Posted on 09/26/2016 6:32:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
I remember the moment well.
I was sitting in my car, waiting outside my office, my ear glued to the radio. The newscasters were about to announce the verdict of the O. J. Simpson double murder case. Would he be found guilty or not?
The evidence against him seemed overwhelming. But was he framed? Could the police be trusted? Yet if he was innocent, why did he run?
It seemed all of America was waiting with baited breath. What would the jury decide?
Many Americans stood gathered around TV monitors in public places, and as the words “Not guilty” were pronounced something extraordinary happened. Many blacks were absolutely elated w many whites were absolutely shocked, as preserved in more than one iconic photo.
Why such disparate reactions?
Was it simply a matter of skin color, with blacks siding with O. J. and whites siding with the victims?
For some, it may have been that simple, but remember that O. J. was hugely popular in white America, and he had been married to a white American and was living the American dream. And how many blacks would want a cold-blooded, double-murderer, living in privileged white communities, to walk away free?
No, there was something deeper going on, and it had to do with perceptions about “the system,” in this case, police and the courts.
Blacks, generally speaking, tended to distrust the system; whites, generally speaking, tended to trust it.
Even today, more than 20 years after the O. J. verdict in June, 1995, “A full 83 percent of white Americans said that they are ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ sure of Simpson's guilt. By contrast, 57 percent of black Americans agreed.”
Significantly, 2015 marked the first time that polls indicated that a majority of black Americans also believed O. J. was guilty, in sharp contrast with a 1997 poll where 82 percent of whites and just 31 percent of blacks believed he was guilty.
But the numbers still remain quite disparate today, with the 2015 poll still showing a difference of 26 percent between the views of white and black Americans, and those deep difference in perceptions have surfaced time and again in the last few years (think Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Terrence Crutcher, and Keith Lamont Scott).
After George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin, I wrote an article titled, “The George Zimmerman Trial in Black and White,” where I laid out the varied racial perspectives on the trial, arguing passionately for each position and doing my best to expose each side to the perspective of the other side.
Now, this tragic scenario is playing out again with the Charlotte shooting of Keith Lamont Scott.
Speaking again in broadly general terms (and I apologize for the obvious over-generalizations), white Americans are grieved over the shooting but see it as justifiable.
After all, the man had a gun, he refused to obey numerous orders by the police officer (hey, he didn’t even listen to his wife saying, “Don’t do it!”), and he was potentially threatening the life of others. He also had a police record – come on, he previously assaulted someone with a deadly weapon – and his fingerprints, blood, and DNA were found on the gun.
And there’s more: The officer who shot him is black and the local police chief is black, and the police chief insists that there are eyewitnesses, along with video evidence, confirming that the officer acted properly.
Black Americans are not just grieved over the shooting, they are outraged.
Here was a man sitting peacefully in his car, waiting for his son to come home from school as he did every day, reading a book (the Quran). He posed no threat to anyone, nor did he own a gun or regularly carry a gun.
And for goodness sake, the man had been in a motorcycle accident and had a traumatic brain injury (TBI), making it difficult for him to respond to the police properly. His own wife was shouting, “He doesn’t have a gun!” and “He as a TBI!”
As for the gun, the police planted it at the scene (remember the white cop in South Carolina who was charged with murder and who allegedly altered the crime scene to implicate the black man he shot in the back?), and there are eyewitnesses who confirm that it was a white officer who shot Mr. Scott.
White Americans then say, “You’ve got to be kidding me! You’re sticking in your head in the sand. And just look at these lawless rioters and looters. No wonder the police are so quick to shoot.”
Black Americans say, “What will it take for you to accept that we are not treated equally? And while these looters do not represent our community, they’re expressing a deep frustration we’ve felt for decades.”
And on and it goes, with no end in sight.
A few days ago, my wife Nancy said to me, “How would we feel if, as whites, we were the small minority, brought over on slave ships and sold as slaves, then oppressed by black society for generations, with anti-white prejudice still alive and well in many parts of the society?”
Obviously, we’ve thought about these things before, but it’s almost impossible for us to know how we’d feel since this was not our background and experience (although as Jews, we have had more than our share of suffering in history through the centuries).
At the same time, the perception of the oppressed can also be skewed, especially when agitators play into a perpetual victim mentality that continues to enslave rather than empower.
What, then, is the solution?
At the risk of repeating points I’ve made in previous articles, here are four simple things we must do.
First, we must determine not to react in a fleshly, emotional, even irrational way, recognizing that carnal anger does not produce positive results. Pointing fingers, insulting others, and, worse still, breaking the law, does far more harm than good.
Second, we must talk face to face as much as possible with other fair-minded people across the racial divide, asking them to share their perspectives before allowing us to share ours.
Third, we must ask God to reveal blind spots we might have along with blind spots our friends and colleagues might have.
