Among the signature images of O.J. Simpson’s acquittal of the murders of his ex-wife and her friend was the contrasting tableaus of Black people grouping in front of television screens applauding while white people watching it were shaking their heads — appalled, perplexed and even disgusted by a verdict that flew in the face of obvious fact. Those contrasting perspectives have gone down as demonstrating a gulf of understanding between the races.
That gulf persists, but it narrows apace, and if the verdict came down today, it would be a lot less perplexing to many white people than it was back then. Many would understand why the jury acted as it did. We might even see some of them applauding along with Black people.
It isn’t that these people would celebrate Simpson himself, any more than the jurors did back in 1995. As has been often noted in the wake of his death, Simpson was not much of a hero in the Black community, as he spent little time with Black people, dated white women, made no contributions to Black-related causes and even declared “I’m not Black, I’m O.J.”
I’m not sure how many people of any color sincerely believed that Simpson was not the murderer and that the L.A.P.D., which had long coddled him despite his frequent battery of his wife, had for some reason framed him. The evidence of Simpson’s deed was overwhelming despite the ineptitude of the prosecution team. The verdict and the response to it among the Black community weren’t signs of support for Simpson; they were protests against a long legacy of mistreatment and even murder at the hands of the police.
For Black people in Los Angeles recalling how the L.A.P.D. had treated them for decades, for Black people in Philadelphia not long past the all but open racism of the police force there under Mayor Frank Rizzo, for Black people in Chicago remembering the racist profiling and abuse by the cops called the Flying Squad, the sheer fact of a Black man getting off on a murder charge was of epic significance. If anything, the fact that he was obviously guilty only amplified the victory.
For all the statistical discrepancies between Black and white Americans, interactions with the police may be the central driver of how many Black people experience racism. I noted this in my research and conversations in preparation for my book “Losing the Race” in the late 1990s, when I was sincerely trying to figure out why so many Black people spoke of racism almost as if it were the 1890s rather than the 1990s. There is a reason that the main focus of the Black Panthers was combating police brutality, that anti-cop animus was central to gangsta rap and that today Black Lives Matter may be more influential than the N.A.A.C.P.
In 1995 white people were generally less aware of this legacy. But today a majority of both white people and Black people attest that Black people are treated unfairly by the police.
It’s easier to insist that change doesn’t happen — which, when it comes to race, too many are inclined to — than to allow that it happens slowly. In 1949, even as progressive a soul as Oscar Hammerstein had to be politely implored by Paul Robeson’s wife not to make the one Black male chorus member in the original production of “South Pacific” spend his time onstage jitterbugging happily around. A theater artist would have been vastly less likely to make that mistake by the 1970s, but racism hadn’t ended; it had just become more subtle.
I saw it then, as a kid, in the coverage of television. Two popular sitcoms included actresses in their 80s going strong: Judith Lowry, the white woman who played Mother Dexter on “Phyllis,” and Zara Cully, the Black woman who played Mother Jefferson on “The Jeffersons.” There was endless media coverage of what a marvel Lowry was but all but none of this kind on Cully, despite the fact that “The Jeffersons” was a much bigger show — and that Cully was, frankly, a better and funnier actress. I noticed that Lowry was celebrated as a magnificent aged trouper while Cully was processed as just some old lady. My mother noticed it, too, saying that it was an example of Black people not being fully seen.
Observations like these were common among Black people but much less so among white people. Today I see white people far more aware. That’s why when I fast-forward the Simpson verdict to 2024, I picture some white people getting the news on their phones and doing high-fives and group hugs, some of them in tears. They would be no more likely to see Simpson himself as a hero than were the jurors of 1995, especially given that modern America is more sensitized not only to racism but also to abuse of women. But they would be more likely to see the acquittal as a kind of payback for all of the white cops who have been exonerated for murdering Black people. It would be processed, I imagine, as a teaching moment of sorts.
I, for one, have my issues with how racism and the police are commonly discussed these days. The cops obviously discriminate against Black people; the data is in. But when it comes to murder, I have learned over the past eight years or so that the story is more complex. Too many white people also are killed by cops. Proportionately to our share of the population, Black people are more likely than white people to be killed. But they are also more likely to be poor, and for a whole host of reasons, poor people are more likely to encounter the police. So poverty itself may explain part of the disparity. Also, in 2016 a white man named Tony Timpa was killed by cops in a way very similar to how George Floyd was murdered, but Timpa’s case did not attract the same kind of public outcry. All that leads me to think that America has a problem with police violence in general. But here’s the thing: I am accustomed to vigorous resistance to that argument from not only Black but white people, too.
It is in this context that the stark racial divide in the reception of the Simpson verdict three decades ago seems rather antique. There has been, regardless of the disagreements that inevitably persist, progress.