on this special edition of "our world with black enterprise," the iconic comic turned activist. bill cosby and psychiatrist alvin pouissant take on the ills of black america. that's up next. >> i can look people in the face and hear somebody tell me to my face, well, you didn't do anything during the time of the civil rights march and the so forth and so on. and i think i feel very, very

comfortable, man, looking at that person and saying, okay, well, what are you going to do about today? ♪ our world ♪ our world ♪ our world ♪ ♪ our world >> bill cosby is a comedic legend. in the 1960s he was a groundbreaking stand-up comic that had crossover appeal. he later pushed the needle by becoming the first black star in a weekly action series. the '70s gave birth to the popular cartoon "fat albert and the cosby kids." and in the 1980s, he became america's dad with the phenomenally successful "the cosby show," which showed the country a flourishing black family as never before seen on

television. but cosby's latest venture has nothing to do with entertainment or comedy. since 2004, the philadelphia native has crossed the country warning the country of ills of teen pregnancy and anti-social behavior in the black community. he says these and other like issues are destroying the fiber of the people. >> for me, it is almost annal jeesic to talk about what the white man is doing against us. and it keeps keeps a person frozen in their seat. >> we met at columbia university in new york city to talk about his book, "come on people on the path from victims to victors." his co-author, noted psychiatrist and good friend alvin pouissant would join us later. but, first, i wanted to know how the 70-year-old icon has become

the town cryer rather than sit at home and bask in his success and watch from the sidelines. >> i can't take it anymore. because people are not paying attention to the pain and the sadness that's in your children. they're not addressing it. and, so, these children grow up to be teenagers who make themselves parents. some of them will be raped. by their own people. by relatives, by the mother's boyfriend. and i'm talking about the males as well. things that we didn't believe when we first heard and we paid no attention to, these things began to slide. well, the young people are saying they're not going to live past age 25, 24. oh, that's -- that's nonsense.

proudly wearing the pants down without a belt, and they're imitating the people in prison. ah, that's nonsense. and these things, these things didn't pass, ed, as far as i'm concerned. they continued. and now they've turned into murder. they've turned into a total disrespect for the woman, and the philosophy is -- the philosophy is idiot as far as i'm concerned. and, so, i just can't take it anymore. >> when you came out initially, i thought to myself that we were going to see a bigger groundswell, quite frankly, from black leadership than i have seen. i thought that, okay, finally

someone was brave enough to say it, and now you don't have to be the lead runner. you can at least now jump on the bandwagon. have you been disappointed that you've not seen perhaps the groundswell that i thought i was coming and perhaps you had hoped? >> i was disappointed, not that i wanted anyone to follow me, because there was enough, i really didn't care. i knew i was paying respect to those people sitting in the balcony, who were now close to 100 years old. after i said to these people in the audience, that we as a people have beaten off the enemy, we've outjumped them, we've run over them on the football field. we've done all kinds of athletic things that they said we couldn't do. we proved that we could do it. >> cosby used a landmark brown v

board of education supreme court ruling which declared separate but equal was not constitutional as an example of no matter what the obstacles, blacks always use their brains to overcome adversity. >> at topeka, kansas, whether what they won in that courtroom worked or not, they won. and they proved with their brains -- see, we beat those people, those racists, in topeka with our minds. >> more from bill cosby right after this. >> somebody's got to yell in your face. get up and move. ♪ our world "our world" is being brought

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♪ our world let me turn you back to the leadership question. did you expect, do you expect, do you want more people, not to follow you, but to follow the idea of betterment? >> obviously.

but, you know, man, it's -- it's out there. there's a strangeness that has built up over the years, mr. gordon, that people behave in a certain way, and they actually believe it. those of us who want to make change, we've got to believe that when a person says something strange, they actually believe it. but the point is, if you know something's wrong, who are you looking for? there's a confusion about what you're waiting for, while you watch. and you have to understand the pain that people really don't know. better. you don't have to be a leader,

but you can -- not in a cosby way, you can make -- try and make a correction. even if you get cursed out. my brother russell called me. this is a week ago. my brother also graduated from florida a&m. now, obviously, the man who approached my brother didn't know that russell is bill cosby's brother. so, russell said, the guy came up to him, black, and he said to russell, man, what are we going to do about these kids? and russell said, better parenting. and the guy says, oh, you talking about that cosby [ bleep ]. >> as that story demonstrates, not everyone has agreed with cosby's crusade. some have criticized his answers as too simplistic. others say the multimillionaire

has lost touch with the everyday man's problems. still others, like scholar michael eric dyson whose book is "cosby right" suggests that cosby is blaming the victim for their plight. last year dyson told me that he respects cosby immensely and agrees that black should correct many of the problems themselves, but feels you cannot attack the downtrodden. >> the moment our intellectuals and entertainers begin to beat up on poor black people, this is a tragedy in our own race. >> i wondered if cosby despite of a long history of fighting for civil rights was angry or hurt by those who commit sized the comedian for not being, quote, black enough to deliver the message. it had to have hurt at some point, no? >> no. because i live with these people. i was brought up in black neighborhoods. i've seen good, the bad, the evil, the crazy. i've seen my own color, my own people, do bad things to each