Fourth, we must commit to following the truth wherever it leads – to pursuing justice, regardless of the consequences and implications – which requires courage and integrity and humility.
Can we do this together?
Do we really have a choice?
I just read his “black and white” article about Zimmerman. He tries to play “the middle” and argue that both sides are partly right and both are partly wrong. It’s like arguing that a divorce between a man and woman where the man was a compulsive gambler, alcoholic and womanizer, and the wife took the kids to church every week and had a glass of Merlot every day with dinner, was a 50-50 proposition. They both had blood on their hands.
BS.
The Zimmerman case has become a litmus test for racial bias for me. If a person who claims to know the details still thinks that a white cop wannabee shot down a defenseless black kid and the system didn’t protect the kid, I no longer respect that person’s ability to use reason regarding ANYTHING.
Sometimes it really is black and white. Sometimes one side really is wrong. Nobody’s perfect, but sometimes people are in the wrong. I see it all the time on those dash cam crash videos. It really can be that black and white with this sort of stuff.
BTW, I have no opinion on the NC case yet because it’s not gone to court and it is still in the solidifying stage. In the beginning I thought Zimmerman was the bad guy.
Good analysis. I agree with you litmus test. The frustration is compounded because there are frequently losers and jerks on both sides of these cases.
Teaching not to resist arrest would go a long way to prevent every one of these incidents.
It was pathetic how Marcia Clark destroyed her own case!
Jesus Christ: You can't impeach Him and He ain't gonna resign.
The frustration is compounded because there are frequently losers and jerks on both sides of these cases.
Yeah. That is why that one is my litmus test. In the Zimmerman case, EVERYONE on the other side was a loser or jerk. That is, no reasonable person, with even a rudimentary understanding of the facts of the case, would have expected charges to be filed.
I posted a lot on a liberal site at the time. About 2/3 of the liberals there finally came down against Martin. But there was still a core group that were absolutely furious that Zimmerman was getting away with cold blooded murder. And these were folks that were repeatedly referred to the excellent Conservativetreehouse.com coverage and so many other sources. i.e. they had the facts.
On a comical note, I said to one, “I think I get it. You are black, aren’t you?”
He went ballistic at my raw racism. But in the end, yes, he admitted that he was black. He was a black racist.
The funny thing is that, given the way they can be treated, even today, in our culture, I understand how a black person can see the world through the lens of race. As a white male boomer, my race rarely mattered about anything. To a black man, it could easily be a daily occurrence. That has an impact on a person.
But still, it doesn’t excuse what many are doing, nor does it excuse just being stupid in your analysis of information.
Everybody reading this needs to click on those photo links in the article, especially the YouTube link. The most striking bit of video was the reaction of the police horses who knew OJ had gotten away with it.
As to the writer and the piece, he really needs to learn his idioms since he expects to be paid for his efforts. It’s “bated breath” and doesn’t have a darn thing to do with fishing. Further, it’s impossible to discern what position he’s trying to take on the Charlotte police shooting. If he’s simply trying to split the difference and tell both stories equally, it would be good to let the reader in on that.
What are they going to do when Trump is elected?
If hillary is elected, what are they going to do as their condition continues to deteriorate as it has under obama, but “The Won” is not there for them to whisper sweet lies?”
They can’t avoid “resisting arrest” because most of the “victims” faced prison time due to drug or weapons charges (in their possession at the time of the shooting); it is no accident that most of them were “bad dudes” - that is WHY they resist/draw weapons/run down cops/disobey orders...
Normal people let the cops due their jobs; guilty perps with records a mile long don’t want to go back to the cage.
One very disturbing aspect of the OJ case was the admission by many blacks that while he had done it, his acquittal was just because in the past whites had gotten off for killing blacks. To them Nicole & Ron were meaningless biscuit-heads who were sacrificed to right a vague past wrong.
The violence many blacks encounter in their daily lives is the fruit of this attitude about human life in general.
I'd feel a wee bit Irish!
Potato Lives Matter!!!
As I see it if the black ‘victim’ has a rap sheet a mile long he then has a KNOWN propensity to set himself up to be shot. Good for the gene pool.
Reporters die by homonym. Trouble is, readers just don’t notice. Then again, do modern journalists even know that there is a difference between ‘bated’ and ‘baited’? If it were explained to them would they understand the explanation?
I don’t put much credence in writers who refuse to proofread their work. Maybe they can’t?
?
Wouldn't the horses just kind of stand there?
They were happy about the acquittal BECAUSE they figured he was guilty.
Remembering that time -- I avoided my next-door neighbors for a while after that. I was steamed, and I think that they were actually embarrassed by the verdict and demonstrations.
In a word, no, and that's why I said to see the video.
That’s right; though he was guilty (they didn’t doubt that), his acquittal was somehow justice for unrelated issues from the past...
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