During the Ferguson riots of 2014, I was reading Blood Done Sign My Name by Timothy B. Tyson, a race scholar who tells the story of a racial murder that happened in Oxford, North Carolina in the 1970s. The tale is also autobiographical — Oxford was Tyson’s hometown.

The parallels between the two incidents were striking in similarity. From the white community raising money to support the accused, to the arguments leveled at why 23 year old Henry Marrow deserved what he got, to the acquittal of two suspects by an all-white jury — all of it seemed to connect to the situation at hand — a disconcerting thought, considering they happened 44 years apart.

That book taught me a lot about the state of race in America, where we had come from, and how far we still have to go.

The black experience

Often, people on the liberal side of things will overdo it. They will say that they don’t understand what it’s like to be black, or even that they couldn’t possibly. They will state that white people need to tune in to the “experiences” of people of color and listen to them.

I reject this premise. Because you can. I know people who are not black can understand many different types of oppression. How? Because Timothy B. Tyson is white.

If this country is going to have progress on the issue of race, we have to have more moral courage than saying than deferring to someone because they have a certain experience. I believe it is an intellectually sloppy way to go about things, and it ensures that people can tear down your argument simply based on the race of the person you’re discussing.

Instead we have to have intellectual conviction, and the ability to say, “I’m not right about race because I’m black. I’m right because I can prove it.” Doing so also gives more power to white allies, as they now know that they don’t need that particular experience to stand in direct opposition to oppression.

I once wrote an article called “Civil rights isn’t about you liking people,” because it’s not. I’ve spent countless hours and rounds of debates with people citing data, statistics, and experience of others. It’s not that I believe experience is invalid — it’s that I don’t think it should be the only bullet in the chamber.

Differentiation

I’d like to separate this criticism from the more pernicious set of arguments such as from opponents of affirmative action: “You should get the job because you’re the best person for it, not just because you’re black.”

These arguments have long been made without finishing them — as the messenger is generally unable to tell you what makes the black person “not best” and they cannot state the obvious. They are used for the denigration of minorities in America.

Instead, what I’m suggesting is that on a fundamental level, the new civil rights movement must have strong intellectual backing to it. I’m suggesting that the experience of an oppression that we know is real is not enough to suffice as an argument against that oppression. Tapping into predecessors, you must be politically active and deeply knowledgeable. You must be firm, yet fair. You must place organized pressure, but you must remember who your friends really are.

Instead we have to have intellectual conviction, and the ability to say, “I’m not right about race because I’m black. I’m right because I can prove it.”

Create new arguments. Read a lot of books. No, more than that. Whether you are black, white, Asian, Pakistani, or Hispanic — organize, persist, resist.

Pull statistics from the labor bureau about whites on welfare. Pull up information on minority crime from trusted sources or studies. Discover the rich history of people who have fought this fight before you.

Because that’s what it’s going to take. There were plenty of people in history who, at some point, had to have the courage and conviction to say that they were right when opposing oppression, and not falter.

My basic ask is that instead of saying we couldn’t possibly understand various forms of oppression, that we endeavor to.

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The truth is, I don’t remember 9/11. I was ten, which is well old enough to remember, but I don’t. I don’t remember the screaming, the television coverage in the weeks that followed, the presidential addresses that must’ve been made. I don’t remember violence in the streets, I don’t remember vigils for fallen soldiers and firefighters and bankers and deli delivery boys.

I don’t remember the traumatic stories of victims or the passionate speeches that mobilized communities to rally together and help each other. I don’t remember the incredible stories of people rescued from the rubble, or the tragic stories of the ones that weren’t.

I don’t remember being in school that was interrupted for a moment of silence. I don’t remember feeling fear or anger at what had happened. I don’t remember writing about it in my fifth grade journal. I don’t remember impassioned debates about Muslims, jihadis, and war.

9/11 came and went, as does everything else.

Outsourcing History

It feels strange not to remember any of these things. It feels strange not to remember what many regard to be the most important moments of their lives, and it passed just as a day for me. They wave banners saying “Never Forget”, but who can forget what they have never remembered? And as strange as it might seem, it’s normal.

It’s a product of a culture of outsourcing history. A culture that wages wars that are far away from what I experience in my life. A grocery store I can go to, but I don’t have to ask where things come from. A drone strike operator who gets PTSD without ever firing a gun. Just like the stars in the heavens, we live in a world that increasingly lives farther away from us, and it’s easier, day by day, let it pass.

There is no cure. I may never know what it is truly like to live on the other side of Afghanistan or Iraq. I won’t be able to recover the wasted days or recapture the primacy of the experiences of loved ones who said goodbye for the last time the morning of 9/11. I’ll never know what else I was doing, or how it’s possible that history circled around me without saying hello. All I can do is listen, and manufacture blessed moments of gravity, when the stars, even for a moment, come ever slightly closer together.

If you love the art of storytelling and in particular want stories about 9/11, I recommend StoryCorps, who do amazing work with the victims of 9/11, telling their stories through animation.

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If Milo Yiannopolous is the poster child for an impassioned battle for free speech in America, we may have taken a wrong turn.

Today, I’m going to teach you how to be Milo Yiannopolous, God-supposing you ever want to try.

With his easily debunkable diatribes about Black Lives Matter, or his incitation of sexist abuse towards Leslie Jones on Twitter, he becomes a superstar, because if people are offended by what you say, that’s good, and political correctness is toxic for America.

This is the culture Milo exists in. This is the culture Milo exists for.

Let’s break down the Milo method:

1. Blame Political Correctness

Can we all please have a break on “political correctness?”

Just because you can you cite statistics about crime in black neighborhoods, as Milo does and then say in your British accent and with your haughty demeanor that “‘Black lives don’t matter to Black Lives Matter’, otherwise they’d be addressing these issues already,” that doesn’t make you right.

It doesn’t make up for your intentional lack of differentiation between citizen-citizen violence and state-sanctioned state-citizen violence.

It doesn’t make up for your intentional ignorance of the many programs and organizations devoted to a reduction of crime in poverty-stricken areas.

It doesn’t make up for your intentional ignorance of the nature of criticism towards police from Black Lives Matter, and your intentional conflation of that criticism with a call for violence on law enforcement.

