After Harvey Weinstein was indicted for rape and criminal sex acts Friday, a woman who has accused Bill Cosby of rape says there is pressure for Black women not to speak out against the beloved comedian.
Bill Cosby was found guilty on three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand in April and in response, several of his supporters — like his wife, Camille, and comedian Fazon Love, compared it to a lynching.
However, Lili Bernard, a visual artist and actor, says such responses has led the Black women who accused Cosby to face a backlash.
“Bell hooks wrote that Black women are programmed historically to be the sexual latrines of both powerful white men and disempowered Black men. And this is critically important, because, from a cultural perspective, it’s actually against the status quo for Black women to speak out publicly against their rapist, particularly when the rapist is a beloved, iconic, Black, powerful father figure, such as Bill Cosby,” she explains Friday, May 25 on “Democracy Now.” “Now, more than a third of us Cosby accusers are Black women: 26 of us are Black women. And this has come with great burden, because since the Cosby verdict, the vitriol that I and my sisters have been receiving from Black, adoring, die-hard Cosby fans and rape apologists — I’m sorry to say, the majority of whom are Black men — has increased tenfold.
“And this vitriol is fueled by Bill Cosby’s impudence in paralleling himself to the lynched child Emmett Till and into his audacity in likening us to modern-day lynch mobs, to likening us to, really, white supremacist thugs who target and murder innocent children, women and men.”
Bernard said Weinstein’s verdict quells the noise from rape apologists and puts the focus back on the issue of rape itself. She also blasted the entertainment industry for creating a “disempowered form of feminism.” Still, she says women need to fight back against such things.
Additionally, the accuser recounted what happened when she claims Cosby drugged and raped her, saying it occurred in the 1990s when he was grooming her as an actress.
“During one of the theater exercises, he came around behind me, and he grabbed my breast. And I gasped, and I turned around really quickly, and, in disdain, I said, ‘Mr. C, you grabbed my breast!’ And he’s like, ‘No, I didn’t.’ I said, ‘Yes, you did. You grabbed my breast.’ He said, ‘No, I didn’t.’ I said, ‘You grabbed my breast, Mr. C.’ And so, when he saw that I was displeased, he said, ‘No, I didn’t. I was trying to grab your rib cage. I was trying to show you to lift up your rib cage and project through your diaphragm.’ And so this caused me to doubt myself. But so there’s this very calculating, masterful manipulation of the mind that Bill Cosby, you know, enacted in order to subdue dozens and dozens of women, to the point of being able to drug and rape me.”
In response to Bernard, several people were fired up over the actress’s remarks.
“Weather the Coon Cosby is guilty or not, just the denial of white supremacy or racism proves who she is working for!”
“Angela Davis would be turning over in her grave. To have that fro and be so demonic. You ma’am are ignorance personified.”
