nycflasher
Active Member
"....Minutes after the verdict was announced, we learned something disheartening: The chasm between whites and blacks in this country was more pronounced than anyone imagined. As TV stations started showing various reactions to the verdict around the country, those images confirmed everything we refused to believe for 15 months. The defense was right. This trial wasn't about a double-murder, it was about a distressing racial divide, a legacy of mistrust between blacks and whites.
The O.J. trial taught us one thing, we are still a racially divided nation.
At the time, many African-Americans had trouble trusting police, lawyers, the legal process as a whole ... too many of their own people had been railroaded or mistreated over the years, personified by the revolting images from the Rodney King beating and the subsequent acquittal of the policemen involved. These scars affected every facet of Simpson's defense: the jury selection, the defense, even the verdict. When the system acquitted a clearly culpable man, some of these same African-Americans rejoiced upon hearing the news. One of their own had finally beaten the system. Didn't matter how.
And yes, some blacks believed O.J. was guilty, just like some whites believed he was innocent. But those weren't the images that television chose to show us. And that remains the legacy of the trial, that astonishing moment when the verdict was announced -- My God, he's going to walk -- followed by many blacks celebrating like they won the Super Bowl, many whites recoiling in horror, O.J. and his team rejoicing, and saddest of all, Kim Goldman and her father sobbing uncontrollably. Ten years later, that image of the Goldmans endures over everything else, a sobering reminder of two brutal murders, of the mounds of evidence pointing to one man, of a trial that evolved into something else.
Ten years later, we're still picking up the pieces. And if you can't remember what happened ... maybe you're lucky."more
The O.J. trial taught us one thing, we are still a racially divided nation.
At the time, many African-Americans had trouble trusting police, lawyers, the legal process as a whole ... too many of their own people had been railroaded or mistreated over the years, personified by the revolting images from the Rodney King beating and the subsequent acquittal of the policemen involved. These scars affected every facet of Simpson's defense: the jury selection, the defense, even the verdict. When the system acquitted a clearly culpable man, some of these same African-Americans rejoiced upon hearing the news. One of their own had finally beaten the system. Didn't matter how.
And yes, some blacks believed O.J. was guilty, just like some whites believed he was innocent. But those weren't the images that television chose to show us. And that remains the legacy of the trial, that astonishing moment when the verdict was announced -- My God, he's going to walk -- followed by many blacks celebrating like they won the Super Bowl, many whites recoiling in horror, O.J. and his team rejoicing, and saddest of all, Kim Goldman and her father sobbing uncontrollably. Ten years later, that image of the Goldmans endures over everything else, a sobering reminder of two brutal murders, of the mounds of evidence pointing to one man, of a trial that evolved into something else.
Ten years later, we're still picking up the pieces. And if you can't remember what happened ... maybe you're lucky."more