So the picture that you paint, however stylishly you believe you do it, is not “politically incorrect”, “edgy”, or “what the leftists don’t want you to hear”, it’s actually just wrong.

But be sure to blame any backlash on that, and not on, you know, not being correct.

2. Conflate Arguments

One might say that Milo is statistically, factually incorrect about his wild assertions concerning the black community. He is. But if that were all there was to it, the argument would be over quickly. Milo has, however, another card.

Milo: “Something offensive.”

Person: “That’s not correct, and kinda really offensive.”

Milo: “You’re being a whiny little bitch if you have a problem with what I’ve got to say.”

See? Milo has turned being offensive into the thing that is right and being offended as the thing that is wrong, and this muddies the waters sufficiently enough that the actual truth value of what he’s saying is never addressed. This is how Milo wants it. It allows him to, with impunity, say ridiculous things and still be “right,” because as long as the offense card is in play, the thing that is correct is being offensive. What he fails to notice is…

The truth is not always offensive.

The truth is not always shocking.

The truth is not always contrary.

3. Decry grievance culture (whilst using it to propel yourself higher)

Milo doesn’t like grievance culture. He thinks that people who have a certain identity, like gay or woman or black have it easy because they can appeal to grievances to get them through. Milo doesn’t focus on the fact that your child drinking lead isn’t a grievance, it’s a fucking problem. Or that being denied a marriage license that you’re legally allowed to get isn’t a grievance, it’s a miscarriage of justice. Milo doesn’t like these.

Milo does like the social media capital that he gets from being banned from Twitter. He does like the rallying cries of #FreeMilo, and people supporting his first amendment rights to speak truth to power on Twitter. The fact that it’s a private company and under no obligation to let anyone use its services for any reason is not important.

Milo likes appealing to that grievance. Milo likes dog-whistling to the white males. Milo likes calling it “being a firestarter” when it could be called “being a dick.”

___________

Do this. If you do these and develop a shell of a human that shields you from both criticism and empathy, but does have a soft spot in your exoskeleton for money, you’ll be able to auto-pimp your soul, and become the self-made wrecking crew that Milo is.

If you want to.

You can read more about my socio-political ruminations on the dark state of the world at NowThatWereHere.com.

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“When exactly was America great?” John Green has said it, President Obama has said it (to whatever degree he is allowed to say things) and even I have said it. This attacks the fundamental notion of Trump’s campaign: the idea that there exists in America, a kernel of the past unblemished by inequality or racism or sexism, and seeks to say that his nostalgia constitutes a clear and present danger for the many problems we face today that will be swept under the rug, yearning for a past that never actually existed.

This time around, though, he’s not the only one with a problem.

Right now, minorities are stuck in a chasm between two idealisms.

On the one hand, they’ve already become accustomed to the dog-whistling and even blatant alienation of the right, which has appeared to do everything it can to get less and less people to think, “I want to sign up for that.” The right has also done an excellent job of ascribing to an intensely specific version of the past that does not reflect the totality of it, and actively desires to transport us all back there, which they might not try to do if they fully understood that it’s not a place to which many minorities would like to return.

On the other hand are the liberals.

For liberals, the problem with conservatives, they say, is that they refuse to accept things as they are, blinded by the allure of the past. Their refusal to live in the present represents a stubbornness that liberals can’t wrap their minds around. What goes unnoticed is that liberals’ insistence on living in the future also poses a danger to minority communities.

Right now, minorities are stuck in a chasm between two idealisms.

Liberals often lambaste conservatives for this kind of hyper-nostalgia that comes from thinking that the 1950s were a time of greatness to which we need to return, but are often guilty of the same thing when mistaking the future that they idolize for the realities that are.

The conservatives are stuck in the past. The liberals are stuck in the future. The minorities are stuck in the present.

This problem spans at least three movies.

Michelangelo Signorile recently made an appearance on the Daily show that highlights the dangers of liberalism. The danger is that, being liberal and progressive people can cause you to think that change has occurred even when it has not, simply because you wish it very much to be the case. Many liberals are unaware of how many laws are on the books regarding hiring and firing processes for LGBT people, or they are unaware that the fight for LGBT rights didn’t end with a Supreme Court decision.

Once again, being stuck in the future and practicing utopic thinking can lead to a severe lack of engagement on social issues that liberals care about. It’s the difference between thinking that Roe. V. Wade was the end of the battle and remaining engaged enough to fight every single conservative legislature and demagogue that makes abortion today technically legal, but impossible to get.

It’s the kind of lack of engagement that can lead to the disastrous midterm elections of 2010, where only 12% of youth and minorities voted, feeling that a victory had been won for them in 2008, while older, whiter voters rushed to the polls, “cranky about how ‘tall’ the president was.”, and instituted a political gridlock that made it vexingly difficult for President Obama to do anything at all.

And engagement is not the only area where the problems of liberal future-pressing are made manifest.

Let The Adults Drive

Often, in their push to create a more just society, liberals are guilty of devising a political revolution to which minorities are essential in supporting, but when it comes to structuring that revolution or being “in the room where it happens,” minorities consistently get the short end of the stick.

It’s the difference between thinking that Roe. V. Wade was the end of the battle and remaining engaged enough to fight every single conservative legislature and demagogue that makes abortion technically legal, but impossible to get.

Consider that blacks and Hispanics have already been told this election cycle that they are voting against their best interests by their strong support of Hillary Clinton. But in the gallons of articles about these issues, is there ever a sense of introspection at the infantilization necessary to tell people that they don’t know what is good for them?

- Is there ever any question of precisely why blacks do not feel that Bernie Sanders would be the best bet for them?

- Is there ever any questioning of Hillary’s decisive win in Puerto Rico, full as it is of people that are routinely disenfranchised from the political system and process?

- Is it always viewed as an insulting statistic to ask the question of why Sanders’s wins did not span a more diverse demographic range?

To me, this suggests a fundamental misconception among liberals: minorities like blacks, who vote reliably Democratic, are needed for support, not input. This again creates a dynamic of blacks sitting in the background while the adults make the decisions. For the conservatives, it’s “We don’t want you.” For the liberals it’s, “We want you…to get on board.” I understand that not breaking into that particular voting bloc was disappointing for Sanders supporters, but you’ve got to come up with an answer that’s less insulting than “They don’t know what’s good for them.”

