Or has it just begun. Like many of you, I have been bombarded by the coverage of the OJ trial like everyone else. And I was in the Wedge with friends and colleagues watching the announcement of the verdict. Perhaps nothing since the Challenger accident brought so many people to watch or follow a single event. We as a nation were one in waiting suspense.
That is where the oneness ended. The reaction to the verdict is almost uniformly divided along racial lines. White people believed that the jury had blown it and let a guilty man go free. People of color believed that justice had been done and that the attempt of a racist police department had been frustrated. We were, we are, a nation divided.
What has been surprising to me was the shock and surprise that many white Americans have expressed over the racial overtones of this trial. They have expressed disbelief or explained away the jury's verdict as a demonstration that a mostly all-Black jury would acquit a Black man accused of murder. They claim not to understand how this could happen; how persons having heard what they (the white people) believe is overwhelming evidence in favor of conviction and ignore the evidence and acquit. Therefore, the argument goes, race must have been an issue in their decision.
Of course it was. What all of us white folks forget is our history. We forget that for a hundred years white juries have spent less than four minutes, let alone four hours, to convict black men of murder. Lynching a "nigger" was legal in Southern states until after World War II. It is only since the Civil Rights movement that Blacks in many states can even serve on juries.
That is only part of our history. I recite that history not to justify the OJ verdict, but to point out how deep the racial divide we peer across is in this country. We stand once again as a nation exposed to hatreds and mistrust and violence that racism creates. When the LA policeman who beat Rodney King was acquitted, Blacks rioted. Will whites now riot? Will a backlash now flow in the directions of supporting Pat Buchanan or Phil Gramm?
For a moment, the lid is off the pot where we contain the tensions of racism. We stand exposed to what divides us. We have an opportunity now to look at that division and discuss it and go another step toward healing the breech. Or we can hurriedly put the lid back on and hope that it will save us from the truth, save us from one another.
We would do well to heed to America's true prophet. "It is time we stopped our blithe lip service to the guarantees of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There fine sentiments are embodied in the Declaration of Independence, but that document was always a declaration of intent rather than of reality. There were slaves when it was written; there were slaves when it was adopted; and to this day, black Americans have not life, liberty, nor the privilege of pursuing happiness, and millions of poor white Americans are in economic bondage that is scarcely less oppressive."
"Americans who genuinely treasure our national ideals, who know that they are still elusive dreams for all too many, should welcome the stirring of Negro demands. They are shattering a complacency that allowed a multitude of social evils to accumulate; Negro agitation is requiring America to reexamine its comforting myths and may yet catalyze the drastic reforms that will save us from social catastrophe." (Martin Luther King Jr., Playboy, January, 1969, pp. 174ff)
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