*Bill Cosby recently spoke out on the Trayvon Martin case and said guns, not racism was responsible for the murder.
Cosby, whose son Enis died in 1997, understands what the Martin family is going through.
But instead of focusing on race, he wants to focus on the abundance of guns in urban communities and how these communities are getting their hands on them.
Frequent EURweb contributor Dr. Boyce Watkins feels that Cosby is right on one front, but wrong on the other in his most recent op-ed.
Check out this excerpt:
Bill Cosby is still kicking and ticking, speaking his mind, whether we want to hear it or not. In a series of recent media appearances, Dr. Huxtable spoke on everything from the Trayvon Martin tragedy to the Obama presidency. When Cosby talks, people listen, even when the poor man drones on and on and on like that long, dull movie that keeps going and going and going, seeming to never end, like this really long run on sentence that I am slowly typing onto this page right now (deep sigh).
I have a tremendous amount of respect for Bill Cosby, at least for the fact that he gives a damn about “us.” I respect him for the same reasons that I respect my father. Unlike the sperm donor responsible for my existence on this planet, my true father is the man who raised me into the awkward (and admittedly irritating) human being that I am today. Both Cosby and my dad love to share old school perspectives that crinkle the foreheads of everyone around them. Sometimes they might even say something wise.
Read more at NewsOne.
Cosby should really know better than to sweep the issue of racism under the rug in glaringly obvious case. Perhaps I should send him a copy of this write up where someone tells the truth for once. Here are some the highlights:
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/07/opinion/op-hernandez7
Yet there was nothing really new about it. Rather, the murder was a manifestation of an increasingly common trend: Latino ethnic cleansing of African Americans from multiracial neighborhoods. Just last August, federal prosecutors convicted four Latino gang members of engaging in a six-year conspiracy to assault and murder African Americans in Highland Park. During the trial, prosecutors demonstrated that African American residents (with no gang ties at all) were being terrorized in an effort to force them out of a neighborhood now perceived as Latino.
Over the years, there’s also been a tendency on the part of observers to blame the conflict more on African Americans (who are often portrayed as the aggressors) than on Latinos. But although it’s certainly true that there’s plenty of blame to go around, it’s important not to ignore the effect of Latino culture and history in fueling the rift.
The fact is that racism — and anti-black racism in particular — is a pervasive and historically entrenched reality of life in Latin America and the Caribbean.
White supremacy is deeply ingrained in Latin America and continues into the present.
Given this, it should not be surprising that migrants from Mexico and other areas of Latin America and the Caribbean arrive in the U.S. carrying the baggage of racism. Nor that this facet of Latino culture is in turn transmitted, to some degree, to younger generations along with all other manifestations of the culture.
For instance, in University of Houston sociologist Tatcho Mindiola’s 2002 survey of 600 Latinos in Houston (two-thirds of whom were Mexican, the remainder Salvadoran and Colombian) and 600 African Americans, the African Americans had substantially more positive views of Latinos than Latinos had of African Americans.
Is it me or is Mr. Cosby increasingly becoming the “crazier than a cat sh*t sandwich on toast” uncle who says the oddest things at the most inappropriate times?
Just Saying.
Mr. Cosby may be partly right.
Were the police being racist when they didn’t charge Zimmerman? Maybe, maybe not. What I’ve heard so far through the media is:
- Zimmerman’s father is a retired judge
- A police officer has stepped forward and said he was pressured by the prosecutor’s office not to charge Zimmerman
- Zimmerman has gotten away with previous violent crimes such as assaulting a past girlfriend (race not known) and assaulting an on-duty police officer (race not known).
This information seems to suggest that the problem was not one of racism but of corruption in the justice system (such that a family member of a judge / former judge has been given a “get out of jail free” card for his whole life).
Was Zimmerman acting in a racist manner when he killed Mr. Martin? In other words if Mr. Martin had been a young white or Latino (or Asian or another background for that matter) male wearing a hoodie would he have been killed by Zimmerman? It’s hard to tell. Zimmerman may be a deranged vigilante who would’ve killed Mr. Martin even if he was white or Latino. There is the possibility that Zimmerman called Mr. Martin a “coon” while on the phone (but there’s a debate on whether it was “goon”). Zimmerman’s use of a racial slur would indeed be proof that racism was involved in his killing of Mr. Martin.
A life was lost for no good reason and I’m glad that Mr. Martin’s parents had the strength to push for justice. Makes me wonder how many lives were lost and swept under the rug by the justice system because no one stood and spoke for them.