Where does that really leave minorities?

Identity Politics and Economic Policies

Another troubling aspect of the Sanders campaign is the outright rejection of the validity of identity politics. I’ve heard many liberals, including Senator Sanders himself, brusquely shove identity politics to the side, saying things to the effect of, “Well, when you fix the economic disadvantages, the racism goes away.” And that is simply not true. Economics are certainly a part of the black struggle, but it’s not as if blacks who aren’t poor don’t experience their fair share of racism. Has Barack Obama not experienced extreme racism, even as a laureate of Harvard, one of the most prestigious colleges in the nation? I’m listening.

The reason Barack Obama still experiences a startling amount of racism is that it is simply not a construct reserved solely for blacks shackled by the manacles of low socioeconomic status. The problems of racism and prejudice are not purely economic, and therefore cannot be mended tangentially. Rejecting identity politics out of hand is probably a good way to not speak to the concerns that many minority groups have, including Hispanics, blacks, and the LGBT community.

Economics are certainly a part of the black struggle, but it’s not as if blacks who aren’t poor don’t experience their fair share of racism.

Simply because they are not affected by economic setbacks, as Barack Obama is not, that simply does not magically solve the particular problems of unity, diversity, and racism, in the same way that 60% support for gay marriage doesn’t mean that 30% of those people don’t still feel uncomfortable with same sex PDA.

However, rather than connecting with the concerns, liberals have gone a different way, and decided, like Bernie Sanders, that the South’s votes don’t matter because “it’s the most conservative part of the country,” or that Planned Parenthood (who does great work in minority communities that desperately need it) and its endorsement of Hillary Clinton constitutes “the establishment.”

Rather than thinking there were legitimate reasons that minority voters didn’t want Sanders to be their president, liberals opted for the insulting fantasy that Hillary must’ve just rigged the election, because “Well, I know what’s good for black voters, and it’s Bernie, so she must’ve cheated or tricked them.”

To me, this suggests a fundamental misconception from liberals: minorities like blacks, who vote reliably Democratic, are needed for support, not input.

Another reason that Bernie’s campaign may have failed to strike a winning chord with the black community is that one of the chief identifiers of the communal black struggle/experience is endurance, not idealism. Mothers resolutely praying for the safety of their children, Negro spirituals that sing about the struggle, the grind, the endurance of cyclical, everyday violence, and the slow, step-by-step march towards freedom that every generation gives its energy to for the next — these features dominate the black story.

How then, do you pitch idealism to these people, and wonder why it doesn’t appeal to them as much as an approach that is billed as thoughtful, pragmatic, and consistent?

Trickle Down Revolution

The last point I’d like to make is that liberals have much to say about the pure applesauce of trickle-down economics, but not a lot to say about the blind spots necessary to believe in trickle-down revolution. Any kind of theory that puts forth the idea that the specific problems of unity, racial division, and minority communities in this country can just be solved by another problem means that once again, minority interests get trampled by the white people who know what’s really best for them.

It’s just like the problems that communities (the LGBT community, the feminist community, and the atheistic community, for example) faced when they realized that there were persistent problems of race and diversity that were not addressed and did not simply go away with revolutionary change for the whole. So you still have the world’s most famous atheists being 4 white dudes, white feminism, gay white men still getting gobs more representation than anyone else also emblematic of the gay community, bisexual people treated as if they don’t even exist, and Caitlyn Jenner somehow being the “face of the trans community” despite being straight shit as a person.

Liberals have a lot to say about the pure applesauce of trickle-down economics, but not a lot to say about the blind spots necessary to believe in trickle-down revolution.

The minorities in these communities often did not find that revolution trickled all the way down to them, and therefore there was no reason for them to expect that Sanders’s revolution would trickle down to them, either, or that they should prefer his revolution to the slow, steady, and pragmatic grind that Clinton represents that is much more characteristic of the historical and present narrative of how these communities took a seat at the table for themselves in the first place.

Unity

As we wrap up the primary process, it is apparent who minority voters have chosen as the candidate that would best serve their interests. They are attempting to deftly straddle the dangerous nostalgia of the right as well as the demoralizing naiveté and utopic thinking of the left. Because we have problems to solve today, and a step forward is a step forward.

Perhaps it is up to us to get behind them as we always insist we are, rather than their job to get behind the plan that we’ve devised, if we have any interest in listening what they have to say, instead of simply getting them in line. We might find that, in doing so, we will gain a better understanding of the biases and prejudices that run rampant throughout our whole country, not simply one particular party, and discover the true power of unity, not the false pretenses of unity that create chasms such as these at crossroads such as this.

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We should start this off right: I don’t know. I don’t know anything. And neither do you. The purpose of this post is to talk about Bill Cosby and rape in America, and we can’t do that unless we go from the ground up, and that’s what we’re doing here.

I would not like to admonish my brothers and sisters in the black community, like Phylicia Rashad or Eddie Griffin, who feel that Cosby’s defamation is undeserved and calculated. They might be right. Their anger might be justified.

I would not like to rein in my darlings like Trevor Noah, Larry Wilmore, Tina Fey, or Amy Poehler for making comedy pursuant to common culture. They could be right, but it is not the majority of their job to be right — it is to be funny and to create content.

But the point is that none of them know.

Here’s what we do know.

What’s True About Rape In America

1.) We Have a Disastrously Lax Attitude Towards Rape in America.

When reporting rape in America, people often have to answer questions ridiculous in both quantity and scope. Women have it awful because of the sheer amount of assault, with some reports being as high as 20 percent of women experiencing sexual assault in college. That’s one in five. For men, it can be just as bad to be raped, because no one even believes it can happen.

I view this lackadaisical attitude toward rape in common culture to be a powerful motive for us to believe what rape victims tell us. That’s compassion talking. We don’t want to be overtly skeptical or subject rape victims to the same kind of delegitimization they experience on a daily basis. That is a good and honest thing.

However, when it comes to the law, and how we try, prosecute, and convict criminals, we can’t pretend that that initial reaction on our part is enough to sustain a case, and we shouldn’t slip into believing that it justifies not asking much thornier questions later on in the process.

