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Comedian Bill Cosby, Trayvon Martin, Gun Control some say.

April 17, 2012 by  
Filed under News, Opinion, Weekly Columns

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(ThyBlackMan.com) Bill Cosby is still kicking and ticking, speaking his mind, whether we want to hear it or not.  In a series of recent media appearances, Dr. Huxtable spoke on everything from the Trayvon Martin tragedy to the Obama presidency.  When Bill Cosby talks, people listen, even when the poor man drones on and on and on like that long, dull movie that keeps going and going and going, seeming to never end, like this really long run on sentence that I am slowly typing onto this page right now (deep sigh).

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Bill Cosby, at least for the fact that he gives a damn about “us.”  I respect him for the same reasons that I respect my father.  Unlike the sperm donor responsible for my existence on this planet, my true father is the man who raised me into the awkward (and admittedly irritating) human being that I am today.  Both Cosby and my dad  love to share old school perspectives that crinkle the foreheads of everyone around them.  Sometimes they might even say something wise.

Bill Cosby’s latest remarks about the Trayvon Martin case were interesting and actually made quite a bit of sense.  He made the accurate point that the Trayvon Martin case makes a very strong statement about gun control.  He is right to point out the fact that much of the handgun violence that is responsible for killing so many black men in America results from the easy availability of guns in our neighborhoods.

Bill Cosby was incorrect in presuming that the Trayvon Martin case had little to do with racism.  Trayvon Martin was a black boy in the wrong neighborhood, accused of looking suspicious, and killed in cold blood by a man who wasn’t arrested for several weeks.  I doubt the police would have ever thought they could get away with sweeping the death of a young white woman under the rug in the same way they cut corners with Trayvon Martin.

Bill Cosby did, however, address racism as it pertained to President Obama.  He referred to those who are making unfair racial attacks on the president as being “un-American.”  Bill Cosby was right on the mark, since the racism being thrust at the president is an embarrassment to our nation and threatens the stability and functionality of our government.

What I can’t quite understand, however, is why Bill Cosby can so readily see the racism in the case of President Obama, but has trouble seeing the racism in the case of Trayvon Martin?  Is it because Obama is a wealthy, powerful politician who graduated from Harvard?  I’d hate to say this, but Bill Cosby’s remarks, while somewhat accurate, are both elitist and a little more political than they should be.

It is likely more than coincidental that Bill Cosby’s comments on gun control and President Obama just happen to support the Democratic agenda.  It’s also interesting that his decision to evade the issue of race in the case of Trayvon Martin is similar to the response of President Obama himself.  What Bill Cosby, President Obama and others must understand is that racism doesn’t just show itself in the White House.  It exists in an even more pervasive form in other segments of our society.

Bill Cosby’s remarks were not off-base and were far more constructive than his rants against young single parents several years ago.  I share Bill Cosby’s frustrations with young black parents, especially when I meet the young brother with 8 kids, 6 baby mamas, no education, no job, a bottle in his hand, a joint in his mouth, 37 tattoos and a felony.  But it’s important that any conversation about the lack of progress among some of us in the black community comes with an equally diligent commitment to confronting the systems that lead to the stomach-churning outcomes we see in our communities every day.

In other words, when I see the brother with all the kids and no education, I realize that he is a product of a culture and environment that was designed for his self-destruction.  He doesn’t own the media outlets that feed him music that teaches him to destroy his life, he doesn’t control the prison industrial complex that took away his father, and he has nothing to do with the fact that his local school system is woefully underfunded.

Conversations on race must be balanced, and I’m sure Bill Cosby understands this.  What I hope Bill Cosby also realizes, in his old age, is that we can’t just fight against racism when the victim is a Harvard graduate in the White House.  Racism affects us all.

Staff Writer; Dr. Boyce Watkins
 
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. For more information, please visit http://BoyceWatkins.com.
 
 

Comments

7 Responses to “Comedian Bill Cosby, Trayvon Martin, Gun Control some say.”
  1. xjdavid says:

    Zimmerman also organized protests against the police beating of a homeless black man. And in every call he ever made to 911 as captain of the Neighborhood Watch, he NEVER mentioned race until he was specifically asked by the dispatcher. So I have to agree with Cosby.

  2. Steve says:

    Hey wait a minute….wasn’t Zimmerman a minority?

    Facts:

    •Zimmerman grew up in a mixed-race household
    •He was an altar boy at his Caltholic church from age 7-17
    •He is bilingual
    •After he finished high school, he studied for and got an insurance license
    •In 2004, Zimmerman and a black friend opened an Allstate insurance office

  3. Steve says:

    Excuse me but did you just type, “this is what money do to to un-couth that has more money than sense?” I believe the gramatically correct phrase is, “This is what money does…”

  4. sankofa says:

    “Bill Cosby did, however, address racism as it pertained to President Obama. He referred to those who are making unfair racial attacks on the president as being “un-American.” Bill Cosby was right on the mark, since the racism being thrust at the president is an embarrassment to our nation and threatens the stability and functionality of our government.”—– Dr. Boyce Watkins

    I beg to differ and am sure many would with that statement. This incorporated entity called the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (one must know his-story to appreciate that statement) was funded on ethnic hate, misnomered racism (an artificial concept created by hate filled people to separate them from us) when they decimated the original inhabitants on the land, stole your ancestors and held them as prisoners of imperial and colonialist war for hundreds of years and created the very same manufactured being we now are afraid off and of which I called the American knee-grow. The constitution, which is really a mission statement for the corporation called America Inc., still has Africans as 3/5th of human being. The Dred Scott proclamation that “negro has no rights a white man is compelled to respect” has birth the self same attitude in the Educational, judicial, entertainment, Employment, Military, Economic, social and Religious areas of people activity, of which the European Americans control. These are the same physical and philosophical children of the pilgrims who came to America, all those years ago. After these pilgrims- mostly the under bellies of their society, were turfed out of the Brutish Empire for being the lowest forms of vermin’s and criminals in that society.
    That bastardized philosophy is evident today, everyday, 24/7/365, but not only in America Inc., but now in every corner of the world that the Eurocentric ethnic hatred pervades. By the way getscalledracistallthetime is a perfect example in name and response. I wonder if he/she/it was also as disparaging with the previous “puppet” in the Caucasian house.

  5. getscalledracistallthetime says:

    ‘Racism’ is not nearly the boogeyman it is accused of being. For example with regard to ‘The Kenyan’, is there not a bountiful suply of reasons to oppose this MOST corrupt and evil man? Yet those of us who express opposition to his corruption are always accused of being ‘racist’. Go ahead. I don’t care. Evil is still evil regardless of the race of it’s carrier. And it is not racist to recognize and point out evil.

  6. Gilbert Mullen says:

    Hey, if bill booty call cosby wants to have his own brain farts he can aford it, this is what money do to to un-couth that has more money than sense and cheated on his wife and at the same time portraiting the all American dad figure, or maybe that was his Avitar

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