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Bill Cosby’s a household name. His iconic career as an actor, comedian, writer, and TV host has spanned the decades. NewsOne.com lists Cosby as being one of the top 3 black philanthropists of all time. Because of all his hard work, today Cosby is worth approximately $400 million dollars.

As everyone knows, Cosby has been forced to defend himself against numerous rape allegations, many of them going back multiple decades. With the kind of fame and money that Cosby’s success brought…is it any wonder he had multiple extramarital relationships? We hear all the time about musicians and other celebrities having consensual sex with groupies…why is it so unbelievable that Cosby would do the same? In fact, most…if not all… of Cosby’s rape accusers admit to having a consensual sexual relationship with him. Many of them admit to continuing consensual sex with him, after the supposed rapes occurred.

Cosby’s trial has occurred in the court of public opinion and caused irreparable harm. Hypocritically, it’s been minorities and radical feminists who’ve harassed and disparaged Cosby the most…not white America.

Continuing to disparage Cosby publicly without the benefit of a court trial is no different than white supremacists lynching innocent blacks who’ve been accused of crimes in the south or police publicly disparaging the many blacks and other minorities they murder in cold blood. In case anyone forgot…BLACK LIVES MATTER!

Yet…ironically…it’s radical feminists and minorities who’ve jumped the shark here.

In the United States, the legal theory of innocent until proven guilty has saved many minorities from wrongful imprisonment and death. If you search online, you will find numerous cases of blacks and other minorities falsely convicted of crimes and imprisoned…only to be exonerated decades later…after their lives have been destroyed.

Yet Cosby…a man who’s lived a life dedicated to supporting the black community…has been tried and convicted in a court of public opinion on the basis of unverified rape allegations going back almost 50 years. His accusers, many of which are convicted criminals, drug abusers, or diagnosed with mental health issues, never reported these crimes when they were fresh. Many tried to extort money from Cosby afterward.

While there’s numerous accounts of Cosby providing drugs and alcohol to many of these women…what the media has failed to report on is an objective context of the social climate of those times. Back then, drugs were far more socially acceptable than they are today. The drugs identified weren’t date rape drugs…they were commonly obtainable party drugs. Further, it’s not like Cosby administered these drugs without these women’s knowledge. They absolutely knew what they were taking and were willing participants in their drug abuse.

Yet, other than these women’s words…there is no evidence any of them were ever raped. If there was, Cosby would’ve been convicted already.

What makes matters worse is that some feminists are using the false Cosby rape allegations as evidence of a rape culture that targets women. Yet, in 2014 Lara Stemple, of the Human Rights Project at UCLA co-authored a paper called “The Sexual Victimization of Men in America: New Data Challenge Age Old Assumptions, published in the April 17, 2014 edition of the American Journal of Public Health, that thoroughly debunks that rape is a crime primarily committed by men against women. It turns out when looking at instances of sexual assault, men are just as often victims of sexual assault as women. This was confirmed by the Center for Disease Control.

The Center for Disease Control found that men are sexually assaulted by women at nearly the same rate that women are sexually assaulted by men. This was confirmed by a study from the University of Missouri that found, “A total of 43% of high school boys and young college men reported they had an unwanted sexual experience and of those, 95% said a female acquaintance was the aggressor.”

Step back and think for a second, if those participating in the Cosby lynching were truly interested in preventing sexual assault…we would be hearing about violent protests against female rapists getting convicted and receiving next to no punishment for their crimes. Yet, their silence on this is deafening.

So before we allow anyone else to continue to lynch a black icon like Bill Cosby…or anyone else…let’s get all the facts first. Destroying Cosby’s reputation through unverified allegations in the media, without an opportunity to meaningfully defend himself in court, is as racially oppressive as any other form of violence against blacks and other minorities.

 

For more from Bob Lewis: One Citizen’s Opinion