Outrunning race

Last week brought the news that O.J. Simpson had died from prostate cancer. Any sentient being older than 40 knows that the former football star, actor and pitch man was acquitted in a criminal trial in 1995 of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman. That courtroom drama, which was appropriately dubbed “The Trial of the Century”, continues to beguile us as America perpetually grapples with race – its congenital moral trap door. That whole affair was, and arguably remains, the quintessential racial Rorschach test. In general, white Americans and Black Americans examined the same set of facts in this case (as well as innumerable others) and saw very different things. Some argue that “the media” caused this divide by incessantly focusing on the race of the victims in comparison to the race of the accused. However, surveys that were taken right after the murders strongly indicated that views regarding Simpson’s guilt or innocence were usually racially-based. This is not to mention the fact that the Supreme Court had outlawed interracial marriage a scant 27 years before the murders. Then came the verdict. For most African Americans, Simpson’s acquittal signaled one of the very few cases...