Bill Cosby’s “A Boy Like Me”
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
I’d never heard of this until I spotted the YouTube video on ExpatJane’s blog, Where The Hell Am I? It’s apparently from a 1968 TV special in which Bill Cosby took a look at the differences between the drawings made by young black children and young white children.
While I see what they’re getting at, I find the psychologist’s assertion that a kid might want to burn a city down when he grows up, pretty alarming. What do you think?
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
carol wrote:
I’ve never seen this before. As a parent it made me so sad, and as a human at all it made me cry. To jump to the conclusion that the black child will grow up to want to burn down cities exagerates and makes it sound like there is an inevitable, irreversable future. But it does point to how self-image problems can manifest themselves at such an early age, and many parents of color might not be equipped to deal with that or have the language to talk about it with their kids. I wish the clip included more context about the socioeconomic environment these kids were in, education level of the parents, etc. - from how it was described the drawings came from children that were in the same class, but I’m not sure.
Posted 14 Mar 2007 at 1:45 pm ¶
s wrote:
ALL of our children could overcome anything they face today if only they had healthy, tight, close knit families to provide a stable support system for them. Many, if not a majority of black families lack this in some form or another (no father, poor or ignorant single mother, etc.).
But as time has shown, talking about it doesn’t change things for those in need.
Posted 14 Mar 2007 at 3:23 pm ¶
kim wrote:
The study of developmental skills and learning styles having come eons from where it was during that time, I can view the assessment of the armless and faceless people as the result of differences in cognition and intellectual development without much shifting of the calm inside of my being.
Of course, there is no supporting statement on the parallels or distinctions thought to have existed due to age, type of housing, family situation, assessed academic readiness, or general classification of where the children were on the then-scales of typically developing milestones, but, “normal” is “normal” here, and so I’ll go with that, too.
My biggest concern, and that with which I take issue, is the final assessment by the psychologist (is that what he was?), and my not knowing if he did blind group assessments, and only related the race factor to it after determining values present in the art, or if, going in, “looking” for something akin to PTSD, he drew the parallels and named them in order to buttress a position.
Honestly, this is so dated, I can’t care. But equally honest, I think that last kid has some abstract art skill. I looked at the undulating blonde hair in the drawing, and the strong, large head and its watercoloring, and then the UFO-shaped head and kind of house-paint based background of the self-portrait, and all the symmetry found there, and thought, “damn…a little David Hammons, or early Pippen.”
Posted 14 Mar 2007 at 3:41 pm ¶
Kimi wrote:
I have seen another Bill Cosby special from the 1960’s….it dealt with the “n-word” and other identity issue for Blacks during that time. It actually featured Richard Pryer as well…..has anyone else seen this video? It was featured in part in another documentary entitled, “The N-Word” which was released a couple of years ago.
Posted 14 Mar 2007 at 4:13 pm ¶
Y. Carrington wrote:
I think Carol brought up the most important missing element here: context. Even by 1968 standards, the guest psychologist’s conclusions are very problematic. I don’t know how useful this particular comparison of kids’ artwork is, since we have no way of knowing what kids actually drew which pictures. And what about the samples the producers chose—did the white kids have more training in drawing, or did they screen the artistic proficiency of all the kids beforehand? Basically, the only information the audience has are the producers’ assertions.
As for that “burn a city down” quote, that was the psychologist’s own fears projected onto Black reality. This was 1968 after all.
Posted 15 Mar 2007 at 2:28 am ¶
justin wrote:
Children don’t ever have a lot of training. There are no illustrations there, just learning exercises and work in progress. I would guess that the child who painted robin hood and the self portrait was given one hour to paint two images. He spent most of that time mixing colours for the first image and dashed of the second picture in under ten minutes. Robin Hoods lack of eyes and painted on mouth is naïve compared to the way brush has been used on the second image.
I’m also going to guess that after the documentary the white children’s best pictures were stuck to a fridge in the louvre while the all black children’s work crated and freighted to british museum for scientific research.
Posted 15 Mar 2007 at 11:07 am ¶