Maybe the answer to how we solve a problem like Cosby, and in turn R. Kelly, is that we stop allowing black men who abuse the black community to thrive.
By Ira Madison III
By Ira Madison III
Three years ago, 35 women who have accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault appeared on the cover of New York magazine.
It had been decades longer for many of the women who came forward to
say they were drugged and raped by the once-beloved sitcom star. And it
was only now, this week, that they received any type of justice.
A jury Thursday found Cosby guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, home back in 2005. He now faces up to 30 years in prison.
The verdict stripped away the last remnants of The Cosby Show’s
Cliff Huxtable—a façade that always had its shortcomings. The show
presented a pristine image of an upwardly mobile black family, but
rarely showed the working class black family members that real-life
upper class black families are never too far removed from. It was also
dripping with respectability politics—a flaw that became clearer in the
mid-2000s when Cosby delivered his infamous “pound cake” speech.
As described by The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer,
“Given at a 2004 NAACP event commemorating the 50th anniversary of
Brown v. Board of Education, the decision striking down segregated
public schools, Cosby mixed a familiar message of black empowerment with
a palpable disgust for what he described as black lower-class norms and
behavior.
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Source: The Daily Beast
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