Continuing in my humble - and I hope what will prove to be relevant - undertaking, I proceed with musings on the Trayvon Martin matter.

Every now and then the supernatural occurs. Supermoons fill the horizon. Earthquakes and tsunamis roar in tandem. Dictators fall like dominoes. And, Bill Cosby speaks. Cosby recently weighed in on the Trayvon Martin matter. In the cases of the moon and earthquakes, they fill us with awe and ground us with a sense of predictability. So is the case with Dr. Cosby: when Dr. Cosby speaks, the Black community listens…or at least used to listen for his voice of reason. Lately, though, in his aging wisdom, Cosby leaves me scratching my head. His punditry at first glance appears logical, but upon deeper analysis and a lens of history, his voice comes from left field.

Last week, longtime comedian, actor and corporate spokesperson, Dr. Bill Cosby, often touted by mainstream America as a credible voice on the plight of Black America, elected to opine on Trayvon Martin’s killing. To recap, non-Black (Hispanic American) George Zimmerman, the self-described neighborhood watch patroller, admitted to fatally shooting Trayvon Martin on February 26. Zimmerman currently awaits trial after a protracted and controversial series of events catapulted the Black community into demanding his arrest. The Black community viewed Zimmerman as the armed stalker and shooter of the 17-year-old teen who was armed with nothing more than a pack of Skittles and a bottle of Arizona iced tea. Zimmerman deemed Trayvon “suspicious.” He wore a “hoodie” (It was raining.) Zimmerman’s perception effectively created a climate ripe for confrontation.

As has been his penchant in years past, Cosby elected to blame the victim and absolve the perpetrator. A groundswell of Black Americans clearly believes - myself included - that Zimmerman’s act was racially motivated. I also believe that coordinated efforts, even if unwitting, of white male-led organizations and factions, created a racially motivated cover for Zimmerman’s act. If you believe like I do about the circumstances of the killing and the subsequent chain of events, let’s continue to rely on the facts to validate our claims.

In the period following the shooting, the investigation of law enforcement was intentionally subverted and due process aborted. After all, Zimmerman is a white male. He was absolved of guilt under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which grants legal gun owners de facto permission to shoot anyone - unarmed or otherwise - if the shooter feels threatened. Crafted by two white, male-dominated Goliaths (National Rifle Association and Walmart), that law has proven itself problematic: It has proven to be fatal for Black men across the country.

Enter Mr. Cosby.

In a CNN interview with Piers Morgan, Cosby posited that the shooting of Trayvon Martin “should be about guns, not about race.” What an insulting and misleading opinion! I find it ludicrous that Cosby would encourage the most maligned race among America’s citizenry to diminish the very basis of white men’s fear - Black males (though few whites would be loathed to admit that). Instead, he attributes racial profiling to guns, which is simplistically the tool of choice. I challenge you to visit and reflect on the contents at my web site, Stop Attacking Black Men (SABM). The litany of attacks on Black males is telling. [SABM is currently on hiatus; please bookmark the site and visit us when we return in July.]

Black men are convicted and incarcerated at rates at least seven times greater than white males, which effectively disenfranchises Blacks from their Constitutional right of gun ownership under the Second Amendment. This loss of rights, compounded by the insidious campaign to pass voter ID laws, blocks Blacks access to voting, and thus from electing representatives who’d best represent their interests, including the reversal of Draconian laws that have a disproportionately adverse impact on our community. The voter ID bills have been liken to a modern-day poll tax. Thank goodness for civil rights organizations, including the National Action Network, the NAACP, and many community-based groups, that vigorously challenge this affront.

The results of several studies support the claims of racial bias, which remember is my premise for Zimmerman’s action. For example, a January 2003 study published by the University of Maryland showed that defendants who killed a white man are more likely to receive the death penalty than those who kill a Black man. Contrast that study with one that shows the incidence of whites shooting Blacks (suspected of “suspicious activity”) is 14 times higher than for Blacks shooting whites, and the racial majority of death penalty sentences becomes clear - bleak, Black.

I describe the third study as quirky as best, a waste of my tax payer dollars, at worse. This UCLA study concluded that a person holding a gun seems taller and more muscular in the viewer’s mind than a person holding a tool or other object.” Perhaps, Zimmerman was aware of this study. “Who would even fund such a study?” you might ask. The US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (a majority white male-run operation) led the research. Such research seems more appropriate to the domain of psychology, than to military science, but I don’t have a doctorate degree…but Bill Cosby does.

What’s Cosby got to do with these studies? Cosby misleads Americans - Blacks and whites - into believing that guns and race are mutually exclusive. Are we to believe that Cosby does not believe that a racist feels empowered behind the trigger of a gun? If all citizens in this country could be assured of equal protection under the law, specifically regarding the use of deadly force, guns would achieve a remarkable feat: diminishing racism to an iota of the power it wields today. Bill Cosby’s pitiable history of blaming Black people for their oppression in a white patriarchal society is wrong. No such correctness exists in Cosby’s rationale.

What I know is that guns coupled with race share a kinship of legacy in America. Anyone with any degree of honesty must recognize that. And someone with a public platform, such as Cosby, cannot responsibly ignore that reality. Black Americans are experiencing systematic killing on multiple affronts (thanks to US agencies that institute wealth inequality, criminal injustice, and social disparity). Culturally, the playing field is warped too: consider that Black baseball players make up only 8.05% of the major league, down from 19% in 1995, and 27% in 1975 when I was but a child collecting baseball cards.

With young Black men lured by music videos and the lucrative lifestyles of athletes and entertainers, to copulate with a white women seems to be one rite of passage for Black males (of course, often resulting in offspring). Consequently, the Black male population is dwindling. The abysmal failure of the War on Drugs, fueled by tough-on-crime white legislators in the 1980s, served as a successful mechanism for decreasing that population, and hence the Black vote. Add to that scenario, firearms in the hands of fearful white men and you’ve produced a time-tested mechanism to quash competition from the resilient Black males who managed to circumvent the dragnet of institutionalized racism - Arthur McDuffie, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Oscar Grant, Howard Morgan, Kendrec McDade, Ramarley Graham, Kenneth Chamberlain, now Trayvon Martin and thousands more.

For every voter ID law or drug-test-in-order-to-get-food-stamps law, again no such correctness exists for any voice that would blame the victims. It really is about race. Anything else is secondary. Has the legendary Bill Cosby lost empathy for his base - the Black community to whom he owes his long and stellar career? Sure, our young men need to “pull their pants up” and Black men must “be good fathers,” but, these imperatives apply to all men. No such correctness lies in relegating the scourge of racism to the proverbial back burner. So, Dr. Cosby, come correct.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Perry Redd, is the former Executive Director of the workers rights advocacy, Sincere Seven, and author of the on-line commentary, “The Other Side of the Tracks.” He is the host of the internet-based talk radio show, Socially Speaking in Washington, DC. Click here to contact Mr. Redd.