Chicago ? This, my cousin tells me, is where R. Kelly lives.

It’s the typical pop star mansion, secluded far behind foreboding gates, from which the outside world is watched by security cameras. As our van pulls beneath the camera’s gaze, I tell somebody in back to push my 11-year-old daughter out of view. A weak joke in response to an entirely unfunny circumstance. Kelly, the singer best known for his inspirational anthem, “I Believe I Can Fly,” recently pleaded not guilty to charges growing out of a videotape that allegedly shows him having sex with a 13-year-old girl.

My cousin Anthony and I have been having a debate about this. He wonders if there hasn’t been something unfair in the media’s coverage of the case. He’s concerned that Kelly’s woes make us look bad in the eyes of the nation.

The “us” in question, you will not be surprised to hear, are black men in particular. And the fear is that the arrest of a high-profile black male on such heinous charges will be yet another cross we have to bear.

If you find that fear foolish, I have two words for you: O.J. Simpson. Taken on their own merits, his arrest and trial on charges of murder had absolutely nothing to do with race. To the degree they spoke to any larger issue, that issue was domestic violence. Had Simpson been a fading white celebrity accused of killing his wife, the level of interest would have been middling at best. Note that there have been no hourly updates of the Robert Blake case.

But Simpson, unlike Blake, is black. And that was the biggest not the only, but the most significant difference. Worse, he was a big black man who stood accused of murdering a beautiful, blond white woman. So there was a firestorm of controversy and his trial became a kind of Rorschach ink blot upon which many white people projected their most primal fears about black sexuality, criminality and savagery. Meantime, black people saw in it their deepest frustrations with white America’s tendency to judge the character of the many by the misbehavior of the few.

That frustration is reflexive in anyone who has ever felt marginalized by, or unwelcome in, the mainstream. I’ve even encountered Catholics who feel that sharp criticism of the way the church has handled its ongoing sex scandal amounts to bias against their religion.

I doubt any objective observer would agree that mainstream media coverage of pedophilia among priests has truly produced much in the way of anti-Catholic prejudice. Still, you understand where the sensitivity is coming from.

The same is true of blacks. If you know anything of history, it’s not hard to figure why a black man, even a conservatively dressed, soft-spoken professional like my cousin, would look upon the R. Kelly debacle with trepidation, wondering if this is somehow going to be used to tarnish him, his brothers or his son. And candidly, if the child the singer is accused of molesting were ever revealed to be white, there’d be no need to wonder. The case, regarded now with moderate interest in the world beyond African-America, would likely become a ferocious, racially charged controversy, just as Simpson’s did.

This is the just the reality of our world. It’s the reason thoughtful minority members always fear the misbehavior of the few.

But that fear should never induce us to reflexively spring to the defense of or cry foul on behalf of, black wrongdoers simply because they are black. Blacks made that mistake with the convicted rapist, Mike Tyson, made it with the accused killer, Simpson. I tell Anthony I’d hate to see us do the same with Kelly.

Where he’s concerned, two things are readily apparent to me. The evidence that he did what he is accused of doing seems strong. Two, there has been little if anything in the media’s coverage of these events that suggests a racial agenda.

That being the case, it seems to me a fruitless expenditure of time, energy, emotion and social capital to sit here wondering how Kelly’s arrest makes “us” look.

It makes him look awful. Doesn’t do a damn thing to me.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald.