ON BILL COSBY CASE, “WHITENESS” and SEXUAL ASSAULTS
The case of Bill Cosby reminds me of William Ellison, a cotton gin maker, who made the great use of his skills to be professional in his job as a slave and then bought his freedom from his master with the money he earned throughout his slavery years. He then distanced himself from his fellow ‘Blacks’ to get closer to ‘whites’. I interpret this as getting closer to whiteness, or superiority for that matter. Because he not only became free by means of his own efforts and money, more precisely; but also owned slaves, other Blacks. He took this further and supported Confederates, who wanted to uphold the institution of slavery.
Let me get back to Bill Cosby to show how I relate his situation to Ellison’s. It is for sure that Cosby was aware of what Black people were experiencing during the years of Jim Crow laws and with great probability, he experienced many incidents of discrimination while serving in the Army and also while trying to get accepted into the world of entertainment where white men dominated. So, just like Ellison, it is inevitable for Cosby to harbor rage against this supremacy. In other words, I argue that Cosby, because of repressed racial rage, developed himself into an oppressive figure for the idea of acceptance. In the meantime, he transformed himself into the equivalent of a white male supremacist. This does not necessarily mean that he cunningly planned his revenge, but instead internalized white, patriarchal hegemony and started to objectivize women regardless of their race. That is to say, the inherent nature of oppression he had faced before going into his new world of ‘Whiteness’ became his own patriarchal hegemonic persona.
In correspondence with this new nature of him, Cosby benefitted his fame, wealth and superiority (!) over women to seduce them, abuse and even rape them. It is an undoubted fact that women used to know no-one would have believed them if they had spoken out. Actually, I can say this is still the case nowadays except for some brave women who come forward and speak out against male dominance and sexual assaults. On the other hand, Cosby absolutely knew that he would be protected as a rich, dominant, well-known man, even if he faced complaints or lawsuits. Am I not right by saying that it is still very hard for women to overcome this idea in a world of injustice and inequality?
Finally, I strongly reject the idea of blaming women because they kept communicating with him even though he had abused them. This cannot be interpreted with the thought that they wanted to derive benefits from his power, wealth, and social/professional connections to advance their own careers. I would rather say that there is no way for women to find a world where they never face the abusive nature of men. So they should either go on and fight whatever it takes or give up their careers, their dreams, their social lives by withdrawing from the workforce, from the social environments, from the academia and so on. Thus, it would be unfair to anticipate solutions from women. I think the remedy is to educate people about equality and social justice and train them about how to resist the idea of racism, male dominance and class superiority.