2.) False Reports

Apparently a number is going around that only 2% of women lie about rape cases, and that number is touted by feminists to make it seem drastically low. However, it is not really reliable. Another number, 41%, bandied about by men’s rights activists, is only slightly more reliable, but seeing as it was the result of research conducted by Eugene Kanin with 109 cases in a small city over a period of nine years, twenty years ago, it’s not your best bet.

That coupled with the fact that Kanin seemed okay with accepting data in favor of his position that could actually swing both ways instead (i.e. counting cases withdrawn by the plaintiff as “false”, when that does not necessarily mean that, for instance), and you’ve got yourself a study you should use very sparingly and cautiously.

The truth? We don’t know. How many rape accusations are actually false is kind of a hard number to come by. So the only way we can judge whether or not these women are telling the truth is whether their stories match up to other objective truths.

Another difficult-to-come-by number is how many instances of sexual assault go unreported. According to RAINN, self-billed as “The nation’s largest anti-sexual assault organization”, that number is 62%, according to research done by the FBI and the Justice Department. However, they don’t describe what “unreported” means, as it could mean “never reported”, which, in the instance of the Cosby rapes, would be untrue.

What’s True About The Law

1.) What Happens In a Courtroom is Different Than What Happens on TV

In the article, One of The Most Shameless Episodes in Journalistic History, Huffington Post journalist Charles Thompson recalls an exchange between Fox columnist Roger Friedman and Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report about the 2005 Michael Jackson trial:

In an April 2005 interview with Matt Drudge, Fox columnist Roger Friedman explained, “What’s not reported is that the cross examination of these witnesses is usually fatal to them.” He added that whenever anybody said anything salacious or dramatic about Jackson, the media ‘went running outside to report on it’ and missed the subsequent cross examination.

Drudge agreed, adding, “You’re not hearing how witness after witness is disintegrating on the stand. There is not one witness, at least lately, that hasn’t admitted to perjuring themselves in previous proceedings either in this case or in some other case.

I understand that not everyone has enough time to devote to thinking about cases like a lawyer, and I understand that I’m no lawyer. But it behooves us to either try to think that way, or to be able to legitimately change our minds about how we see a case, because that’s what our justice system depends upon.

2) News and Truth are Not Synonymous

As noted earlier, the media circus following accusations like these is deafening, but not very reliable. While one might hope that channels and anchors that actually bill themselves as news organizations and professionals would provide more hard hitting journalism, it can seem at times that they are simply starved for the same thing everyone else in entertainment is starved for: content.

As Charles Thompson writes in his article about the Jackson trial:

- “When the prosecution rested, the media seemed to lose interest in the trial. The defense case was given comparatively little newspaper space and air time…”

- “A not guilty verdict was not quite so lucrative. In an interview with Newsweek, CNN Boss Jonathan Klein recalled watching the not guilty verdicts come in and then telling his deputies, “We have a less interesting story now.”

- “Almost every single prosecution witness either perjured themselves or wound up helping the defense. There wasn’t a shred of evidence connecting Jackson to any crime and there wasn’t a single credible witness connecting him to a crime either.

But that didn’t stop journalists and pundits from predicting guilty verdicts, CNN’s Nancy Grace leading the way. Defense attorney Robert Shapiro, who had once represented the Chandler family, stated with certainty on CNN, ‘He’s going to be convicted.’”

- “The story was over. There were no apologies and no retractions. There was no scrutiny no inquiries or investigations. Nobody was held to account for what was done to Michael Jackson. The media was content to let people go on believing their heavily skewed and borderline fictitious account of the trial. That was that.”

It is a disconcerting reality, but a reality nonetheless, that news is not always trustworthy. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated in cases like the one above that news, starved for content, can get out of control in a hurry, but afterwards, there are no retractions, take-backs, or apologies.

The news can say what it will, speculate how it will, and lay down whatever narrative it will, with very little kickback, regardless of whether they are ultimately right or wrong.

3) Yes, Celebrities Can Go To Jail.

One of the latent fears of the populace surrounding cases involving celebrities is that those demigods will be able to leverage their fame, power, and money in order to manipulate the results of the case. There are only a couple of notes that I would like to submit under this point.

A) Oscar Pistorious and Reeva Steenkamp

On September 12, 2014, Oscar Pistorius was found guilty of culpable homicide and one firearm-related charge, of reckless endangerment related to discharging a firearm in a restaurant. He was found not guilty of two firearm-related charges relating to illegal possession of ammunition and firing a firearm through the sunroof of a car. On October 21, 2014, he received a prison sentence of a maximum of five years for culpable homicide and a concurrent three-year suspended prison sentence for the separate reckless endangerment conviction.

And this was one of our darlings.

All you have to do to be one of our darlings is be an inspirational runner who had his legs amputated when he was 11 but ran anyway — and we still put him in jail. The criminal justice system isn’t perfect, but I only bring up Oscar Pistorius to point out that it’s not impossible for rich, powerful, or extremely likable people to be convicted of a crime, and as much as we are afraid of that, we should know that that doesn’t de facto mean that you’ll get away with something.

B) You’ve Got To Give The Average American a Little More Credit

In the wake of a “not guilty” verdict following a person of fame, the public finds itself asking, “How much did this person’s celebrity tie into the decision?” But this question is unreasonable on multiple counts.

The first is that in cases like Jackson’s, he was acquitted unanimously by a jury of his peers, not by a mistrial (an error in the proceedings.)

It wasn’t as if Jackson used his giant money to pay people off, or every witness was conspicuously found dead in the Bermuda Triangle the day before they had to testify: He was acquitted by a group of well-selected but average American people. And every one of them, after having reviewed the facts and evidence, submitted a ballot exonerating him.

The second reason this question is unreasonable is that it assumes the amorality of the American people, which is not something I believe in. However liked or respected an individual may be, I find it very difficult to believe that these jurors did not want truth. I also find it very difficult to believe that they would pardon someone they thought was a child rapist simply because they liked his music.

You’ve got to give them more credit than that.

4.) The Defense of Fame

This fear of the rich and powerful using their influence or authority to play by different rules has also become one of the talking points in the case of Bill Cosby. When it is pointed out that some of these alleged incidents were almost 50 years ago (which is not to be construed as “less important because it was long ago”, simply to be construed as “legally outside the statute of limitations for a criminal charge”), people claim that the plaintiffs chose not to come forward before because of Cosby’s mega-fame mixed with his values-driven persona (as Margaret Cho states here.)

