Dear Bill Cosby: Some Scary Shit

Dear Bill Cosby,

I watched your depiction of a black man as I grew up. I sometimes wished you were my father: playful, smart, something big in life. I watched the way you watched television and ate healthily at the demand of your wife. I particularly enjoyed the way you handled Rudy and Olivia. Now that I am older I know that you are not that man, you are an actor. Even then when my mother or someone told me that you were a comedian I despaired; because, your humour was so slight, so quiet.  I did not get it especially against other Black comedians later I was able to realize that it was because other black comedians were very loud and distracting. Your Huxtable character was amenable and sweet and real. I drank your koolaid. Thank you.

There was an interview you did with Oprah Winfrey, years after, that made me think of OJ Simpson. It was the interview where I watched you mourn the death of your son. Your only son. I felt real pain for you then. I wondered then, if you would ever recover from the loss of a child. I wondered about your wife.

Then you returned as that Huxtable man again, but not. You were now living with Mrs Huxtable, no children just a constant white neighbour but again the show was called the Cosby’s. Funny thing about that it’s only now that I realize that the show was never called the Huxtables it was called the Bill Cosby Show.

Here you are again, Bill Cosby, having lived a full life, haunting me again. I am in Grad School studying creative writing in the Caribbean. Yes we don’t just go to the beach here; we struggle to make sense of the world in a place that wants to be like America. In the Caribbean the division between ideas and the shared history is agitated by the vast seas that separate our islands from each other and so even though we are victims of colonialization and descendants of slaves we handle our politics, ourselves and our children differently. We emulate different spaces. I am a Jamaican and we emulate America. We do not idolize our black heroes such as Walter Rodney, Manley, Williams or even Garvey in the way that you did Luther or Malcom. Our Television shows do don’t show these men the way your shows explore and whisper history to us. We revere the television. Many people sit in front of the television for hours scrolling through cable channels or local television stations just to get laughter and a sense of how to be. Laura Hurst in her book Born Fi Dead tells of the effect the western shows had on the creation of dons and ‘bad man’ in Kingston. So it’s no wonder you are important to us.

You have shown us a black man with many children happy, professional and grounded. We saw you and maybe came close to seeing possibility in ourselves. You told us that the Uncle Tom, the black man with education is a man worthy of emulating not just jocks, musicians and drug lords. You made America heaven and a dream. And now we have come to hear that you were a rapist and sexually assertive man. This is hurtful, especially because the rape and the abuse of women by black men in power is so prolific and expected. And I don’t believe you are guiltless in this. I believe even your wife was complicit in this and this is where the pain becomes ripe. You fucked up Bill, you fucked up so badly I cannot feel anything for you. My grandmother used to say-well if not mine then many Jamaican grandmothers-‘if you never go deh you name couldn’t call’. And your name is being called over 35 times. So…

But recently as a student doing a Masters Program in a Caribbean University so many of us are sitting around and wondering about power and change and development of the New World African community and how to do it. We are after all the new Uncle Toms, well if not yet then soon. We are learning how to sit at the table and all I can think of is you. Well, not just you but Vybz Kartel, Dudus, Manley, Castro and what we are allowed to do when we think about leadership and ideas, wealth distribution and empowerment of the black communities and lower classes in a light outside of the way the system is set up to run. Yes Bill it is here that I have stopped to look at you.

I believe you want to buy or run NBC. And I believe that that is why those acts of the 1969 onward with the white women came to light. I believed they saved you from a lynching and you got too brave you forgot that they want you to remain in your lane. And now you are useless. This does not negate that your actions of drugging and sleeping with women. That is wrong. It just means that this is your tragic flaw.

The Black man is constantly to know that he is not to be anything more in the system than an Uncle Tom. He is not a leader. Those days have gone. Those days of being able to lead a people and a culture into identifying himself beyond the idea of the noble savage is to upset the system change the way markets work. The Klan is no longer hooded and burning churches, they are lynching characters and ambition through the black leaders tragic flaw.

Now what does that leave the black leader in the Caribbean to do?

