http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/27/news-kaplan.php
This is a really good article about the impact of Cos' remarks. And here's a doozy of an excerpt. I edited it because I don't use the n-word.
The great thorn in the side of the black middle class that we curse in private but never in public for fear of denigrating the whole race — a very valid fear, by the way — is the hopeless intransigence of the lower class. It’s not just that folks don’t have money; Lord knows blacks, even the biggest conservatives, don’t blame each other for that.
The anger is about people’s willingness to be n******. Cosby’s fellow comedian Chris Rock brought this up years ago in his now-famous dialectic about loving black people but hating n****** — those who felt license to live the low life, to openly scoff at education, brag about doing prison time and generally sabotage the nobler efforts of their own people at every turn. Rock exaggerated to make a point, but it was well taken among blacks that I know. Yet he knew that a big part of the problem was that American culture, as usual, minted the current image of the truly authentic Negro, and expects blacks to live up — or down — to it. He knew that American culture still views educated or well-spoken blacks as almost an affront to the get-down soul, to the purely instinctual that dictates everything from basketball to bad English to breaking into violence, that we all know and love (and sometimes fear — but that’s another story).
Rock, and now Cosby, argue that blacks have a choice in the matter of behavior, and too often it’s the wrong one. That’s true, but what Theodore Shaw implied about blacks not being responsible for their own hell forged by a long history is also true. So you have your pick of truth here, though they are by no means equal truths all the time. It would be infinitely more useful to examine the gray areas — of public policy, resource allocations and the like — rather than choose one of only two paths at a false crossroads.