Bill Cosby ‘Stung’ Even Al Sharpton & Jesse Jackson Won’t Play Race Card for Him: Report

Bill Cosby is reportedly “stung” that even Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are refusing to play the race card for him.

Cosby, who has been accused of sexual assault by nearly 60 women, has reportedly been “charged with drugging and assaulting former Temple University athlete Andrea Constand, then 31, in his home in 2004.” His legal team plans to play the race card when Cosby’s trial is set to start on June 5. Cosby has denied all of the charges and reportedly faces “up to 10 years in prison if convicted.”

A source from Cosby’s camp told the New York Post over the weekend that, “Jesse [Jackson] claims to have forgotten Bill’s number and Al Sharpton won’t even return his phone calls.”

“Both of them were vocal in their support of Michael Jackson and the charges against Mike involved kids,” the source reportedly added. “So, is this really that toxic when you compare the two? Any other time they’d at least rally to say something about innocent until otherwise proven.”

As the Associated Press noted, when the prosecution struck two black jurors during the jury selection process, Cosby’s lawyers attacked what they claimed was the prosecution’s “systemic exclusion of African-Americans.”

Two black jurors were ultimately selected for the 12-person jury and “two more were among the six people chosen as alternates.”

Cosby reportedly spoke to a black media outlet last month about “the racist history of the United States” and his daughters reportedly have claimed that the racist mainstream media have been “lynching” their father.

Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson told the Associated Press that Cosby may be signaling to jurors that “you have a mission on this jury, to make sure he’s not treated as a black man who’s come on aggressively to white women.”

She also pointed out that Cosby is not the average black defendant because “he is the African-American celebrity who crossed the race divide. He had enormous appeal to white households.”

James Braxton Peterson, the director of Africana Studies at Lehigh University, told the Associated Press that it is“striking” and “ironic” that Cosby is playing the race card “given that he’s demonized poor black people in the past.”