However, this doesn’t appear to be the best defense for multiple reasons.

A.) Bill Cosby is not less famous now than he used to be.

This one bears very little explanation, but it’s just to say that if these women did not report on Cosby at the time of the incident because of his fame, it makes little sense that they would feel more comfortable now as opposed to then, seeing as Bill Cosby is even more famous now than he was in 1965.

However, a charitable way of understanding this would be to say that the women, seeing the courage of others in similar situations, would finally have the courage to speak out, because numbers are safer. That is reasonable.

B.) It was still 1965.

At least for the first alleged incident of assault, it was still 1965. That’s two years before interracial marriage was legalized, and only one year after The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on protected classes, including race. It was a whopping 15 years before the acquittal of Robert Teel by an all-white jury for the murder of Henry Marrow sparked outrage and a continuing conversation about racial violence and prejudice, and on August 6 of that same year, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson would sign into law the Voting Rights Act, giving Bill Cosby the right to vote.

My point in recounting that history is that it seems strange to me, the argument that these women immediately felt that they were in a situation that would be unsympathetic or hostile to their claims that black man had raped them.

In keeping with the precedent of history, they would have been able to simply assume that society would have been on their side, and in keeping with the precedent of history, Bill Cosby would’ve been summarily lynched.

So their reticence to report the incident does not seem quite explainable in that way.

C) Racial Hoaxes and Fear of Black Bodies Is a Feature of American Culture

This is a point I would rather not belabor, because, as I’ve already noted above, nobody really knows how many false reports of rape there are, so we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. I wouldn’t want to appear to be exaggerating the number or understating it.

Suffice it to say, though, that it does happen. And in the case of the war on black bodies, it doesn’t even have to happen, only the insinuation does. Timothy B. Tyson, in his book Blood Done Sign My Name, chronicles the murder of Henry Marrow in Oxford, NC in 1970. Marrow was attacked and chase out of the general store by Robert Teel, the racist proprietor, and his sons, and shot in the head while already on the ground, immobilized from a connecting scattershot. The reason was that he had apparently said “ugly words” about Robert Teel’s daughter-in-law.

As Tyson notes:

The force that drove the bullet through Henry Marrow’s brain, if you were looking for something more explosive than gunpowder and more specific than that Cain slew Abel, was white people’s deep, irrational fear of sex between black men and white women, any single instance of which was supposed to abolish the republic, desecrate the Bible, and ring in Planet of the Apes. (p.43)

Similar cases like that of Emmett Till or of Rosewood Florida can be recounted, their crucial elements being that they include violence justified by America’s substantial history of fear when it comes to black men having sex with white women.

This is particularly to ask, “What, despite this solid evidence of a history that has proven to be entirely on their side, convinced these women that Bill Cosby was untouchable?”

This is honestly not at all to suggest that all rape accusations are lies. But as much as I would be the first to not want to admit it, some of them are, and it would be naive to pretend otherwise.

Consider this excerpt from American Thinker, examining Bill Cosby’s accusers:

Former exotic dancer Chloe Goins claimed that Mr. Cosby sexually assaulted her at the Playboy mansion on August 9, 2008. Her claim was the most serious at the time, because it fell within the statute of limitations. However, Marty Singer, Mr. Cosby’s attorney, has stated that flight and telephone records clearly place Cosby in New York City, 2,500 miles from the mansion, on the date the alleged assault supposedly took place.

That is not even particularly good or clever work on the part of Cosby’s legal team, that’s just him literally not being anywhere near where the plaintiff claims that he was when she claims he was.

An instance like that could only be described using the colorful words of Wolfgang Pauli, the noted theoretical physicist: “That is not only not right, it is not even wrong.” That is to say, “That is so far outside of the strictures of right and wrong that its truth value is unquantifiable.”

Will the other cases follow suit or prove to be similarly hollow?

If a person is that wrong about the details of a case, what compels them to pursue it, and what competent lawyer doesn’t see a loss coming before taking that case?

Are there factors other than justice that can cause someone to pursue unpursuable cases?

These are meaningful questions to ask, but they don’t have clear answers yet.

Conclusion

I understand the outrage of some, the support of others, the pushback against victim blaming or shaming, the solidarity with the oppressed, and a certain mistrust for the integrity of both our legal system and our media, that either spins things to its liking, or doesn’t legitimately stand up for or represent the people.

Like Comedian Jerry Seinfeld said of the Cosby case: “…if the allegations have any truth to them, you want the truth to come out. You want justification for all the people.”

And I know that doesn’t always happen. Dick Cheney doesn’t go to jail despite war crimes we know he committed, and no one goes to jail for the 2008 housing market collapse. Despite our best efforts, ill befalls the good and the evil slip away into the night.

However (and I feel that I’ve sufficiently prepared you for this opinion at this point): I don’t think Cosby, in the legal sense, raped these women. (Which should be differentiated from any simply smarmy or skeezy behavior.) As far as what we send people to jail for and how long, I don’t think that Cosby is guilty under the law.

To me, the evidence points more strongly towards a case for defamation and money rather than justice. That combined with previous fraudulent cases of a similar nature makes me believe that it is reasonable that a confluence of factors are responsible for Cosby’s current crucifixion, and that what the American public would like to believe is not the same thing as what is objectively true in this case, or what can actually be ascertained under the law.

To be clear, I could be wrong.

And that is why, thankfully, we do not summarily execute people. That is why we have a legal system. Because, for all its faults, it is possible that in the due course of time, we may discover facts and figures that challenge our notions of what already is, and quite possibly, that change our minds.

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“With great power comes great responsibility.” — Uncle Ben

Uncle Ben is laying the smackdown of truth right here. This idea is fundamental, and it even factors into our justice system. Minors get charged differently, because we ascribe a different level of responsibility to their actions. People who are mentally ill are not culpable in the same way as an average 30 year old. The 10 year old that bashes his mother’s head in with a baseball bat that she bought him for his birthday is sure as hell going to haunt our dreams, but he’s not the same as Dexter serially slaying people on Showtime, and we know that.

