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Bill Cosby & Being Racially Targeted.

June 1, 2017 by  
Filed under Ent., News, Opinion, Politics, Weekly Columns

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(ThyBlackMan.com) Disgraced entertainer Bill Cosby did the predictable when he screamed there was racial bias in the jury selection in his scheduled trial. This wasn’t the first time Cosby screamed racial foul play. He did it when he claimed there was a racial motive behind the dozens of women who claimed he drugged, raped and sexually abused them for years. Then there is the report that Cosby was peeved that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson won’t publicly defend him. This may or may not be true. But Cosby is friends with both the civil rights leaders.

Bill Cosby is hardly the only one screaming that the case against him is take your pick: the white man, white establishment, or a sensationalism driven media establishment trying to bring down a wealthy, prominent black man. Thousands of other blacks, and many Cosby fans, shouted the same thing virtually from the moment the accusations of sexual rapacity started flying against him. They endlessly cite prominent, wealthy celebs, from Woody Allen to Charlie Sheen to Bill O’Reilly, to bolster their contention that there is a vicious malignant, racial double standard in hammering Bill Cosby while letting the other big-name white sexual miscreants skip away relatively untouched.

Let’s be perfectly clear. Bill Cosby is on trial for sexual assault. The jury that he got given the relatively sparse number of blacks in the county he’ll be tried in is about as racially balanced and fair as he’ll get. Also, he has the deep pockets to get the best legal team money can buy. They made sure they got the best jury he could get. He will be found innocent or guilty based on the evidence, not because he’s black. Given the sheer number of alleged victims, the hideousness of their accusations, and that many of them were white women, Cosby got the biggest pass one could imagine, in not being hauled into a court before now by a prosecutor. He could thank his fame, name and money for that. Something few blacks could ever dream of.

But can even Bill Cosby make a case he’s being racially targeted? Yes and no. In his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, former President Obama ticked off a standard checklist of slights and abuses that he had routinely faced; security guards tailing him as he shopped in department stores, white couples who toss him their car keys as he stands outside a restaurant waiting for the valet, police cars pulling him over for no apparent reason.

Obama noted that he was subjected to these slights and insults during his college days and even after he launched his professional career. The racial attacks, and vilification and slanders certainly didn’t stop when he set foot in the Oval Office.

Obama happened to be the most glaring, and to some, surprising examples of a prominent black subject to abuse. But legions of prominent blacks have had the same or worse experiences. They tell harrowing tales about being embarrassed, harassed, and assailed by police, private security guards, storeowners, and clerks. Their names read like a who’s who of the wealthiest and biggest names among blacks. This is especially the case with big name celebrities who wind up in a court docket. Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson, and of course, O.J. Simpson, loudly hinted that race had much to do with their legal woes.

Bill Cosby, didn’t say it directly, but many others note that black celebrities, professionals, business leaders, are hauled or slammed to the curb and arrested at any time no matter their status or appearance. Supposedly, it’s their very prominence that stirs resentment, jealousy, and harassment. It’s the old uppity Negro syndrome spruced up in modern day resentments over the wealth and success of prominent blacks. Many Bill Cosby defenders were quick to claim that he became a marked man when he floated the idea of buying NBC in 1992. The very notion of a black man owning a mega media outlet was supposedly considered racial heresy.

There’s no proof of any racist conspiracy to nail Cosby because of this, or because of his fame. The Cosby-NBC rumored deal came almost a quarter century before his indictment in Pennsylvania. During those years, Cosby was lauded, feted, and praised as the nation’s number one dad. He was given every platform imaginable to chastise other blacks for their alleged laggard, immoral failings. Even after the accusations against him mounted up of sexual misdeeds, and he confessed to giving drugs to one woman and getting drugs for other women he wanted to have sex in an affidavit he swore to in 2005, legions of legal experts either defended him or claimed there were no legal grounds to prosecute him because the statute of limitations had long since run out on most of the claims. Bill Cosby acknowledged that officials in Allegheny County bent over backward to make things “very very smooth” for him.

That may be. But the bitter reality is that Bill Cosby’s legal pass finally ran out in a Pennsylvania courtroom. And like so many prominent black men, so did his racial pass.

Written By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

One can find more info about Mr. Hutchinson over at the following site; TheHutchinson ReportNews.

Also feel free to connect with him through twitter; http://twitter.com/earlhutchins

He is also an associate editor of New America Media. His forthcoming book is From King to Obama: Witness to a Turbulent History (Middle Passage Press).


