Last November, Jewel Allison came forward with many other women to allege that Bill Cosby drugged, and raped her during the 1980s. On Friday she explained, in an op-ed for The Washington Post, that the reason she stayed silent so long was because she didn't trust how the media would handle the downfall of one of the most prominent black men in America. And she was concerned that black America might not be able to handle the allegations. "I let race trump rape," she wrote.
“As an African-American woman, I felt the stakes for me were even higher. Historic images of black men being vilified en masse as sexually violent sent chills through my body. Telling my story wouldn’t only help bring down Cosby; I feared it would undermine the entire African-American community."
“I did not want to see yet another African-American man vilified in the media. As I debated whether to come forward, I struggled with where my allegiances should lie – with the women who were sexually victimized or with black America, which had been systemically victimized.”
Allison was conflicted about the immense respect that she had for Cosby, and she admits that she let that cloud her ability to press charges against the comedian. She explained in the Post that Cosby was a guiding force for good when black communities were having new crises in black communities including, “Reaganomics, AIDS and the crack epidemic.”
"But as I vomited in the backseat of the taxi that Cosby ushered me into after he assaulted me one night in the late 1980s, that Dr. Huxtable image no longer made sense. I felt both physically violated and emotionally bamboozled. Still, I didn’t want the image of Dr. Huxtable reduced to that of a criminal. For so many of the African-American men I knew, William H. Cosby, Ed.D. provided a much-needed wholesome image of success, and the character he made famous was their model for self-worth and manhood. I knew that, in my reluctance to add my assault to the allegations facing Cosby, I was allowing race to trump rape."
Ultimately, Allison learned that fictional characters such as Cosby's public persona should not carry more weight than the pain that she suffered.