Scariest child murderer ever? Sarah Hyland in the SVU episode “Hothouse”. Just. Don’t. Even. DO. IT.

This is about culpability. It’s about the fact that along with the other factors that we consider when we define culpability, we recognize that being fully culpable is directly proportionate to an agent’s understanding of their actions. This is actually why the question of how to treat criminal minors is a hot button topic, especially when considering the possibility that their decision making capacities are impaired during that period in life due to lower brain activity in the frontal lobe and more in the amygdala, leading to a lack of true understanding of their actions.

Understandings of God

• He is all powerful. (Soundbite: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”; Full length ego-trip: “I’m so badass.” (Job 38–41)
• He knows all. I always like to add my personal caveat that my understanding of the Christian conception of God is not only that He knows everything, like some Encyclopedia Britannica, but that He understands everything. The cause and effect for everything in the past, present, and future is with Him, and He understands, not just every single thing, but how every single thing interacts and works together (Rom 8:28).
• He is good/love. We don’t have time to debunk that claim here and now (see here and here for just a taste), but let’s take it, as they say, “on faith.” Verses like Psalm 145:9 even go the extra mile to say that God’s not just good, but He’s good to everybody.

Here’s the thing: These are highly specific claims, and they raise God’s power levels faster than a Mario mushroom or power flower. This brings us back to the timeless wisdom of Uncle Ben (maybe Voltaire, but mostly Uncle Ben): “With great power comes great responsibility.” Put a different way, it might sound like this:

…For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more. (Luke 12:48)

Given the nature of the claims we’ve just entertained, God would ultimately have the absolute highest degree of culpability for what He does and creates. He knows all, can do all, and is fundamentally good. Remember: Our judgment should be directly proportionate to the agent’s understanding and capacity.

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things (Isaiah 45:7)

Now consider teachers. We place our children in teachers’ care every day, and if something happens to them under the watch of the teacher, largely, it is the teacher’s fault. But teachers are neither omniscient (“I didn’t know that he was eating rat poop”), omnipotent (“Actually, sir, that’s a 300 pound man gorilla masquerading as a high schooler, and I spent the last 7 years of my life reading books, so no, I couldn’t break up the fight so easily”), or omnipresent (“I was not there when he punched Petey into orbit, Mrs. Wilson, I’m sure he’ll come down soon”). Teachers lack all these powers, and we still think it’s their fault when something goes wrong. Furthermore, if we were to add even one of these qualities to Mrs. Higgenbottom or Mr. Scratchcraggle, their culpability would be even higher and we would blame them MORE for failing to keep our children from harm. The crucial question: where is God’s responsibility?

I swear, the bear thing with Elisha in 2 Kings was totally…ahem…legit.

For some reason, the fact that Yahweh can commit genocide against the whole earth because He regrets making us, order the killing of Amalekite infants, bizarrely care about foreskin, condone and endorse slavery, or leave a shocking amount of today’s ills off of His almighty to-do list is easily shed by modern Christians by simply claiming a different interpretation of the text. God can say things as clearly as “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7) and somehow Christians still blame most of the world’s woes on sin, free will, and our choices that lead us away from God.

Surely anything claiming to be good, loving, all powerful and all-knowing should have the screws put to it for a world as poorly designed as this one. Or, of course, He doesn’t actually exist. There’s always that possibility.

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Sitting in the middle of the airport in Rochester, NY and getting on a flight even when I don’t know what’s on the other side, I feel my limits very much. Usually, when we make plans, especially plans like international travel, we have all our ducks lined up in a row. I’m one of those duck people.

I don’t look like it, but I like control, just like everyone else. That’s why living here on Earth doesn’t work well sometimes. Maybe living somewhere like Mars or Venus would help, or perhaps there is a transcendent sort of peace that only Neptune can provide. Maybe there’s one planet, star, nebula, asteroid belt, or galaxy in the universe where everything comes together at the right time for the right reasons and the right people make the right decisions. I think I heard an old book talk about that once. Wherever it is, it’s very far away.

“The star maker says, ‘It ain’t so bad.’”

I have to leave the airport in Rochester to go to JFK, knowing that there is nothing waiting for me there. My plane to Italy left almost 12 hours ago. It’s the kind of thing where you feel your heart drop into your stomach. Or perhaps, with a little less literary panache, you lie on the beige rug covering your living room, looking from the computer to the sky and repeating over and over to yourself the only word commensurate to the depth of your realization: no, No, NO. Or maybe, betrayed in your sense that some piece of life must be always just, you cry.

I recently read a book recently that talked about being certain. It asserted that rather than being drawn from conclusive and tested facts, being certain is a provable mental sensation that happens to a person. It can function completely independent of reason and often does. This is no more evident than in the case of me reading my itinerary incorrectly.

“The spaceman says, ‘Everybody look down. It’s all in your mind.’”

But it isn’t all in my mind, Mr. Flowers, it’s very real. I’m looking at the biggest error that I could’ve made, one that will cost me $465 in the very near future, but I don’t know that yet. What I do know is that my ridiculous mistake is, for the moment, mine. I have a chance to not break character. No one has to know about this but me.

Usually, we think that might be a good thing. I certainly used to. We look around when we trip, hoping that no one saw us and counting it as a success if no one did. But many times, I think we don’t want anyone around because of our perception of others, not of ourselves. The world’s not bright like it was when we were little, and we fear we will be laughed at or rejected. Or worse, we feel that we will be a burden on those who want to help, that they will be willing but unable. In short, we don’t trust others.

But we know ourselves. In fact, there’s no one we know better. We know all the smart and dumb things we’ve said, all the clever and idiotic things we’ve done, all the people we’ve hurt and helped. It’s all there, conscious or subconscious, making up the person that we are. The person that decides what the world is. From childhood, we’re given conflicting views on the world, but we do know it’s broken. We’re brought together with an enemy to force an apology from our lips, only to be told when we grow older that you have to have respect for yourself. We’re told that failure makes you better, but we’re shown that no one wants to do it. And we’re told to be vulnerable in a world they told us was dog-eat-dog. Why admit you made a mistake in that kind of world?

