the case that Mr. Cosby's not speaking about all poor Black people, he hasn't done that on his "Call Out Tours" that he's been taking part in across the country--or "Conversations With Bill Cosby--" or, as I have termed it, "The Blame the Poor Tour." The reality is that Mr. Cosby has had ample opportunity to retract his statements or to put them into a broader context where he explains his love for Black people and that love is the motivation for him seeking a better remedy for the ruin to which they have been so viciously subject.

So my point is, Tavis, he's had ample opportunity to do that and hasn't done it, and furthermore I can't argue with the fact that, yes, he wants to do something that's good here, but if that's the case, then get some people who know what they're talking about involved in the conversation. Mr. Cosby could be, say, for instance, a survivor of a disease. He could come on your show and tell you what he did to survive it, Tavis, but he's not a specialist, say, in oncology, if that disease happened to be cancer.

Mr. Cosby is addressing as a comedian--one of the greatest comedians we've ever witnessed in this nation, on par with Mark Twain, even. Here's a man who has had an enormously successful career as a comedian, now stepping out into social critique into waters that are clearly above his head, and he's drowning. But in the process of drowning, he's pulling down an entire group of people because they've been seduced by his iconic status and by his celebrity and not by the hardnosed sense he makes or the edifying character of the social criticism he delivers.

So I think in this case, Mr. Cosby's non-transferability of genius--great as a comedian, terrible as a social critic--needs to be acknowledged here. And, finally, Tavis, I think what's important is that Mr. Cosby should engage in debate and dialogue. Here's a man who has deliberately avoided engaging with me, who's written and entire book about his comments and, more especially, about the issues that surround it. If Mr. Cosby loves Black people and I love Black people--he's far more prominent than I am, but I'm a prominent Black intellectual--then why can't we sit down together at the table of brotherhood and engage in a conversation, in a dialogue, whose intent is to fix some of the problems that both of us are concerned about?

Tavis: Again, to the point I made earlier--like or loathe Mike Dyson and his particular issues raised his book, "Is Bill Cosby Right?"--one of the things I love about you is that nobody can turn a phrase like you can. I got a whole list of Dyson favorites, not the least of which is, "The USA: The United States of Amnesia." But in this book, you break off a few new terms that you've created, one of which you refer to as "the afristocracy." Break that off for me.

Dyson: Well, what I'm referring to there are the Black blessed, the Black fortunate, the Black elite, those African-American aristocrats, Black aristocrats, afristocrats. The afristocracy is part of this entire cotillion and contingent of Black people who have been blessed with economic fortune and upward mobility. And I'm posing them, Tavis, not only now, but historically, against the so-called un-elite, the ghettocracy, those who are stuck at the bottom of the economic ladder.

And I'm trying to suggest here that there is a huge class chasm between the have-gots and have-nots. And the afristocracy is the one, I think, that Mr. Cosby should be going after. Given his druthers, I think, Tavis, for trying to fix what's wrong, why start with those who are most vulnerable? Why not start with those like us who are the upper class, the elites, those Black people who get into high positions of authority and seal the doors behind us, those who travel across the bridge of success and yet want to burn it down for those who are coming behind them?

I think whether you agreed with Mr. Harry Belafonte or not when he attacked--or at least engaged--then Secretary of State Colin Powell on the "Larry King Show"--here was an example of one Black elite taking on another Black elite, picking on somebody his own size. I'm afraid that Mr. Cosby has put his colossal foot on the fragile necks of poor Black people, and even though many Black people agree that something should be done, I think when we break down Mr. Cosby's comments, for instance, the following: "Pretty soon you're gonna have to have a DNA card in the ghetto to determine if you're making love to your grandmother. She's 12 when she has a baby. The baby has a baby when the mother is 14, and therefore she's 26 years old. I'm trying to keep you from having sex with your grandmother." Then he said, "You name your kids Shaliqua, Taliqua, Mohammed, and all that crap--"

That's a direct quote, and here's a direct quote: "And all of 'em are in jail." That kind of acrimonious assault by the afristocracy against the vulnerable is replete with the most ridiculous assaults that we need to point out, and were it not for it being Mr. Cosby, many of the Black people would have been much more vocal and much more visible in their resistance to such unprincipled and unfair assaults upon the poor.

Tavis: Let me offer this, then, Michael, if I might, as an exit question and this may well be, certainly, for my money, the most important question for me that comes out of this conversation between Cosby and Dyson or the lack of conversation, as it were, to your earlier point, between the two of you at least, but the most important question or issue that comes out of this for me is simply this: how then, in a contemporary setting, forget Dubois and Washington for a moment--how then, in a contemporary setting, do African-Americans have conversations in a public sphere about things which they disagree and yet not be disagreeable? How do we have those conversations in a public sphere?

Dyson: That's a great question, Tavis, and I think we can do so. We have done so in the past and we can continue to do so in the future. The thing is, first of all, the principle of openness and democratic exchange. That is to say, one person on one side, another person on another side, one group on one side, one group on the other side, openly with love and consideration engaging the other in a conversation whose aim is to ameliorate and to make better the circumstances of our people, number one. Number 2, the willingness to be on the spot. Mr. Cosby has shown partially, a willingness to do so by traveling across the country at his own expense, but the question is, is he willing to engage people who respectfully disagree with him and yet who have an equal amount of love for Black people, and then thirdly, Tavis, we must not be dupes, however. Mr. Cosby must recognize that the right wing and the acid white conservatives in this country are taking glee in his comments because he's trying to fly the plane of Black progress with one wing. Personal responsibility is a critical and necessary wing, but he's forgetting the second wing, which is social responsibility and political responsibility, so Black people having conversations in public must never underestimate the degree to which the enemies, the opponents of our best interests will always seize upon narrow ranges of discourse to justify and legitimate their assault upon us. Mr. Cosby has an intellectual responsibility to cast his notions of moral responsibility in such terms that he is not taken advantage of by those who oppose what his fundamental interests are.

Tavis: As evidenced again by this "L.A. Times Magazine" piece a year after Cosby's comments, months after the publication of Professor Dyson's book, this conversation continues to rage. The book is "Is Bill Cosby Right or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?, a question I'm sure you're debating wherever you are sitting and watching this program, even as we speak. Professor Dyson, nice to have you on as always, sir.

Dyson: Brother Smiley, always a blessing to have you here and thank God you are an enlightened afristocrat that I look up to.

Tavis: I thank you for that, sir. All the best to you, Michael. God bless you. Up next on the program, Spelman College Professor Anne C. Bailey and her new book about the Atlantic slave trade. This is fascinating stuff, I promise you. Stay with us.