Knowing Your Triggers IV

 

   

I recently watched Kamau Bell's 2022 documentary on Bill Cosby, which is every bit as dispiriting as I'd imagined. It contains peculiar passages of classism and status-consciousness that while not altogether surprising were disappointing to hear. All while being oddly mute on Cosby's apparent predilection for white women as victims. 

During a section of the documentary on Cosby's educational bona fides, some of those interviewed questioned the legitimacy of the doctorate awarded to him by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Some questioned if he'd actually written his dissertation, the subject of which was his animated television series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. 

While those are legitimate questions -- particularly in light of the claims by some former Cosby staffers that they did the work on his thesis -- I thought the commenters' relegating the doctor of education degree, which Cosby holds, to a tier below the Ph.D. was petty and self-serving, in that both interviewees had earned the Ph.D. 

One commenter compared holding the Ph.D. to playing in the NBA, and the Ed.D. to the G. League. And another took umbrage when Cosby, who had taken offense at something the Temple University professor had written about Cosby, refused to call him "doctor" while addressing him. Pulling at each other like crabs in a bucket.

For his part, Cosby, who is depicted in the film as a vile narcissist, is shown in one section belittling a reporter who had been covering the allegations of sexual assault filed against Cosby. He demeaned the reporter as only making "700 dollars a week" while he, himself, was making $60 million a year.  "He's jealous," Cosby said of the reporter. It's a despicable display. 

That Bell and Cosby's critics do not probe more thoroughly why two-thirds to three-fourths of the women who accused him of drugging and assaulting them were white women is strange to me. Some of those on camera dismissed the disparity as unimportant because Black women were among those victimized, too. But what does it say when most of those accusing him of rape are white or fair-skinned Black women? Wouldn't it lend greater credence to the claims and suggest that his predation was calculated? That he had a type?

Perhaps that line of inquiry was rejected because of this country's history of casting Black men as threats to white women. I can see that and can imagine the backlash. 

Still one of Cosby's accusers made a comment that struck me as echoing popular prejudices about Black bodies. She said she was surprised by how soft his skin was.