I loved all the characters for very different reasons. Rudy (the youngest child) represented the curiosity, tenacity, and spunk I saw in myself. Sondra (the eldest daughter) was the dreamer and free thinker I wished to be when I was older. Theo (the only son) was the imaginary sibling with whom I could imagine engaging in all sorts of shenanigans and getting into trouble with. Clair (the wife) was the no nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is warrior woman who reminded me of my own mother. But Cliff (the husband and Bill Cosby’s character)—he was the father that I never had. While there were many important topics and characters introduced week after week, I secretly tuned in because he gave me a glimpse into the father-child relationship that was so lacking in my own life. I loved nearly everything about him—from his ugly dad sweaters, to his comic antics, to the way he integrated black music and culture so seamlessly into his kids’ (and our) lives.
To this day, I believe Bill Cosby deserves tremendous credit for developing a show which left an indelible mark on American society. The show generated an intense sense of pride among black Americans. It reframed what it meant to be black in this country while educating the world about black people and culture. I remain eternally grateful to Bill Cosby for the lessons I learned about blackness from my years of watching the show. What my own family didn’t teach me, the Huxtables did. I am left with an enduring passion for Alvin Ailey (whose dance troupe I see perform every year during Black History Month) and jazz, among other things, because of watching that show.
As I got older, they did too. The show ended in 1992 when I was in high school. By then, although I was sad to see it go, I was deeply into its spin-off A Different World, which had captured my imagination in a different way. That show, which began with Denise’s (the second oldest daughter) journey to college, helped me to understand that there is an entire world in which black people go to college and thrive. The show had all sorts of diverse representations of blackness that I had never seen before, including positive and meaningful relationships between black men and women and enduring friendships between black women. It ended shortly before my own journey to college. By then, I had learned enough from my decade or so of watching shows that sprang from the mind of Bill Cosby that I was somewhat prepared to enter into the world as a young, black woman.
In my freshman year, I took a sociology class called Ethnic Inequalities and Intergroup Relations. One of the texts we read was called Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream. The book covers the many contradictions of America’s beloved show—particularly in the way it fails to address the realities of race and class. It quotes Michael Eric Dyson, who points out that “the most useful aspects of Cosby’s dismantling of racial mythology and stereotyping is that it has permitted America to view black folk as human beings.” I remember how, when I first read that sentence, I highlighted it and it sat in my soul for a good long while. At the time, I’m not sure that I really understood that white people didn’t think of us as human beings. It confused me. And looking back at it now, the statement explains a lot.
While black Americans held the show in such high regard, most of us didn’t actually live the way the Cosbys did. Yet for so many of us, the show allowed us to see and imagine ourselves very differently—living in a world where racism and oppression hadn’t been substantial barriers to our success. And it allowed white people to finally see us as like them. The authors of the book do extensive research into audience perceptions of the show. There were a number of white people who felt that the show was “too black,” who were offended by the fact that Cosby gave money to historically black colleges and universities and generally didn’t like the show because they felt that it wasn’t “for them.”
I remember this coming as a great shock to me at the time— since I assumed that everyone felt the same way about the show and about Bill Cosby that I did. Without a doubt, I knew that the show was for me since I saw myself so perfectly represented in it. Since I was just beginning to develop a critical racial consciousness at the time, the book gave me much to think about in terms of race, class and race relations. More than two decades after taking that course, that text remains a staple in my personal book collection.
Over the years, the show and Bill Cosby, in particular, remained a touchpoint for me as I recalled my childhood. He remained the perfect father figure in my mind. And as is usually the case when we grow older and begin to really see our parents for who they are, I struggled with the fact that he began to reveal himself as a very flawed human being.
In 2004, he gave a speech to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Board vs. Board of Education ruling in which he excoriated black people for pretty much everything. The man who once showed a deep and abiding love for black people was now in public telling us that we weren’t good enough. It was jarring. He blamed poor parents for not being good parents and not spending their money on the “right” things for their kids. He blasted us for not talking the “proper” way, which really meant we needed to be speak more like white folks. He told black women to stop having kids with so many different men (note: he did not tell the men to stop having kids with so many different women). And this wasn’t the only time he would do it.
He then went around the country continuing to say the same things. It wasn’t that I was shocked because I had never heard these things before—white conservatives had been saying these things about black people for decades. And certain black folks who align themselves with white supremacy often embody this brand of respectability politics. So this was familiar talk. But coming from Bill Cosby, they stung. They were devastating.
For a while, I really wondered if he was becoming senile. Surely, these had to be rantings of a man who no longer had all his mental faculties. How could our dad, my dad, the one who had received all of our love and unwavering support for all those years, be saying such horrible things to us? Did he not love us anymore? Even though this felt like abuse, I was willing to turn a blind eye and endure it because of the past and all that he had meant to me.
I can’t remember when it was when I’d first heard that he was a sexual predator. As I look back, there were likely rumblings and whisperings that were probably always there that I had chosen to ignore—a joke made here or there in passing that I didn’t fully understand, but chose not to question, a rumor that I had heard but was too lazy to give my mind the space to fully process. It was never that I did not believe the victims. But my desire to keep him in my mind as the perfect father from my childhood was strong. The agony of trying to process the betrayal of a man who was supposed to be a father figure, a protector, and a role model to the country, and to me personally, was shattering. It was made even more difficult by the fact that he was a giant in the black community.
