By Jewel
Allison
 |
|
Jewel
Allison says she stayed quiet after Bill Cosby assaulted her because she didn’t
want to hurt the African-American community. (Yana Paskova/For The Washington
Post)
|
Like many of the women who say they were
assaulted by Bill Cosby, it took me two decades to gain the courage to reveal it publicly. His accusers – mostly white, so far – have
faced retaliation, humiliation, and skepticism by coming forward.
As an
African-American woman, I felt the stakes for me were even higher. Historic images of
black men being vilified en masse as sexually violent sent chills through
my body. Telling my story wouldn’t only help bring down
Cosby; I feared it would undermine the entire African-American community.
When I first heard Andrea Constand and Tamara Green publicly tell their stories about being
drugged and assaulted by Cosby, I wasn’t relieved; I was terrified. I knew
these women weren’t fabricating stories and conspiring to destroy America’s
favorite dad, but I did not want to see yet another African-American man
vilified in the media.
As I debated whether to come forward, I struggled with
where my allegiances should lie – with the women who were sexually victimized
or with black America, which had been systemically victimized. I called several
friends for advice.
While some encouraged me to speak out, others were cautious
– even angry. One friend, an African-American man, insisted I should stay
quiet: “You will be eaten alive, and for what? The black community is not going
to support you.” It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but I think it was his way of
protecting me.
Even I felt a certain instinct to protect
Cosby. In the 1980s, when The Cosby Show aired, African Americans were
suffering more than most from the combined scourge of Reaganomics, AIDS and the
crack epidemic.
When I would go home to Brooklyn, I would wonder whether absent
childhood friends had gotten hooked on crack. When a fellow model wouldn’t show
up at auditions for months, I worried that she had succumbed to AIDS – and
sadly, one close friend did. Weekly doses of The Cosby Show allowed me to
escape this painful reality and restore my hope in the future for black
America.
The well-educated, well-spoken and well-heeled Huxtables seemed to
promise that, despite the decaying conditions for black folks, everything was
going to be alright. In The Cosby Show’s first season, I attached myself to
Lisa Bonet’s character, Denise, because of our similar age and physical
appearance, and I imagined the Huxtables were my family.
With his 30-minute
sitcom, Cosby helped soothe black America’s psyche, showing that our men could
be engaged fathers, our women could become successful lawyers and our children
could go to college. By simply providing a better vision of ourselves, Cosby
became one of the African-American community’s most celebrated and admired
icons.
But as I vomited in the backseat of the taxi
that Cosby ushered me into after he assaulted me one night in the late 1980s,
that Dr. Huxtable image no longer made sense. I felt both physically violated and
emotionally bamboozled. Still, I didn’t want the image of Dr. Huxtable reduced
to that of a criminal.
For so many of the African-American men I knew, William
H. Cosby, Ed.D. provided a much-needed wholesome image of success, and the
character he made famous was their model for self-worth and manhood. I knew
that, in my reluctance to add my assault to the allegations facing Cosby, I was
allowing race to trump rape.
Even as the number of Cosby’s accusers has
mounted to more than 25, many African Americans struggled to part
with their idealized image of him. Several celebrities publicly defended Cosby, questioning the credibility of his
accusers and criticizing the media for ruining his legacy: actors Whoopi Goldberg and Ben Vereen, and singer Jill Scott, among others.
At the BET Honors last week,
Phylicia Rashad, who played Cosby’s TV wife, was applauded when she alluded to protecting The Cosby
Show’s legacy during her award acceptance speech. Rashad, at one point, even gave credence to conspiracy theories circulating among
African Americans that suggest some nameless person or group made up the sexual
assault allegations to prevent Cosby’s return to television.
Historical context also has fueled much of
this doubt. Last year, before I revealed my own story, I called a very dear
African American friend and asked her what she thought about the women accusing
Bill Cosby. “I don’t believe these white women,” she said.
“They are just
trying to destroy another black man.” It pained me terribly to hear her say it,
but I knew her perspective wasn’t uncommon. Black people are sensitive to the
fact that, for centuries, images of African-American men as threats to white
women have been used to justify oppressing them.
In 1989, for instance, as the fifth season of
The Cosby Show aired and the Huxtables were the most-watched
TV family in American homes, the heart-wrenching case of the
Central Park Five began to unfold in the news. The story was filled with
abhorrent racist overtones: Five African-American and Hispanic boys were
convicted of raping a white woman as she was jogging in the park, even though
the crime-scene DNA did not match any of the teens.
They were depicted in the media as wild animals, and unjustly imprisoned
on sentences ranging from five to 13 years. Their forced
confessions, the wrongful convictions, and white America’s misplaced rage all
fed off old stereotypes of black men’s lustful, violent, and uncontrollable
behavior toward white women, the same stereotypes that had convicted the Scottsboro boys and caused countless other
African-American men to belynched, castrated and burned alive.
Like my friend, many people have invoked this
long and horrific history when examining the sexual assault accusations against
Bill Cosby. Many black folks feel suspicious, agitated and afraid when they see
white women charging an African-American man with sexual violence.
Admitting
that Cosby is a rapist would feel like giving in to white America’s age-old
stereotypes about black men. It would be akin to validating fears that
African-American men are lustful and violent. It would be taking away one of
our greatest and most inspiring role models – one many African Americans feel
we can’t afford to lose.
Eventually, it was the vicious anger that
some directed at Barbara Bowman, Victoria Valentino, and the other courageous women who spoke
up about their assaults by Cosby that convinced me to come forward. I saw in
their eyes the same deep pain that I had been experiencing silently for years.
Other women of color started speaking up to say they had been drugged and/or
sexually assaulted by Cosby, too, and model Beverly Johnson eventually joined them.
When I
finally told my story in the New York Daily News in November, it
was hard for me to look other African-American people in the eye. On some
level, I felt that I had betrayed black America. And some of my
African-American friends seemed too hurt by the damage to Cosby’s image to
offer me any support. The friend who had dismissed the stories of Cosby’s white
accusers, for instance, didn’t offer me any words of comfort.
Soon after I told my story, I ran into a
successful African-American photographer who asked me, “Sister, is it true?”
The tone of his question made it sound like our father had died. “I’m sorry,
brother, but it is true. Do not let this weaken you in any way,” I told him.
Cosby was once a source of hope for many
African Americans. But fictional icons like him should not wield so much power
over our collective spirit. Our nation’s greatest African-American heroes have
been on the front lines of Civil Rights efforts, not in our television sets.
They are in the mothers and fathers who fought real-life challenges to raise us
and in the teachers and professors who worked long hours to educate us. Bill
Cosby did not lead the March on Washington, and The Cosby Show didn’t end
racism. The only legacy at stake is of one entertainer, not of black manhood,
as I once feared.
Jewel Allison is a poet and author of "Stealing Peace: Let's Talk About Racism." She is a
graduate of New York University, a public speaker and a music educator.
Source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
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