Talking about race for people of color in this nation is the natural thing to do. Blacks carry race around with them all the time. But for whites, talking about race is uncomfortable. It’s a wild card. Whites believe blacks rejoiced in the verdict because it was a payback for white racism, or that blacks are gloating because a black man got away with murdering two white people. It’s much more complicated than that. There is a deep-seated distrust of authority in urban America. Our urban policy for blacks is the criminal-justice system and, for many blacks, it is not a fair system. Blacks are cynical and distrustful of that authority, and they are much more likely to scrutinize the authority’s ease against a defendant. The rejoicing is not that somebody got away with murder, but that somebody beat the system.
former L.A. police chief
I don’t think there is another individual who feels more betrayed than I do and than other police officers do [by Mark Fuhrman]. I have absolutely no sympathy for the guy. I’m so angry at him. But given all that, you can’t fire people for holding certain thoughts. I’ve looked at Mark Fuhrman’s personnel record, and it’s unremarkable. There are a few complaints. But I don’t think there are any more than the average 20-year police officer. If he were calling people the N word every single day, you’d have people lined up outside ParkerCenter to complain. They weren’t. I still believe Fuhrman needs to stand up and explain himself. He’s betrayed a lot of people. He’s really hurt the department, hurt its image. [But] I don’t think it’s a problem of the police department. I think we need more reform in our society than in law enforcement.
author of “Living with the Enemy” and anti-domestic-violence activist
O.J. is really no different from any other batterer. But he’s got money and prestige. He’s a commodity. What really breaks my heart is seeing all of the women dancing and cheering when he was acquitted . . . Nicole Brown Simpson is one of our sisters, and she was slaughtered like a filthy dog on her doorstep. That’s no cause for anybody to dance and shout for joy. The defense team was very, very clever to weight that jury with women. Women are snowed by charming men like O.J.
This verdict is a wake-up call to the battered-women’s movement to start focusing on what do we do with the batterers. We need to work on changing the men. Nothing is going to change until we do that. We’re letting the men get off scot-free; this is just the latest example. We’ve got to get the abusers out of the homes.
author of “Two Nations”
This was a real win for black Americans who don’t get that many wins. You could see people shouting and cheering. When Joe Louis beat Max Schmeling, it was the same thing. I could see white people saying, all right. Black people won. But do they have to jump up and down in glee? We [whites] have a protocol on how blacks should behave. There are good blacks like Colin Powell, iffy ones like Jesse Jackson and bad ones like Farrakhan, and the gleeful reception of the verdict isn’t the kind of behavior we like to see. Might there be less support than there now is for affirmative action? For inner-city hospitals, for tailor-made districts with black majorities?
conservative activist and president of the Free Congress Foundation
I am troubled that we are now talking in terms of a jury system that works for one group and doesn’t work for another. I heard a black spokesman say this is the first time the system worked for “us,” and that now whites are upset. The fear [on whites’ part] is not that the jury system is somehow going to be fair to the blacks for the first time, but that it is not going to do justice when a serious crime is committed. Regardless of the merits of the O.J. case, you have to say, after Mark Fuhrman and what’s happening in Philadelphia [where police are accused of manufacturing evidence against blacks], that we have to address the very real, deep-seated mistrust of the system on the part of law-abiding black people. I am very surprised at how deeply fine, decent, churchgoing blacks feel about the system. And this has made me take another look at it.
syndicated columnist and radio talk-show host
This case was a travesty of justice, a miscarriage of justice. It has had me in a slump all week. It hurts me. When I saw the families crying, it broke me up inside because they thought the man who killed their family members has got away, and you know they were right. The students at Howard, for instance, were just kids who are consumed with race. They are a small element in black America. At my company, where there are many black men, it was somber, so sober. We didn’t feel [the images of celebrating blacks] represented us. This has to do with America’s racist past. America used to let its black sons and daughters get lynched and discriminated against. It wasn’t until recently that the system became colorblind. [Still], blacks believe there is an elite system in place to oppress them. They are wrong.
chairman of the Grand Council of Guardians, a black police officers group
African-Americans had their Rodney King case, and now the rest of America has its version of Rodney King-the OJ. case. At the crux of both is the L.A. police. I know how well a good detective can set up a crime scene to make it look any way he wants it to. The power a law-enforcement officer has in shaping a case is unbelievable. And in the eyes of a racist, O.J. is just a million-dollar nigger.
At my precinct in New York after the verdict, the atmosphere was hostile. The white officers were angry. At the same time, you could see black cops quietly acknowledging to each other what was going on–O.J. became a symbol of attacking the system. When I go in to work, white officers will hit the soda machine and get a free soda. When I hit the machine and get a soda, they say, “We need to fix that machine.” When I heard the O.J. verdict, it was as if all of black America hit the soda machine. And now that we got our free soda, everybody wants to fix the machine.
publisher and editor in chief of The Amsterdam News
I’m thrilled because the American system of justice worked. But I’m disturbed at the same time, because almost three quarters of white America– including lawyers-reacted like spoiled children, saying the system did not work the way they wanted itto; therefore there must be something wrong with the system and it must be changed. Evidence be damned. Timeline be damned. Impossibility be damned. And damn that beacon of American jurisprudence: that in-order to be convicted, the case must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. We look at it through different prisms. We bring our sum total of experience. My sum total of experience says to me, cops are crooked until they prove they’re not.
chair of the National Political Congress of Black Women
I was the first black to serve on the zoning board of Philadelphia. It was around this time that my husband-then a young businessman–was accused of stealing someone’s wallet in a discount store, because he was the only black male present when a white lady discovered her billfold was missing. They made us both leave the store and wanted to arrest us, but of course they found nothing. It’s humiliating. Every African-American person has had that kind of experience. Racism is a fact of life. Today it’s worse. That’s why I took on a crusade against gangsta rap–because we’re teaching our youth to look like gangsters, act like gangsters. Today they’re looked on as thugs, rapists and drug addicts. Those types exist in every ethnic group, but for African-Americans it’s the dominant perception.
professor of law at the University of Oklahoma
At least one juror, an African-American woman, said she felt the evidence about domestic violence was irrelevant. Yet spousal abuse resonates deeply with many African-American women who regularly witness such offenses. It is a dilemma for those of us who can relate to both sides’ theories of the case, because the parallel between the racism the [black] community is decrying and the violence against women it is largely ignoring does not escape us. Whatever you think of Simpson’s guilt or innocence, there was uncontroverted evidence of his abusive behavior. Lest the message be to disregard domestic violence, we ought to pause and recognize our interest in ending this form of abuse.