My mind was constantly split—trying to rationalize his behavior, though I knew I couldn’t. As a woman, it wasn’t difficult for me to believe that he might have been an adulterer and a lecherous man. But I was also a black woman who knew, without a doubt, that black men are the victims of white supremacy in America. Recalling the history of how racism in this country has often painted black men as the ultimate threat to white women’s purity and womanhood, rape specifically has been a tactic employed to make us fearful of black men’s sexuality. After all, Emmett Till was murdered for having supposedly just whistled at a white woman in Mississippi in 1955. So when I heard that a number of his accusers were white women, I admit there was a tiny part of me that had urges to question the legitimacy of whether or not their stories were true.
It is times like these that I feel the tension between my blackness and my womanhood most strongly. It is a push-pull between two parts of my identity which ideally would fit neatly together like the interlocking parts of a puzzle, but often don’t. When they are at odds, they leave me feeling disjointed and confused. But having had to live a lifetime in a body where multiple identities coexist, I know that many things can be true at the same time.
I knew that I loved Cliff Huxtable, the character that Bill Cosby played in The Cosby Show. I knew that Cliff was not a rapist. I knew that Bill Cosby was a successful black man living in America who had broken racial barriers and made us re-think what we know to be true about some aspects of the black experience. I knew this came with its share of controversy. I knew that almost 60 women had come forward, with similar stories and that he had drugged and sexually assaulted them. It was because of this that I also knew that in order to find some peace, I needed to separate myself from Bill Cosby—both the man and Heathcliff Huxtable. I needed to separate myself from his legacy in the black community. I needed to come to terms with the fact that all of these things don’t have to exist separately. It can be true that he’s the man that I loved and adored in my childhood. And it can be true that he’s a vile human being that is capable of sexual assault.
On a sweltering day in August 2015, a group of female friends and I met for dinner. As our conversation drifted from topic to topic—family, work, the absurdity of living in Washington, DC—we eventually settled on Bill Cosby. At that point, a few weeks prior, he had actually admitted giving Quaaludes to women that he wanted to have sex with. Though I had talked about the news with my spouse when it had come out, I’m not sure if I had spoken the words out loud yet: “I think he’s guilty.” Though I believed it wholeheartedly, those would come a bit later. We sat around the table swapping stories and it was as if we knew him. Each of us talked about him personally and it was obvious that he'd left an indelible mark on our hearts. He was part of our childhoods.
A few of us were also survivors of various kinds of trauma and that made the pain of his betrayal even more potent. There were many tears as we recalled our own painful pasts. One of the women, Terésa Dowell-Vest, was writing a book about him. It was a work of fan fiction. She decided that in order for us to stop conflating Bill and Cliff as one, we needed to bury Cliff Huxtable for good. Her premise: Imagine The Cosby Show if it were to take place in 2015. How would the Huxtables thrive in a post-9/11, Black Lives Matter world?
“I figured if we kill off Cliff Huxtable, maybe we can finally separate Bill Cosby from the man he plan from the man he is. This is a work of fan fiction in a non-fiction world. This is an ode to a true hero.”
I’ve never really enjoyed fan fiction. And as a writer myself, I’ve always thought it was strange when people find a need to continue the stories that have already been so perfectly written by other writers. I’ve read a few Harry Potter and Twilight fan fiction pieces and have been less than impressed. But when Terésa mentioned her book to me, I felt the emotion in my gut. I knew I needed it. I realized in that moment that I needed to end my connection to Cliff Huxtable so that I could come to terms with what was happening with Bill Cosby. If I didn’t, I might remain in a constant state of wavering back and forth between his guilt and innocence.
Of course, there wasn’t anything about his innocence that I believed. But my own desire to hold on to my childhood and childlike innocence would allow me to make excuses for a man who no longer deserved my devotion and affection.
I read the book in pieces, slowly. It is the day of Cliff’s funeral and each chapter is a different character saying their goodbye. I started the chapters online and when I couldn’t access them all, I bought the book. Some chapters I went back and read over and over again. I devoured the words. I cried and laughed as Terésa referenced many of the beloved scenes and characters from the original show. In her world, the characters have matured, they have lived two decades since we last saw them, they have experienced love and loss and now they are burying their beloved husband and father.
What I appreciate about this book so much is that she preserves Cliff for us, leaving his memory intact and giving us much-needed closure. There is no need for us to erase the wonderful legacy of Dr. Cliff Huxtable from our minds. He was a gift. As a father, husband, and role model, he was—and will forever be—perfect.
“There is a time to live and a time to die and Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable modeled for us how to do both well. He has now been ushered into eternal rest by the divine undertaker and as we say our final “goodbyes” let us resolve to follow his example. To live well and to die well… for there is a time and a season for both.”
Bill Cosby, on the other hand, is a different story. A comedic genius, for sure, his enduring legacy is both the gift of The Cosby Show and the fact that he is a serial abuser of women and abuser of black people. Sometimes even the people who bring us the most joy in one area of life are capable of doing truly monstrous, heinous things.
Bill Cosby is not Heathcliff Huxtable. We need to stop seeing them as one person. One is a character and one is a deeply disturbed, depraved individual. As the public continues to wrestle with this and juries do too, perhaps we may not be able to fully separate the two in our minds. But burying Cliff for good and mourning his loss so that we can come to terms with the man that Bill Cosby is: that’s an important start.
To order The Death of Cliff Huxtable, click here.
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