RACE

Several times my posts that had anything whatsoever to do with Race were completely ignored. (Of course my journal on some other subjects were frequently almost ignored, ha!) For example, apparently not a soul who has an AOL Journal has seen, or if seen will discuss, the Best Picture, Oscar for 2005, CRASH.  I consider it the best movie I've ever seen. So I hope you can understand my resultant feelings of dislocation. My all time favorite movie cannot even be discussed?!? My children, ages 4, 5, 11, ask frequently to see the movie again. They are children of an interracial couple! They know some of the lines, can remember the names of the characters, and recall scenes, especially scenes with police, weeks after the last time we screened the movie.

With that in mind I can hardly expect anyone to pay the slightest bit of attention to my ruminations of the subject of the Orenthal James Simpson double murder trial. I'm about to conclude the book Without a Doubt by Marcia Clark, with Teresa Carpenter. Recently I read two other books on the same subject, In Contempt by Christopher Darden, with Jess Walter, as well as Madame Foreman A Rush to Judgment? by three jurors Amanda Cooley, Connie Bess, and Marsha Rubin-Jackson. as told to Tom Byrnes.

In sum the three books together prove that OJ (aka 'The Juice') Simpson was guilty, and the murder trial failed to convict him because of machinations springing from considerations of Race. The trial took place in Downtown Los Angeles, where the potential jury pool was made up of a majority African Americans. The subsequent civil trial reached a conviction because that trial was held in Santa Monica, about 15 miles away on the Pacific Coast where it was easier for both sides to find a jury equally black and white. The convicting jury downtown was made up of eight Black women and four jurors white and Hispanic.

The moment I learned the makeup of the acquital jury, of which I was ignorant during the actual trial, I could immediately understand the not guilty verdict. Black women are brought up to defend their man. I learned that years agowhile researching for an interracial play I was writing. I read Black Rage written by two Black psychiatrists. Black Mothers know their daughters will have far less trouble finding a job than will their sons. Knowing just that much, plus the makeup of the jury, and I'd have been certain from day one that OJ would get off. Black women on the jury were insulted that the co-Prosecutor Christopher Darden was Black: they smelled out that he was a 'token' Black man chosen only to cynically endear the prosecution to that jury. It didn't, it alienated them.

                          

                             End of Part One

Barry