OJ Simpson’s trial exposed America’s racial divide. Three decades later, what’s changed?

When a predominantly Black jury in Los Angeles acquitted O.J. Simpson of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman, Camille Charles remembers watching the nation’s split-screen reaction on television: Black people cheering on one side, white people unhappy on the other. Polls at the time nearly three decades ago found Black Americans were much less likely than their white counterparts to say they believed Simpson was guilty. But Charles, a professor of sociology and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said the reactions – which came amid a “powder keg” period following the acquittal of the four officers who beat Rodney King – weren’t simply a celebration of the vindication of what some viewed as a wrongfully accused Black man. “It was more complicated than that,” she said. When the Simpson trial once again exposed the country’s deep racial divides, what was missing from the reporting at the time was the full complexity of what the case meant to Black Americans and their relationship to the criminal justice system, Charles and other experts told USA TODAY after Simpson’s death Wednesday from prostate cancer. At the time, one expert said, the media didn’t capture...