other. so, it isn't past me to know and feel. i see people trying to get out of things. and that's not new for black people. there were people -- and i don't put myself anywhere near dr. king or any of the great lead s leaders. but i heard black people in the neighborhoods talking about how dr. king was making it tough for them to go to work, and they wish he'd shut down, stop it. and people are going to use all kinds of methods, man, to keep from doing what they're supposed to be doing. look, the old famous saying about harriet tubman, who had to explain to slaves that they were

slaves. some of them thought they were doing all right. and she had to use a pistol to move these people. i can look people in the face and hear somebody tell me, to my face, well, you didn't do anything during the time of the civil rights march and the so forth and so on. and i can feel very, very comfortable, man, looking at that person and saying, okay, well, what are you going to do about today? because you're trying to use and make excuses. they tried everything. and they're trying everything. well, these conservatives and these whites, hey, man, you have your heroes. but some of your heroes are preaching things, and you're listening to them. it was not bill cosby who said, let's party and let's not

protect our children. let's get up and dance to certain words. let's -- let's talk about our black women. bill cosby has issues, well, he's this and he's that. okay, so what if he has? but i'm telling you where the road is out. now, you can stand there and argue with me all you want to who you think i am. therefore, you're not going to pay attention to me. but i'm telling you where the road -- the bridge is out, the road is out and where there are problems. and, guess what, you know it. somebody's got to yell in your face, get up and move. >> let me do this. let me take a break. when we return we'll have the co-author of the book, dr. allen pouissaint will join me and dr. cosby. back in a moment. some young people, in fact,

who feel they get status by going to prison, they get status by shooting someone.

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agree with his tactics or not, you can hear the passion and pain in his voice. it's that passion that led to the town hall meetings and the book he co-authored with harvard professor dr. alvin poussaint. the famed psychiatrist joined us. let me ask you something before we go much further. i've tried to get out of dr. cosby and he's been gracious through much of this. when you hear some of the criticism that has been waged toward him, does it anger you? >> it angers me a bit. because i think it's very unfair. when they're angry with him and criticizing him for airing dirty laundry, it makes no sense. sh knows our dirty laundry and that somehow bill is hurting us by talking about some of our problems with our young people, high school dropouts. violence and so on, poor parenting, that they would say he's airing dirty laundry, i think that's an excuse not to do

anything, to be in a state of denial about what we need to do and the kind of issues and problems we have in the black community that need correction. >> doctor, you and i have talked many, many years about some of these problems individually. >> yeah. >> how much do you believe now it is pathological within the community? >> well, i think there are -- you know, pathological in the sense that some people are trying to take it like abnormal behavior, including being a thug and making it normal behavior. so that they are kind of flip flopping what the good values are so that you have some young people who actually feel they get status by going to prison, they get status by shooting someone, they get status by exploiting women and seeing them as sexual objects, like they flip-flop the values and engage in a lot of self-destructive

behavior. in fact, that destroys them and destroys their community, yet they are kind of holding it up as a way of life for people to emulate. most noticeably in like gangster rap types of things which other young people imitate and adopt the lifestyle which is destructive to their life chances. >> mr. cosby, talk to me about how you address the issue and you have done so, but one more time, if you'll allow, the idea of critics who will say or young people who will just simply say that your world is not the world that i grow up in now, and these solutions don't work for this generation, the things that worked for yours. >> we were at the university of massachusetts, amherst, and a young man stood up and he said, you know, you make it sound like all you have to do is wave your finger and tell somebody not to do it and they're not going to do it. he said, that's not the way it is out here in this world.

and he went on, and alvin and i both knew he hadn't read the book. >> the book is a collection of inspirational testimonies from the town hall meetings the two have held in black communities across the country. there are also solutions offered to some of the issues that plague black america. cosby asked poussaint to tell the story about a young man they met at one of the call-out sessions in boston. >> he agreed with cosby about getting an education, because he said there was so much says temic racism that he might be able to get an education and still not be able to get a job. we thought, is that a backward way of thinking? so in the book we talk about all the ways that we devalue our own lives in a way. >> yet how much of the criticism that came early on, now that you've done this over the course of almost two years, you accept that the initial notion people saw some as it being a too

simplistic look, that you did a broad brush over racism, you did a broad brush over economic and equities, you did a broad brush over some of the systemic things that cause these problems in black america? >> i thought they were still coming out. i thought that 50 years brown versus the board of education, and we're looking at in the numbers that i brought out was 50% of our lower economic kids in the bad schools are dropping out, 50%. and even up to 70% of these kids are dropping out. and behind that, are all kinds of behavioral things that our children are out in the streets, proudly displaying their use of profanity. 8-year-old kids, 9, 10, 11, getting on the buses, going to and from parents and supermarkets. people behaving in a manner that says, education's not important,

and that we are to be angry with our children. i see people in automobiles playing music with profanity and degrading women, and there's little children, 4, 5 years old sitting in the back seat of the car. we've all seen it. for someone to say that i'm putting the stereotype -- hey, man, the stuff is out there. >> that does it for part one of our conversation with dr. bill cosby and dr. alvin poussaint. join us next week when we continue our conversation. let me tell you something, in the morgue, they don't put in the newspaper who died of an od unless it's a famous person. but, trust me, there are more dead people in the morgue because of bad drugs that don't go into the newspapers, not announced, that some black drug

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