Time To Clean House?

It's spring cleaning season. Time to clean out the closet, air the dirty linen, get your house in order. It also sounds like what we may need to do regarding our relationships. A while back, Bill Cosby called us out saying that many of us needed indeed to clean up our act. He chastised and criticized the African American community for the demise of the traditional, two-parent family and the high numbers of high school drop-outs, incarcerations, and unwed births. A year later, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson responded with his book, Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or has the Black Middle Class Lost its Mind?), describing Cosby's remarks as a vicious attack on the most vulnerable in our society. Now, author Merisa Parson Davis -a cousin of Cosby -has written a counterpoint to Dr. Dyson's counterpoint in her new title, Bill Cosby Is Right: But What Should the Church Be Doing About It? "Dr. Cosby's words were a wake-up call to the black church," Davis says. "Today, in the age of Obama, we cannot continue to blame white people for everything. While we have an intact, Ivy-league educated African-American two-parent household currently dwelling at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, only 28% of our black children are growing up in the same type of family with their biological mom and dad, who are married to each other. These issues need to be addressed." The author takes a very conservative view, suggesting for example, that Hurricane Katrina happened because "New Orleans history shows a culture full of the occult, murder and rebellion against God." A bit too harsh, simplistic, and superstitious in my opinion, but what do you say?