Comments

6 Responses to “Bill Cosby & Being Racially Targeted.”
  1. Anne says:

    Apparently, those who defend Cosby on the basis of anti-black racism are willing to overlook the fact that he is a wealthy predator who hid behind a phony mask of morality and respectability for decades. It is how he was able to gain the trust of women and girls he preyed on. Apparently, his defenders are willing to also overlook the fact that some of his victims are black women. There are legions of black men and boys who have been railroaded by the justice system. Cosby is not one of them. At this time, his 2018 conviction has been overturned because of prosecutorial error, but the fact remains that he is guilty.

  2. joe diddly says:

    what a bunch of racist bullshit
    terrible grammar too
    embarrassing website lol

  3. Daoud Robinson says:

    I’m tired of the Neutrality and support. For you Bill Cosby ‘truthers’, 1) He has paid multiple women off to stay silent. (How this relates to innocence is beyond hilarious). 2) He is a “conscious” brother who admits to dealing with date-rape-drugs and sex/cheating on his wife. Go to any legal page or outlet history site for legal confirmation. Hypocritically we go to point 3) He as chastised other blacks while this happened. 4) He is reported to cuss and be lewd with the ladies on set by a number of folks including comedian Godfrey.

    We need to realize Bill Cosby was just an Actor creating an image. He is not a savior, he is not real life doctor (medical anyway), he is not even a prolific author.

    He slacked in early school to bachelors, and received many near academically bogus, just for fame “honorary degrees”, and whose education portfolio is sketchy to say the least.

    He’s just another brother in the Entertainment and Comedy industry.

  4. Pelvo White, Jr. says:

    Some people believed that they were,or are all villains, M. L. King, Jr., was accused of being a sexual villain, so was Muhammad Ali,Malcolm X,Jack Johnson,Mike Tyson, O.J. Simpson,Marion Barry and many others,and others yet to come. When will the villainization of the African American male end? All a female has to say is that the black male sexually assaulted her, and some men will exhaust their money trying to convict the accused. The darker the accused man’s skin, the faster the conviction. America is a nation where a white woman yelling rape killed hundreds if not thousands of black men who were either lynched,beaten or burned to death by unruly mobs. For some, it is easy to believe that Cosby did it because our society has been conditioned to believe that sex is all a black man wants.The people of Montgomery County, PA ought to insist that the District Attorney stop wasting their tax dollars trying to convict an innocent man ! A mis-trial in and of itself isn’t grounds for a retrial. Montgomery County, Pennsylvania shouldn’t pay one single tax dollar in support of the prosecutor’s bruised ego, or for him to make good on a campaign promise that he shouldn’t have made in the first place. The people have spoken, and the prosecutor should move on.

    If ethics is a main concern, consider this, the white man, Ole ” grab em by tha p ” himself, sits in the White House as president of the United States of America no less as a shining example of contemporary American white man ethics. We know this because he was voted into office by a majority white electoral college while a few months later the politicians in Montgomery County waste citizen’s hard earned tax dollars trying to convict an innocent black comedian, and actor. The villainization of the African American male hasn’t ceased in America from the time of chattel slavery until now. To many, Cosby is guilty by American political default because he is the descendant of black fugitives from justice, and inextricably linked to African American history.

    He is guilty because his ancestors escaped chattel slavery, sued for their freedom, was freed by Abraham Lincoln, mightily fought Jim Crow, got Civil Rights,didn’t have to sit in the back of the bus, walking around in three piece suits and it isn’t Sunday,wouldn’t get off of the sidewalk when the white man wanted him to do it,eats in the restaurant with white folks, goes to the movies and sits with white folks, sits in the university classroom with white folks,want to earn the same amounts of money as white folks, didn’t punk out when white folks hung John Brown, and Nat Turner, didn’t punk out when white folks made prisons part of the African American male and female rights of passage, didn’t punk out when white men shot the Kennedy Brothers,and M.L. King,Jr. Didn’t punk out when white men and women continue to hang cases on nearly all of our African American heroes,and now the white man and woman are the champions of American womanhood. Cosby is innocent, and he shouldn’t be villainized, and robbed of his well deserved dignity and his money.

  5. Jarrod Hill says:

    BooHooHoo Bill Cosby. He is a disgrace and represents a cheater at best and a serial predator at worse. His life has been nothing like the Cosby Show. I have no sympathy for him because he made his money by letting white people laugh at his black stereotypes like Fat Albert.

  6. Pat says:

    Send us links of Cosby’s confessions related to drug as proof!

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