Reflection on the OJ Trial: Racism, Doubt, and Revenge
Not everyone is old enough to remember the OJ Simpson car chase and trial. I watched the police follow the infamous white Bronco driven by Al Cowlings as I waited for a table at a Chinese restaurant in Minneapolis. The slow-motion chase played on a big-screen television next to a large aquarium. I can’t help but wonder how that chase would have played out today. What, if any impact, OJ’s acquittal has on police brutality toward Black men now?
Back on June 17, 1994, some of us sipped drinks from the bar as we stood watching the surreal event. The following year, on October 3, 1995, the verdict was read. It happened while I was at my first “real, important” day job. I was a video editor at a large ad agency. Someone announced over the PA that the verdict was in. The agency occupied seven floors in the building. Everyone on my floor stopped working and ran into my editing suite to watch the monitor. There was a stunned silence when he was found not guilty. People went back to work mumbling and shaking their heads.
I didn’t have a whole lot to say about OJ’s recent death, and what I did say offered him no grace. My thoughts then went to his now-adult children and how they must feel knowing how reviled he is. From there I thought about the impact of what happened to Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman and the ensuing trial. My hope is that we can put his name to rest, along with the racist narratives associated with his acquittal. There is an assumption that all Black people were happy to see OJ get off. That OJ’s acquittal was revenge for the well-established and on-going judicial injustice that many Black Americans deal with. This is simply not a view of every Black American despite media focus. Back then, I talked to a handful of people of different hues, who thought it was simply impossible that OJ was guilty. I also talked to a lot more people like myself, a woman of color, who definitely thought he was guilty. I never talked to anyone who said even if he was guilty, he shouldn’t be punished.
Regardless of stance, most Black people recognized Mark Furman, the man heard on tape saying the “N” word 41 times, as a racist who possibly planted evidence as many crooked cops, racist or otherwise sometimes do. OJ was not an antihero, “standing up to the man for the people.” That idea is right out of a white-male-written Blaxploitation movie. Another misconception is that those of us who thought him guilty, questioned his Blackness, due to Nicole having been a White woman. Or because he was rich, he was no longer Black enough. It’s absurd. OJ did not establish Black wealth, or interracial partnerships (I am proof). Both have existed for a long time.
Many Black people believed OJ was a man who had murdered Nicole and Ron, while his children slept upstairs, and that he deserved punishment. This belief was never part of the mainstream media narrative. It was perhaps too normal. Mainstream media loves a perceived Black agenda. While that may be necessary to commemorate a milestone or show a precedent. Some things are based on the laws of humanity and not the man-made constructs of race.
Jurors are instructed that if there is reasonable doubt in a trial, the person should be acquitted. We hear it often about Donald Trump and his many indictments. What we don’t hear is the possibility of a juror’s whiteness being a compelling reason for a possible acquittal. Voting preference, not whiteness is the media alert. The eight Black jurors in OJ’s trial eclipsed the other four jurors. The media leaned into the idea that because eight jurors were Black, they must have pressured the others in ways that wouldn’t happen outside the courtroom. There was an emphasis on there being only one White juror, as though more whiteness would’ve assured OJ been rightfully found guilty.
In the media, there is often presumptuous dialogue about what Black people think and desire from society. It is usually from superficial generalities and with a Black otherness. There is an erroneous yet accepted belief that Black people want the Black guilty to go free, and more importantly, Black people seek revenge against White people at any opportunity. Saying OJ got off solely due to a desire for revenge, would mean all 12 jurors didn’t really believe there was reasonable doubt. Mark Furman’s position as an authority with a history of racism couldn’t really have planted seeds of doubt about his handling of evidence. Johnny Cochrane wasn’t really a masterful attorney who bested the prosecution. The racism attached to the eight Black jurors doesn’t allow the possibility that DNA was so new at that time, that it wasn’t clearly understood by the 12 jurors as factual evidence that was not tampered with by a confessed racist.
History and daily life show us that both racism and passivity about racism are accepted behaviors. The responsibility of racism is usually shifted to those affected by it and not by those who perpetuate it. Was there anyone on the jury biased in favor of OJ, the charming, celebrated, entertainer and former athlete? Probably, but that doesn’t mean it was enough to acquit him. I believe OJ was acquitted not because there were too many Black jurors seeking revenge. OJ Simpson was acquitted because the specter of racism was so strong that it made 12 jurors doubt the legal process.
