The wife of Bill Cosby, Camille Cosby, still has some animosity towards the #MeToo movement two years after her husband was convicted for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in 2004.
Speaking to ABC News on Tuesday in what was her first major interview in six years, Cosby slammed the movement, claiming they should “clean up their act.” Her interview came after Pennsylvania‘s Supreme Court granted her husband the right to appeal two issues in his sexual assault case the same day.
Responding to the ruling, Camille, 76, said she is “very, very pleased.”
“My first reaction is hopefulness, possibilities,” she said. “The state’s highest court … has said, ‘Wait a minute. There are some problems here. They can be considered for an appeal.’”
The PhD holder, who was the inspiration behind Phylicia Rashad’s character, Clair Huxtable, in The Cosby Show, also said she doesn’t “care” what her husband’s alleged sexual assault accusers feel about the recent judgment, going ahead to cite a quote from James Baldwin’s popular 1972 book, No Name in the Street: “Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
She continued: “The #MeToo movement and movements like them have intentional ignorance pertaining to the history of particular white women — not all white women — but particular white women, who have from the very beginning, pertaining to the enslavement of African people, accused black males of sexual assault without any proof whatsoever, no proof, anywhere on the face of the earth.”
“And by ignoring that history, they have put out a lie in itself and that is, ‘Because I’m female, I’m telling the truth.’ Well history disproves that, as well, and gender has never, ever equated with truth. So, they need to clean up their acts. And it’s all of us as women who have not participated anything nefarious — we know how women can lie. We know how they can do the same things that men do — that some men do — because there are good men and bad men. There are good women and bad women.”
Reminded by presenter, Linsey Davis, that her husband’s accusers include Black women, she said: “Yeah, just joining the group, but I cannot go into that because there are legal ramifications.”
Bill Cosby, 82, was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison in 2018 on three counts of aggravated assault for drugging and sexually assaulting former basketball player, Andrea Constand, in his home in 2004. The disgraced comedian and actor’s case is the first high-profile celebrity conviction of the #MeToo era which was initiated to raise awareness of sexual harassment and sexual abuse in the workplace. Cosby also had several women coming out to accuse him of sexual misconduct going back to almost 30 years.
Cosby, who previously likened her husband’s conviction to the Emmett Till lynching, doubled down on her assertion, citing the 1921 Tulsa Oklahoma riots as another comparison to his conviction. Both incidents were spurred by white women accusing black men of assaulting them.
Cosby’s numerous accusers, however, include Black women.
