Make no mistake, the system of criminal justice in this country is, and always has been, rigged against black defendants. White guys often get away with crimes black men get prosecuted and sent off to prison for committing. And anyone who won’t admit this fact is either a bigot or a complete fool.
But with that said, the folks who take the position that Bill Cosby is being treated unfairly because he is black actually have it backwards: What they should be arguing for is equal treatment — arrest and prosecution — for white sexual predators too, and believe me some prosecutions are in the making as I write this.
Nonetheless, some black folks are joining with Cosby’s legal team to play the race card. To claim, in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that he is innocent of the charges and is being railroaded is asinine in the extreme. In fact, it’s total bullshit.
The problem with this kind of nonsense is this: If the race card is allowed to be used spuriously simply because someone was once famous (but now is infamous), it will lose all credibility when it legitimately needs to be used. Following the logic of Cosby’s apologists, all black men — no matter if their crime was murder or some form of mayhem — should not be prosecuted because the criminal justice system is unjust. Taking that logic even a step further, I imagine they feel that no person of color should ever be arrested, let alone convicted of any crime. Now that’s a sure way to assure that crime runs wild in black communities.
I suppose these same folks are supporters of R “The Pisser” Kelly, and Michael “Let’s play Skin the Weenie in the Shower” Jackson. And of course it’s to be expected that journalists who are themselves perverts are going to support other perverts — it’s only unnatural.
But with that said I still do not feel that Cosby should go to prison for his deeds, and this is in line with my firmly held belief that we overuse incarceration in the country, and the majority of those negatively impacted are persons of color.
The hell and embarrassment Cosby is going through is doubly deserved, for his crimes, as well as for his sanctimoniousness. He ran around the country moralizing and beating up on poor black folks, essentially blaming them for their own condition, thereby giving a pass to institutionalized racism, which is actually the culprit. The bastard.
It’s amazing that blacks who, for the most part, abandon the race — I’m thinking about Jackson and O.J. too — immediately rush back to hide behind the blackness they disdain just as soon as the white world turns on them. And we are always big enough fools to take them back and wrap them in our loving embrace.
Are we really a race of fools?
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.