Recently I read a book called The Dragon Can’t Dance by Earl Lovelace and after reading the book I realized a few things about the trauma of slavery. The first thing I was able to notice is that the black savage hid his humanity in plain sight. It is this that makes tourism in the Caribbean so attractive, because even though we are familiar to the places you call home we are distinctly different from the tourist, the difference is the humanity of the supposed savage. For example in the book stick fighting and the dragon costume were relics of an African civilization, but when we meet them they are losing their significance. The holders of the relics of a time past had not been able to make them useful beyond where their grandparents have taken them. But it was heavy in the blood and an outlet was needed. This is the first painful effect of slavery that our history sits with us and becomes useless.

Patrice Lumumba, Nelson Mandela,
Steve Biko, Joseph Kasa-Vubu by esther.

The second thing I realized is that the violent black community leader was using this useless necessary relic to find his place in a world that he doesn’t understand and that does not understand him. That was Fisheye the relegated stick fighter no longer useful or usable when imperialism took over Carnival, his violence is no longer welcomed. So the black community leader with his history is ostracized left out to become the prey of the police. The third thing I realized is that when the route of politics is taken stirring the people is not the only thing required to mobilize and change a system that is no longer useful or understood by those who carry the vision for the New World African; he must also have a plan. This idea made me look a Lumumba, Nelson Mandela and what became their fates.

In this world the Black leader must not think beyond the confines of his roles. We may be free but we are still being controlled. And so I get upset because you gave the, so much to control you with that you will never be able to die with NBC under your belt. The people who gave you power who revered you are turning their backs from you because the media says it quite clearly you are a rapist. No one hears the question your lawyer asks “How many of these women were cohersed into coming forward?” They have come for your head. But if you never go deh you name couldn’t call. So too with Manley and the “Looks like a communist, talk like a communist, walk like a communist then it must be a communist” mantra of Edward Seaga, so too with Dudus and the most powerful druglord or Zeeks and the scary semen in mouth evidence in his murder charge.

The tragic flaw of the Black leader is the demise of the true freedom of the African diasporic community. Bill Cosby I shake my head at you because I wonder why you with all the things you knew with all the things that you were capable of  understanding having been seated at that Uncle Tom table for so long why would you give them this as ammunition. The white woman’s desire for the black man is not a loyal desire it’s a sexual and frivolous one.

Bill Cosby look at when Micheal Jackson and Tupac and remember that even though you played the biggest Uncle Tom you were also a minstrel around the Uncle Tom table.

I want to tell you to ride this out, but time is fleeting. So here is my suggestion Bill Cosby, you are an artist a story teller a comedian for a reason, you are near deaths door anyway and the only thing that can happen in the end  is that you have to go into hiding the way Dave Chapelle did. Not that he was hiding he just had to become useless the way Fisheye had to in the novel I mentioned before. What I didn’t tell you was that the novel also has a character a called Philo a calypsonian who fearless spoke until he felt as if he no longer fit in Diego Martin-the Uncle Tom village- and returned  home. That’s my advice Bill Cosby return to the thing that made you who you are, return the stage behind red screens and tell the story of 1950’s American and the lynching and the beating of black men your rise to the Huxtable fame and then tell us why you are here in this position and call names. Face your demons because shame blocks the pleasure we receive from you.

What else can the black leaders do, we are our own demons at one point or the other we must face it knowing that our death is inevitable. There has to be some change, Mr Cosby. The black community is the consumer and the hewers of wood and the fetchers of water. The black community leader is always in a state of flux: death and imprisonment; so, there is need of  a revelation in order for the system to shift. 

Who are you in this, Mr Bill Cosby? How are you? What is your Purpose? Cause this right here for all the black soon to be uncle Toms is some scary ass shit and we need a model of survival and growth. Ambition cannot be stunted. Is this the new battle field and what is the manual not for survival of the black man but the black community. What's your next move Dr. Huxtable? You should pay the penalties for your atrocities but that does not mean that you are scotch free from the work of helping yourng black soon to be Uncle Tom's figure out how to mobilize and inspire change in our communities. Face your music and do more. That is real power. And that for you should be the easy part...We are waiting!