But I’ve learned. My best friend Micah says that we’re all just bags of flesh, and I tend to agree with him. There’s not really meaning in letting things like secrets kill you that don’t need to. Cancer, heart disease, obesity, sharks, and cigarettes are all waiting for their chance. According to some, so are vaccines, Obama, and the Devil, and these people would probably agree that those are all the same thing. And if none of these take you before the predestined time, you will be compelled to follow either Father Time or The Grim Reaper into the dark, depending on which one best suits your sensibilities. Because we’re all just human.

“Are we human? Or are we denser?”

Sometimes, I’m just not sure. I’m not sure if we’re more than just bags of flesh. That’s the kind of stuff that we have to “be still” to know. Listen to the rumors of an unsung heart. Sometimes it really feels like the “dice are loaded from the start”, that there’s truly no way to make things different. But no matter how much we might profess to fall into the myopic trap of thinking this world unchangeable, we don’t believe it. How do I know? Because we choose to live anyway.

I told my family what happened. And then I told my friends. It was reminiscent of the time that I had the worst time of my life in Spain. I didn’t tell anyone of my bungled sojourn for a week after returning, but when I did, my friends told me that it was single-handedly one of the best stories they’d ever heard. And in life, I think you’ll find more situations are like this than you think, and you can find them if you try.

I don’t say this to mean that there aren’t vicious canines ready to tear you apart in this world, because there truly are. I don’t even say this to convince you that the people closest in proximity to you are the ones with your best interests at heart, or that the ones closest to your heart will never be the ones to break it. But in so many cases, we only get what we give. Faith, hope, trust, endurance, perseverance, love: these are not finite resources. Humans are more than the sum of their parts. We’ve got so much left in the tank. I’ve realized that we don’t run out of these things – we stop using them. They’re more like muscles, that atrophy when out of use. But we can be more.

I eventually got to Italy, just short of actually losing my arm and leg in the process. And I had time to think about the unforeseen future, unforeseen in the sense that I couldn’t know in the past how stupid I would be in the future. And for all the things that could’ve gone more wrong (i.e. I didn’t actually have the money to change flights, there wasn’t a flight to Italy that day, that homeless man actually wanted more from me than a bite of my burrito, etc), Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll was playing as I walked through the airport, so everything was going to be ok. At least, everything was going to be ok for the kind of person who noticed things like that. Even in the midst of a devastating loss,

“For a second there, I’d won.”

My vote is that we’re denser.

*All quotes and paraphrases of The Killers belong to them alone.

When I read a book, I imagine the characters as white. Without the author inserting a description about their bright blue eyes or long blond hair, without saying that they identify as Republican, or that they live in Beverly Hills and go tanning on Saturdays, I imagine the protagonist as white. Even with books like The Road, which contains basically no information about the father or the boy, and definitely nothing about the color of their skin, the white protagonists go dancing in my mind.

The only way that I imagine characters as something other than white is when it is described to me. Things that help me know a character is black are when the author whips out the nappy hair and the mocha skin, the fried chicken and the watermelon. It’s even possible for me to forget that a character is black if the author doesn’t remind me every once in a while. If he goes to Harvard, talks about mergers and acquisitions or physics, or uses words bigger than “ma nigga”, I may forget that he’s black and think that he is obviously white. If the author says on page 30 that the character’s black, but doesn’t mention it again until page 256, I’ll have a rude awakening having to reimagine the character I’ve spent the last 226 pages with.

I’ve already mentioned to people that when I was a kid, I used to get called white. The reason that that’s so offensive has less to do with the what, and more to do with the why. Those kids called me white because of certain behaviors that I engaged in that they felt typified white identity. Unfortunately, those behaviors were reading, getting good grades, and using a large vocabulary. My classmates actually associated being smart with being white, which makes me shudder to think what they associated being black with.

At the root, I think this comes down to problems of over-representation and false representation. Let’s talk about the first one. The problem with over-representation of whites in mainstream American culture is that it gives a wide and nuanced view of what it means to be white. It shows the complexity and depth of the white experience, and the many facets involved. This view of white culture gives the impression that being white has many faces, and conversely, it forces us to accept the myth that other cultures have only one. This intersects with literature quite a lot.

We have lost a certain casuality about the otherness of protagonists and other characters in literature. When we are initially introduced to the character, they are allowed to fall in love, to slay dragons, to rescue princesses, and to fulfill existential desires as long as we think that they are what we call acceptable. The reason that we don’t mention a character being white is that it has so long been the accepted standard that we no longer need to talk about it. Why talk about someone being white when we can talk about them slaying dragons instead? It makes sense, except when you see the opposite. If a character is black, Hispanic, Asian, Indian, or Arab, now we have to talk about it. We have to talk about their race and how that figures into their identity and the things that they do, how it affects their choices and their experiences. We refuse to talk about how being white or being heterosexual figure into your actions or decisions, and when a white person holds up a hospital, it doesn’t serve as a representation of white culture. There is no room for the protagonist who is casually black, because we can’t simply pass over it.

The small view with which we see things can definitely be linked to under-representation, because the less something is seen, the more the few examples we have of it become the standard by which it is seen in the future. Oh, you’re an Arab? Congratulations, you are the new standard by which we will define all successive Arabness from now on; let’s wage a war. Oh, you’re gay? Being gay is now the cross that you have to bear, and you must completely represent for us “The Homosexual Experience”. And I don’t mean to say that white people are solely to blame for purporting these myths about otherness. There are many communities that I consider myself a part of that, unfortunately, have exceedingly high amounts of representation, like men or heterosexuals. I’m just calling out this question because I think that we should be aware of it.

Privilege is a blind spot. How wonderful it must be to live in a world where you have thousands of positive role models that you can look up to that all look like you. How amazing it must be to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that everyone you know understands the complexity and diversity of being you, and having a mirror image to look at and compare yourself to all the time. When’s the last time you think a transgender person has seen another transgender person portrayed as a casual protagonist, where their sexuality didn’t dominate the discourse? When is the last time that being black didn’t really figure into why a character did what he did? The over-representation of whites in mainstream American culture has led to a culture of people that must specifically have “other” defined for them in order to precariously balance it in opposition to the norm, and more importantly, it has led to a culture of specifically black kids who cannot in their own minds decide on the centrality of their own race and experience. A quick side note: For all of you lovely open-minded people reading this article who are thinking something like this: “But Tim, I don’t even view race. When I see people, I may cognitively understand that they are of a different race, but that doesn’t mean that I treat them differently. I’m basically colorblind.” Congratulations. You have arrived at utopia. You have arrived at my vision of the world as it should be, and how we should treat each other. But it would behoove you to wake up and smell the roses, because the rest of the world has not, and you do not live in a post-racial society, where people can so easily flout oppressive definitions of who they are, and who they have to be.

