Bill Cosby, who's been taking some heat for recent comments he's made about disenfranchised African-American youngsters, sidestepped the issue on Saturday night, sticking to humor and praise for parents during a Miami charity event for at-risk children.
Cosby, wearing a sweatshirt reading "Parent Power" at the packed Zo's Summer Groove (organized by former Miami Heat center Alonzo Mourning), joked that his parents and grandparents always knew exactly what he was up to, reports the Associated Press.
"All day long, you were watched," he told the crowd. "Even if there was a drawn shade, there was at least one eye peeking out of it. My mother knew everything I did."
In May, Cosby stunned an audience commemorating the landmark civil rights ruling Brown vs. Board of Education by citing elevated school dropout rates for inner-city black students and criticizing low-income blacks for not using the opportunities for which civil-rights activists had fought so hard to win.
"Fifty percent of African-American males drop out of high school. We're talking epidemic here," he said. "You've got kids who never get told how important it is to study. They've got the designer shirt, but no one's telling them to study. People have to start seeing the light."
Cosby repeated the sentiments this month at a gathering of community activists in Chicago, when he said many African-American youngsters are illiterate and "going nowhere."
On Saturday, he made an indirect allusion to those remarks, saying that veteran TV personality Art Linkletter once told him, "'You know, Bill, as you get older, you're in sync with 5-year-old people and you don't really give a damn about what people think about what you say.'"
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