Run, O.J., Run

Subscribe to future audio versions of AmRen articles here.

This is part of our continuing series of accounts by readers of how they shed the illusions of liberalism and became race realists.

This may not be a unique experience, but I think what finally made me a race realist was the O.J. Simpson case. After the verdict was read, it was clear that, for blacks, race trumps all. Since then, I have decided that the same axiom applies to all non-whites to one degree or another.

A little personal background: When my father was transferred from Pittsburgh to Baltimore in the early 60s, I was soon confronted — at age six — with the reality of blacks. We lived in pleasant suburbs outside the Baltimore Beltway, like all sane middle-class families, but we did like to take in the occasional Orioles game. The road to Memorial Stadium went through harrowing West Baltimore. I developed an instinctive dread of the numerous blacks I saw loitering on the streets, especially the black kids. No suitable playmates there.

Later, when I was in high school, I saw how the black kids (only 10% of the school) got away with just about anything, the quaking white school administration backing them up, giving them cover (this was only 1969, mind you), fearful of appearing to be in any way partial to the white kids.

But I was determined to be fair and open-minded. In college, I made the acquaintance of several well-spoken, relatively well-educated blacks, and started to congratulate myself on my sophistication, my cosmopolitanism. It’s my belief that most educated whites liked to be able to have at least a token black friend or two, objective proof that they aren’t racist, no sir. And besides, these college blacks were more mature, right?

But as life went on, black people eventually always disappointed me. They seemed to expect high praise for little accomplishment. I had to get along with blacks at work, and I did, but they were getting promotions way out of proportion to what they were due. The way they reacted to perceived slights was from a different planet. A black co-worker once told me that he’d coldcocked a cab driver with a pistol because he thought the cabbie had overcharged him. The amount sounded like the going rate, but he was unrepentant.

I think Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign was a game changer in race relations. I remembered Watts. I remembered the violent 1967 riots in Detroit. I remembered MLK’s assassination and the riots that ensued from that. Yet, by the 70s, racial strife seemed to be a thing of the past. Sure, there were black ghettos which, as a white, you knew not to visit after dark — if ever. But I recall that Jackson campaign. I was a political junkie, and I’d watch C-SPAN. I caught some of Jackson’s speeches during that campaign. To Jesse, Selma was always something that had just happened. Was he living in the same country I was? But he got a lot of votes. Later would come the NAACP campaign against the Confederate battle flag, blaming it for black poverty and crime. Incredible, but apparently lucrative. America’s been one big pageant of racism since then.

The worst thing was that white people bought it! The race baiters and diversicrats were leveling us down with their puerile assertions, turning us into a nation of children. And white people bought it. Hell, I probably bought it myself a little.

It was while I was living in LA that the reality of race was finally driven home to me. The 1992 riots came as a complete shock, though in retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised. The idea that you’d burn the whole city down over one drughead made no sense. Well, here was a people who hadn’t reflected much on Thomas Aquinas and the law of proportionality, to say the least. And yes, I know, after the initial flare-up, the first 15 minutes or so, it was more about the freebies, the chance to party, the open department stores, etc. Were they really that impulsive, that short sighted? Yes.

During the riots, three of my co-workers were shot while crossing the street (none died, thank God). The assailant was heard to say, “Today, white people gonna die!” It was like that all over town. People should’ve been outraged, and they were, although not in the way I would’ve thought. One acquaintance told me he watched the news coverage with barely contained outrage — outrage he thought justified because of how badly blacks had been treated for so long. Really? It’s 1992 and it’s still about racism? I knew then we were probably in for more of the same.

Still, I continued to believe that blacks — some blacks anyway — could be fair-minded and objective in light of the facts. Surely, they didn’t believe that the woes they suffered were all someone else’s fault. I laugh at my naivete now.

A couple of years later, we got the O.J. Simpson affair. By the time the low-speed chase ended and Simpson turned himself in, it all seemed pretty cut-and-dried, didn’t it? This one should be a slam dunk, given what we already knew.

How could Marcia Clark have been so feckless? She wanted to build a case based on O.J.’s history of spousal abuse. To that end, she wanted women on the jury, a lot of women. Johnny Cochran thought that was just fine, so long as they were black women. The trial dragged on for months, and the Dream Team poked holes in the case, as expensive lawyers will. But still, we all thought, justice will ultimately be done, right?

The first sign O.J. was going to skate came with the dismissal of two jurors, for whatever reason (I’m sure I don’t remember). The two jurors — both black women — got their 15 minutes of fame, courtesy of the media. I saw a couple of those interviews. They expressed sympathy for Simpson and said they just didn’t see how he could get a fair trial. Were they kidding? A gazillion dollars’ worth of the most famous attorneys in America, a trial in a downtown venue (moved from white Santa Monica where it was thought the liberal ladies would have thought differently about wife-battering), and he couldn’t get a fair trial? Did people really think that way?

You know the rest. The proceedings ended on a Friday afternoon, and the jury was sequestered for what we all thought would be a long siege. The judge and the lawyers all went home. But the jury came back within a couple of hours with the verdict. We all knew they’d acquitted him, but we’d have to wait until Monday to find out.

They read the verdict at 10 am on Monday. I had business in Pasadena until noon. To get home to my house on the coast, the most direct route was via the Harbor Freeway, right through downtown. That day, I planned to take a more circuitous route of about 100 miles to avoid central LA. Guilty or not, I thought there might be a riot. I shouldn’t have worried. The only tears were tears of joy from the gathered spectators (who apparently didn’t have jobs).

When I got home, I watched the news coverage. I called friends and we commiserated. On TV, one juror was saying how stupid the D.A. had been, making the case about spousal abuse. The man’s wife had been murdered. What did that have to do with spousal abuse? It never occurred to her that perhaps murder could be the ultimate spousal abuse.

That was it for me, proof positive. Marcia Clark got her female jurors. Johnny Cochran did too. For blacks, race trumps everything. Nowadays, we’re to the point where you’d almost think a black man will get a presidential medal of freedom for chopping off his blonde wife’s head. Just one fewer white supremacist.

If you have a story about how you became racially aware, or about your firsthand experience with race, we’d like to hear it. If it is well written and compelling, we will publish it. Please feel free to use a pen name and send it to us here.

Original Article