The second problem is false representation. Because of the wide and diverse nature of white representation, white people have the option of choosing from a wider range of potential identifiers. Because there are so many daring, strong, brave, true, and cool-headed white protagonists in literature, they get to have many people that they strongly connect with, and many people to exemplify positive behaviors for them or reflections of their identity. There are not so many positive examples for the black child, and if there are, it’s a book about how being black affects your place in society, your socioeconomic status, and how you perceive the world, whereas the white protagonists get to go live life and do amazing things, unfettered by oppressive assumptions. (I should mention at this point that I’m not a huge fan of the terms “black” and “white” because they are non-descriptive, and perpetuate imagery of good vs. evil. There’s no way that someone from Ghana, Barbados, and South Carolina are all the same, and there’s no way someone from Sweden, Ireland, and California are the same, but we shove them into the melting pot of America and call them “black” and “white”.)

And I’m not the first guy to talk about this. Toofer and Tracy Jordan from 30 Rock clash about this very issue because Tracy is a version of blackness that Toofer very much disagrees with. He wants to dissociate himself from Tracy because he feels that he doesn’t correctly identify him at all, and Toofer would actually be appalled to have someone think of him like that. Tracy suggests that that means that he’s ashamed of his heritage. The under-representation of blacks in literature means that more and more blacks are thinking that only one thing defines being black, and when they reject that particular version of being black, they believe that they’re rejecting the whole thing, and that leaves them with no place to exist, successfully thrust from both spheres.

What I mean to say is that we have to have a nuanced view of the world. We have to understand privilege in a way that helps us to understand the ways in which it can color our world, and the ways in which we can mobilize it to make things better instead of worse. We need to give young black people more positive role models to look up to, because sometimes it can feel like my friend gets George Clooney and Bill Gates while I get Tyrone, who just robbed a liquor store, and Barack Obama, a black man who shares the distinction with all his predecessors of having half of an entire nation hate him. We need to stop asking Toni Morrison why she writes “black books” when she writes books with black characters at the center, and we need to be allowed to portray characters in literature less by “the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

The White Imagination was originally published in Thinking (and Rethinking) Race on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When talking to some friends recently, we started talking about greetings. You use different greetings for everyone you meet, and it’s a complicated and nuanced procedure, involving a calculation of culture, background, gender, and how likely the person is to use the greeting that you’re about to use. I have the theory that, because greetings are necessary, in everyone’s mind, the end-goal of a greeting is to achieve synchronization. Your mind does a complex calculation and at the end, it wants to do the best thing for both parties, and that’s usually the thing that it thinks has the least chance of ending in horrifying social awkwardness.

But my friend’s on this kick about how greeting different people differently is a bad thing. Most people greet him with a handshake instead of “giving him dap”, because he doesn’t look like a minority, even though he is ethnically Mexican. His basic problem? “People are greeting me differently based on the way that I look.” My response? “Duh.” It all goes back to the greeting theory. People don’t have anything else to go on, so they’re going to go with the one that they think will complete the interaction best, which isn’t really a bad practice at all, seeing as it works a lot.

My friend’s diatribes about cultural equality, discrimination, and race relations aside, it did get me to thinking about when I was a kid, and my own tense relationship with race and culture. And I remember that among the many things that I wanted to be when I was a kid — an astronaut, a cowboy, an herbologist (but only because I voraciously read Harry Potter) — I most wanted to be black.

When I was little, I knew that I was black. I knew that my parents were black and who didn’t want to be like my parents? I knew that the people around me were just like me, and it was kind of like we were in a secret club together. Even though I would only learn stereotypes of fried chicken, watermelon, and extensive church services later in life, I adopted all of the facets of being black so thoroughly that they didn’t have to be adopted — they were me.

When I was in grade school, however, I began to understand that I wasn’t black. This wasn’t an internalized realization or something that my parents had told me, but I was informed by more than one child at my grade school that I wasn’t black. Maybe it was all the books I read, or the large words that I used, but something had convinced the children of my grade school that I was an ethnic impostor. It was not something known to me at the time, but after hearing it for a while, and from multiple sources, to my everlasting shame, I began to believe them.

It frustrated me to no end, because I was just dying to be black. I wanted to be allowed back into the country club of my youth that I had been so rudely shoved out of. I wanted to gain admittance to the pool party that everyone but me seemed invited to, and I wanted them to know that I was black just like them. How was I supposed to prove my blackness, though? One of the first CDs that I ever owned was Cry by Faith Hill, and WBEE, a country radio station in my hometown, was my jam for years. I didn’t sag my pants, which was all the rage back in the 90s/aughts, and I didn’t listen to rap, either. All I knew was that some students wanted me to “give them the light” and would randomly shout “Yeeeaaaah” in my vicinity, but I had no idea what it all meant. And I definitely wasn’t willing to rob a corner store. It didn’t seem that there was any way for me to be more black than I already was.

That was when I had the epiphany. It was earth-shattering for me, and I’ll slow it down for you. The epiphany was: I. Am. Black. This is a message out there to all the people who may have had their identity taken away from them. You. Are. Black. And you probably had your identity taken from you because you believed that it was the kind of thing that you could steal from someone, or the kind of thing you could lose.

The struggle that I went through as a child — the struggle of wanting to be accepted, the struggle of being told that I am not what I clearly feel I am, the struggle of being pushed out my identity because some people only have one idea of what that identity is — is the struggle of many black youth in America. Youth who don’t feel that they have something to offer their culture because they’re not willing to wave a gun around in the air like a fool. Youth who may even be stigmatized in their own communities because they would rather get education than hang out on a corner wasting away. Youth who would rather defeat stereotypes than perpetuate them. To those youth, I say that I applaud you. I say that you have the freedom to be who you already are, because this time you get to define what black really means.

Stop Trying to Be Black was originally published in Thinking (and Rethinking) Race on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.