USA TODAY recently printed an essay "Prejudice Permeates American Culture" by Camille O. Cosby, the mother of Ennis William Cosby. I wonder if she would really like to be taken seriously? She claims that it is US culture that is responsible for the death of her son. We "taught" Mikail Markhasev to hate and kill black people, and cites such evidence as the fact that the 1965 Voting Rights Act was written to expire in 2007 and that the $50 bill has a picture of U.S. Grant on it. But what if her ideas would have been taken seriously? Imagine that the Markhasev lawyers had pleaded him innocent using the "twinkie defense" that "society made him do it". And also imagine that the (mostly White?) jury also took this idea seriously and found Markhasev innocent. (A sort of O.J. trial repeat). Would Camille then be happy? Sometime the worst thing that you can do to someone is to take them seriously. I know that she is distraught over the death of her son. But that would be no excuse for the rest of us to take her nonsense seriously. She would be even more devastated if we did. The essay is available at: http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/4834/cosby.htm ,,,,,,, _______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________ (_) jim blair (jeblair@facstaff.wisc.edu) Madison Wisconsin USA. This message was brought to you using biodegradable binary bits, and 100% recycled bandwidth. Subject: Re: Cosby : American Culture Killed My Son Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 18:35:56 -0500 From: "ronald h. davis" Newsgroups: alt.politics.nationalism.white, alt.politics, alt.politics.economics, soc.culture.african.american jim blair wrote: > > But what if her ideas would have been taken seriously? Imagine that > the Markhasev lawyers had pleaded him innocent using the "twinkie" > defense that "society made him do it". > > And also imagine that the (mostly White?) jury also took this idea > seriously and found Markhasev innocent. (A sort of O.J. trial repeat). > i agree that it's definitely not clear that markhasev killed cosby's some because he was black; i mean, not with a $100,000 car because that suggests someone with a lot of money. it is possible i might add because i can tell you from experience that for a lot of white trash, the sight of a black person with more than they have is too much to take. so it is possible that markhasev might have killed cosby's son for this reason where a white person might have just gotten robbed and left standing there. it's possible, and i haven't been following the trial to know whether there was any testimony to support that supposition, but it appears to be a crime of opportunity. as far as you completely specious analogy to the o.j. simpson trial you're completely off the mark. the simpson trial was not about exhoneration because of some "racism made him do it" nonsense - in that trial you had a prosecution timeline that didn't add up, police tampering of evidence, and police caught lying. those are some good reasons to not convict a person because police have railroaded innocent black people to prison too many times by doing exactly the same thing. about the time of the crime two black guys were released from prison in los angeles after 18 years. why you ask? because police tampered with evidence and witnesses to get them convicted. now show me where anything similar to that occurred in the markhasev trial and then we can start talking about similarities... -- __ ______ __ / __/ | _/ (_(_) / (_(_/_/_(_/ . nothing ever happens to us except what happens in our own minds. -eleanor roosevelt REPLY: Hi, My reference to the O.J. trial was not clear. What I intended was this. IF the jury had ignored the evidence an found Markhasev innocent because they were looking for an excuse to aquit (based on the fact that they identified with the accused because of race, and did not care much about the victum), THEN the trial would have been "a sort of O.J. trial repeat". I think it clear that O.J. killed two people, I have just never seriously considered that the "real killer" was someone ELSE with O.J.'s DNA and who wears size 12 Bruno Magli shoes. But THAT jury would not have convicted O.J. even if they had seen a video taken by a hidden security camera that showed him doing it. What did they care that some Jew and a White bitch that "stole one of their men" were dead? Had the Markhasev jury been so inclined, they would have bought the the "twinkie" defense that "society made him do it". Markhasev would have been seen as a victum of US society and not responsible for his actions. When you are LOOKING for an excuse to either convict of to aquit, almost any excuse will do. I did NOT mean that the Cosby trial WAS similar to the O.J. trial; only that IF the juries had been equally racist, and if the Camille Cosby thesis were to be taken seriously, THEN it would have been. I realized that my initial post was unclear only after I read it over after posting it. Hope it is clear now. ON BEING BLACK & WHITE When I was young there were no "black people" in the US. There were "Negroes". Sometime during the 1960's it was Negro leaders who dicided that they wanted to become "black". Of course they were no more "black" in color than I am "white". We were (and still are) mostly various shades of brown-to- pink. The division of people into various "races" is based on politics not on biology, but this is a point of some controversy. I recommend that you look at the files at: http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/4834/aa.htm At any rate how can "White America" be blamed because African-Americans decided that they wanted to be called "black"? REDEMPTION? I was especially disturbed by the concept of "no redemption" that is contained in her article. Alexander Hamilton is not worthy of having his face on US currency (even though he was the one who created a stable US currency linked to gold) because he was BORN on the island of St. Croix to a family of slave owners. He left the island to move to the mainland while young and did not own slaves as an adult. But in her eyes, he is tainted by his "original sin" of birth. "Birth of a Nation", made in 1915, was a racist film. It probably did shape as well as reflect "white" opinion of its time. But it was a milestone in film history. Anyone think it is seen often enough today to have much influence? And does anyone think that US society has not changed since then? Even more disturbing is the case of Ulysses S. Grant. He lead the army that fought the bloodiest war in US history with the result of ENDING slavery in the US, but is unworthy of being on the currency. If U.S. Grant can't redeem himself, what could the US possibly do to redeem itself from its past? While I do understand that she is distraught over the death of her son, I think that it would be condesending to fail to take her USA TODAY article seriously.