As Simpson was arraigned on murder charges last week, he was still a man first. Nonracial factors – namely his celebrity status and the millions he can afford to spend for a first-class defense – are far more connected to the outcome of his trial than the color of his skin. The story remains more Menendez than Rodney King; spouse abuse remains more relevant than racism.
But race had steadily made its way into a case that was originally thought to transcend it. Polls show 40-point gaps between blacks and whites in their view of Simpson’s guilt. Defense attorneys, exercising their right to exploit any option for their client, are dropping bits of color into the jury pool, while claiming not to. And Simpson himself must realize that his best hope for convincing jurors of his claim last week that he is “absolutely 100 percent not guilty” lies in the deep and often irrational public cynicism about the same white power establishment he sought so eagerly to join.
For weeks, the racial dimension was more the province of private conversations than public debate. That was partly because of the usual awkwardness of major news organizations when confronting thorny racial issues. It was partly because even civil-rights leaders didn’t make an issue of race, except as it related to possible application of the death penalty. And it was partly because many whites had invested considerable psychic energy in their illusion of a colorblind society. Their almost paternalistic admiration for Simpson had made them feel better, more broad-minded, and acknowledging the shadow of race threatened that sense of accomplishment.
Racial angles surfaced occasionally. When Time magazine darkened O.J.’s mug shot on its cover, critics weighed the relationship between skin tone and menace. The effect of the case on interracial marriage has been analyzed, though few articles mentioned a stunning 1993 National Opinion Research Center survey showing that one in five white Americans still believes intermarriage should be illegal (down from roughly one in three in 1973). But these stories were peripheral until last week, when a series of polls measuring perceptions of the case showed just how wide the racial gulf has become.
In court, as in life, perception can become reality. But it’s preferable when perception has some relation to facts. What’s disturbing about the introduction of race into the national discussion of O. J. Simpson is that although it’s connected to how people view the case, and possibly to the outcome of the case, it’s not, so far, connected to the facts of the case. The timing. The alibi. The blood. The mother of two and her friend brutally stabbed to death. None of these are racial issues.
What’s more, race is not even explicitly connected to the pseudofacts of the case. To help raise reasonable doubt in the minds of potential jurors, the defense fingered Los Angeles police Detective Mark Fuhrman for once having made racist remarks and offered the dubious theory that he planted the incriminating glove at Simpson’s home. So far, this defense gambit isn’t yielding major results in the black community. A Newsweek Poll showed 20 percent of blacks believe that Simpson was set up by police, and 12 percent see racism as the motive.
But a staggering 60 percent of blacks believe that Simpson was, in fact, set up (23 percent of whites believe it). So the question is, by whom? The most popular answer by far (36 percent of blacks) is “unknown forces.” Even accounting for the uncertainties of polling on racial issues (only 85 percent of blacks have phones, and all people are believed by pollsters to answer less candidly when the interviewer is of a different race), this is a striking finding. It suggests an unfocused but remarkably broad black cynicism – even paranoia – about law enforcement, the news media and society at large. “Reasonable people would be hard pressed to argue he’s being railroaded,” says Roger Wilkins, the author and lecturer. “But I understand the emotional reaction of those who say, “I don’t believe a thing they’re telling us’.”
Understandable, perhaps, in both historical and contemporary terms. After all, the whole history of race relations in America is bound up with the idea of white men trying to protect white women from black men. Again and again, that was the major argument for maintaining segregation. It’s what lynching was all about. In the broad sweep of history, framing a black man for killing a white woman would hardly be unusual. And the contemporary backdrop is compelling, too. In L.A., racism in the police department is not a rare occurrence but a deeply rooted tradition. It’s hard to find middle-class and wealthy blacks in L.A. who have not at least once been stopped and frisked for nothing more than driving a nice car; in the recent past, poorer blacks were frequently abused by police.
Sadly, this history is now often cast as destiny. “When a black man gets to a place where he has power, manifested through money, prestige, popularity, I think there’s definitely a hidden invisible society that goes looking into that man’s life to destroy him,” says the Rev. Wanda Henry-Jenkins of Philadelphia.
Such logic – or illogic – is appallingly common in the African-American community. It explains why former Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry, caught on videotape smoking crack cocaine, is now again a serious candidate for mayor. It explains why the rape conviction of Mike Tyson and the press coverage of Michael Jackson are somehow seen as relevant to the guilt or innocence of O. J. Simpson. And by stripping context from any mooring in fact, it dooms the prospect of rational conversation. Many whites (and a sizable number of blacks) rightly see implausible conspiracy theories as an excuse to avoid personal responsibility for one’s actions. But this point in turn becomes an excuse of its own – an excuse to reinforce negative stereotypes about blacks. The number of blacks who embrace these conspiracy theories is shocking, but the generalizations about blacks made by so many whites who denounce those theories is unfair to the millions of blacks who don’t subscribe to them.
Shelby Steele, a black author who infuriates more conventional thinkers, argues that race has “nothing whatsoever” to do with the particulars of the case: “If you would have proposed a hypothetical O. J. Simpson-like case before this broke, you probably would have gotten the same divisions between whites and blacks.” Steele goes on to argue, as others critical of the media have, that the race angle is just something the press pushed to keep the story going. The problem with that argument is that the striking divisions between black and white views – which is news by any standard – turned up before the racial dimension to the case was heavily covered.
Those divisions are not quite as predictable as one might assume. Black women have been viewed as more antagonistic toward Simpson than black men because he married a white woman and is a confessed wife-beater. But the Newsweek Poll shows that black women are far more convinced of Simpson’s innocence (67 percent) than black men, only half of whom believe that Simpson was framed.
Simpson’s defense team is not so clever as to play all these angles. That would be impossible. But his lawyers have shrewdly taken advantage of circumstances that might help appeal to jurors with a beef against the system. The trial judge announced last week, Lance Ito, has a reputation as a fine and fair jurist, which was one reason he was so readily acceptable to the defense when it was offered a chance to veto him. But the fact that Ito’s wife is a high-ranking official in the LAPD must have been another plus in the mind of the defense. For potential jurors suspicious of the system, it reinforces the idea of a courtroom stacked against Simpson.
Similarly, Johnnie Cochran Jr., who agreed to join the defense last week, is an old friend of Simpson’s and a Los Angeles trial attorney of the first rank who might well have been invited aboard even if he were white. But his presence at the defense table will also help drive home the argument to black jurors that this case has racial dimensions. And Cochran has been known to exploit that advantage in the past. It was Cochran, after all, who arranged to have his client Michael Jackson appear at the NAACP Image Awards. He encouraged the argument that Jackson was being singled out for his race.
At bottom, the role of race in the Simpson case is perhaps best viewed as one issue but not the issue. Olivia Barbee, a 24-year-old black administrative assistant in Chicago, seems to have struck the right note: “You have to distinguish between things that happen in general and things that happen in a particular case. I believe in general that blacks are treated differently in the media and in the courts, but in this specific case, I don’t think you can say this applies. When you become that level of celebrity, you’re almost beyond race.” Almost.
