Moving from Victims to Victors: African American Attitudes on the "Culture of Poverty" and Black Blame

Bill Cosby's controversial remarks at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) 50th Anniversary Commemoration for Brown v. Board of Education questioned the "culture of poverty" among blacks. This paper explores blacks' support of major themes raised in Cosby's speech—improving blacks' parenting of youth, relying less on government to transcend poverty, being contentious of black behavior, and ending out-of-wedlock births among blacks. By analyzing data in an original, national web-based survey of black, Latino, and white public opinion, results indicate most blacks strongly subscribe to several of these themes and often subscribe to them more than non-blacks. Despite class implications for supporting these themes, class indicators do not predict such attitudes. Several themes cohere on one factor, suggesting tenets of black blame.