Cosby would smile at this competition.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

Lately, comedian Bill Cosby isn't leaving some audiences laughing. He's leaving them angry. His crime?

Since last summer, challenging young people, particularly black males, to take responsibility for their lives instead of blaming others for their failures.

Cosby has blasted minorities who pass up the chance to get a high school education, then complain that they can't earn a good living. He has chastised low-income people for buying kids expensive sneakers instead of "Hooked on Phonics."

We'd be naive to think educational and economic advancement is as simple as tacking on a can-do smile and getting to class on time.

Yes, minorities in this country face sociological barriers that make the struggle harder; government and education can do more. But that Cosby has drawn so much criticism for his admonition to "shoot higher" suggests that we've grown far too comfortable with failure.

Which brings us to Saturday's NAACP-sponsored ACT-SO event, which clearly would put a smile on Cosby's face: students competing in the Afro Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics at the Hult Center's Soreng Theatre.

Thirty young people gathering to compete in everything from poetry to painting, dance to drawing, music to math.

Thirty young people who have been mentored by adults in the community with expertise in those areas.

Thirty young people who have a chance, with first-place finishes, to go to nationals in Milwaukee, Wis., this summer.

"Yes, there's truth to what (Cosby) says," former ACT-SO participant David Blasher says.

"Not just for blacks, for everyone," Blasher adds. "There's no substitute for good character - and no monopoly on it, either.

"The message is: Don't be a stereotype. What you hear at ACT-SO isn't that you're black, but that you're talented and smart and work hard."

Blasher, 25, is a three-time winner in the local competition. A 1997 South Eugene High graduate, he went on to earn a degree from Yale in 2001 and now attends law school at the University of Oregon.

"The 'black athlete' gets magnified so much," says Jim Mclaughlin, an ACT-SO volunteer whose son, Jordan Clevenger, won a silver medal last year in the math portion of the local event. "ACT-SO tells kids: `You can excel beyond athletics.' '

I recently got a call from a man who wanted to complain about ACT-SO, having seen a story in the paper about Saturday's event. His beef? That it's exclusionary. "If there was a competition for whites only," he said, "people would be up in arms."

Oh, please.

Look at the deeper value here: Young people are being given a chance to excel. To challenge themselves. To dream a world that's far better when people are contributing to it instead of draining from it.

As a community, we should support ACT-SO with gusto. Show up for the 7 p.m. program; it's free. Donate money for students heading to nationals. Volunteer to be a mentor or a judge for next year's program.

"It really gives you a sense of accomplishment," says Clevenger, a Thurston High sophomore. "I went into it with a lot of doubts; I wasn't that great at math. But afterward, I felt like I'd really accomplished something."

I remember interviewing Desire Fountaine, a 16-year-old Springfield High School girl who won a national ACT-SO bronze medal for a moving piece she wrote about her mother's murder. She said that for the first time in her life, she started believing in herself.

And that pays dividends to us all. "You start to realize you're part of a community," Blasher says. "You're responsible to make that community better, and, at times, to criticize it. But you're to step up and be a role model. And with that right comes responsibility."

Sounds downright Cosby-esque to me. And hardly a crime.

For more information, contact Mclaughlin at [e-mail].