I don't know for sure. But I think Jack Johnson, Bill Cosby, Tiger Woods, and Morgan Freeman are all cut from very similar clothe.
It could be it only appears Freeman is hot after white women like Cosby and Woods because black women are protective of the race and don't come forward to complain very often -- protective of themselves too as the black community tends to tear at any black woman who says a high profile black man hurt her. (Remember: Bill Cosby vs Beverly Johnson)
Then again, Freeman's tastes might be wider ranging. The step granddaughter he was accused of having sex with was brown.
It seems to me only a very small fraction of black men appear to feel that their most important racial freedom in this country is having sex with white women. But it seems like most of them are the rich ones in either entertainment or sports and therefore high profile.
One could hypothesize that it is not our best and brightest that are getting all this ugly limelight -- same as it is for white folks. (Harvey Weinstein is supposed to turn himself in a few months back for sexual harassment and rape charges.)
When I see high profile black people I once admired go down I have to remind myself that most of the people (black, white, and brown) who rise to the top in athletics and in film and music are not just talented. They're also lucky.
That is, there are people waiting tables who never got to be on this team or that team or never got to be in a movie who would have been better at playing ball or better at acting. Talent and opportunity don't always cross paths for an individual, no matter how prepared that individual is. Life is not fair. And sometimes one is just meant to do something else because one has multiple talents.
Morgan Freeman is likely a disappointing man that happens to be black.
Bill Cosby is definitely a disappointing man that happens to be black.
Tiger Woods who has claimed he's not black, had a white fan base who swore he was colorblind until all the Beckys he was cheating on his white wife with came out of the wood work--a white fan base that likely sees Tiger as stereotypically black by now. (Isn't that as ironic and galling as hell)
As for Jack Johnson, I'm not grateful or relieved that the Orange T-Rump pardoned Jack him. I care about as much about him as he would have about me had I been alive and grown during his lifetime.
The pattern presented by these four black men may not be indicative of anything in particular about black men's attitudes. But the black men who will defend these men to the death must be indicative of something.
I mean, why else would a bunch of black male somebodies in Hollywood decide that THE STORY they wanted to tell about Thurgood Marshall's life of service to black people in this country, if not the world, should focus on a case where a black man is accused of raping a white woman that he was simply RISKING HIS LIFE to commit adultry with in the 1950s?
First of all, Ida B. Wells showed over and over again that rape was just a cover for white men's theft half the time, that there wasn't even a white woman around to tell the appropriate lies on a black man in court. The rest of the time, the rape was often a consensual relationship.
But the thing that gets me is this: Why aren't today's black men ashamed of the fact that black men during slavery and immediately after slavery (during Ida B Wells' and Jack Johnson's lifetimes) and during Jim Crow were so desperate to sleep with white women that they literally risked their necks to do so?
That is why the hell wasn't it humiliating to tell the story of black man needing Thurgood Marshall to save him from the white appetite of his dick?
It is wrong for white men to put black men in jail for having sex with white women. But that still doesn't mean black men with black wives and black girlfriends should behave as if screwing white women is the black man's most important racial freedom.
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And if you don't think this is the palest end of this month's colorism discussion, you haven't been paying attention.
BLaCKCHiCKRoCKeD.BLoGSPoT.CoM
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