I remember it as if it was yesterday. Football great O.J. Simpson’s death last week brought back images of his acquittal for murdering his ‘White’ wife.
Then MCJ Managing Editor Tom Mitchell and I were listening to the radio in the production room when the verdict in the Simpson murder trial was rendered.
We both held our breath and as soon as the ‘not guilty’ verdict was announced, we let out uniformed cries of relief—or maybe joy.
Naw, that doesn’t really describe it. A slap in the face to America’s Injustice system?
Karma? Yeah, that best summed it up.
But the verdict drew 100 million television viewers, 90% White and pissed off!
To say White people were angry would be an understatement, and to be honest, their wrath brought sarcastic smiles to Black faces.
(White America) knew how we feel when the rich get off, while Black people get the electric chair for looking at White women, even though they were in a coma in another state when the crime was committed.
We masked that orgasmic reaction we had to the O.J. verdict and dealt with the racial aspect as a medicating defense tactic in the trial.
A racist cop, a glove that didn’t fit, and a legal team that propelled a Black attorney to national stardom. It was enough to appease the curious.
In contrast, local and national White/Majority/Mainstream media let lose a barrage of disbelief and anger that was akin to their reporting (if there was a CNN in the 19th century) of Nat Turner being exonerated for his righteous slave revolt.
Three days after the verdict was handed down, the proverbial ‘other shoe dropped’ when I showed up for the weekly taping of ‘Sunday Insight on Charles Sykes’ television show.
All eyes were on me in the ‘green room’ before taping. Not only was I the only representative for the entire race of Black people—hmmm—but the only person in the room who saw O.J.’s acquittal through the prism of racial kismet: ‘what goes around, comes around!’
Charlie was shocked by my justification. He wasn’t mad, just confused. He and millions of White Milwaukeeans, Wisconsonites, and Americans were scratching their heads and asking themselves: ‘How and why was Black America applauding (in White minds) the ‘WRONG’ verdict’?
I tried to explain before and during the taping. But as the only brotha on the weekly panel I became a moving target for White people in Milwaukee for having and expressing a different perspective.
(As a matter of fact, I recall the time when two of our staffers had gone to a nearby emergency room after one of them had sprained their ankle on the same day of the verdict.
What was caring, empathetic and prompt service from the ER staff, quickly turned into anger and ‘un-care’ as the words ‘not guilty’ echoed throughout the facility.)
I recall several heated emails and hate letters following the show.
And an angry White man called and asked me to meet him on the south side.
Nope. I knew better than to cross Milwaukee’s ‘Mason-Dixon line’ to meet some angry White dude. I only venture across ‘the line’ when I go to the airport or go to Chicago.
Decades later, my feelings are the same; I still laugh at how White America reacted to a black man (small b) murdering a White woman (capital W) and getting away with it because he could afford to do what White people do and have done for over 200 years: hire the best defense team money can buy.
And that’s why White Americans reacted the way they did: a celebrity black man (small b) crossing the invisible line…the line of privilege (‘white privilege, to be exact).
Today, it’s expected. Back then, it was a rarity.
What is most remarkable about this support for O.J. (if you wanna call it that), is that most of us in the Black community “DIDN’T CONSIDER ‘THE JUICE’ TO BE A BROTHA!”
Many called him a ‘Tom,’ caught up in a fantasy world, dissing a beautiful Black queen (his first wife) for a White woman.
If O.J. Simpson, the football great, had killed his Black wife in a jealous rage, it would have been buried on page five of many American newspapers (nothing new in the eyes of White folks generally).
Intead, we’re reliving hhis trial decades later, igniting the fire of the ‘injustice system.’
Goodbye O.J. Too bad you couldn’t bury America’s racial ‘injustice system’ with you.
Hotep