Luv those Knicks wrote:Knick4Real wrote:I just finished watching all 5 parts and so many thoughts are flooding through my head.
For CENTURIES, black men have been convicted of crimes they didn't commit, simply because (for example) a WHITE woman said he raped her, or a WHITE man said he stole from him. It didn't matter if it was true or not...if a WHITE person said it, that's all that mattered. It WAS true!
The O.J. trial and the verdict that followed was a manifestation of all those years blacks were falsely accused and lynched for having done nothing wrong. So at some point, the trial became less about O.J. and more of a referendum on years of bias against Black Americans. Blame the end result on a history of national racism and corrupt police departments that actively promoted it.
I won't get into if O.J. really did it or not, since everybody has their own opinions. However, just as White America cheered the day the cops who beat Rodney King were found not guilty, they found out how it felt to be on the opposite end of a court decision. Blacks cheered because they'd heard "GUILTY" for so long...even when the black man or woman wasn't guilty. For once, "NOT GUILTY" was a celebration.
Was O.J. the wrong person to be the face of this moment of black vindication? Perhaps. Is it sad that 2 people died brutally on the day Nicole and Ron were killed? Absolutely! However, after YEARS of being beat down physically, mentally and emotionally, did Black America need this brief moment of feeling as if THEY had finally won? You better believe it!
I'm white and old enough to remember all of this going down. I don't remember any white people cheering. Cops may have cheered, white people in society didn't at least, not any I knew.
Many white people, me among them, feel relief the rare instances where cops are charged and I think they still get away with too much. Every case should be looked at individually, but generally speaking, cops get found not guilty much too often in my opinion. The Staten Island choking really stands out as just a terrible job by an asleep at the wheel grand jury. That was an absolute travesty that makes me mad every time I think about it. You don't have to be black to think that Daniel Pantaleo belongs in a jail cell. I think he belongs in a jail cell.
But other than the hilighted part, I agree with what you wrote.
I posted a few pages back that I thought the OJ trial was good for the country (which I think one or two people disagreed with). It's a tragedy for the victims and their families, obviously, and the trial was a joke, but it was also good that cops went on trial for questionable work. That part was a good thing.
I still think Johnnie Cochran's a scumbag for the Hitler thing, and one lesson of the trial that's not been given enough attention is that rich people with good lawyers can do terrible things and get away with it. But I still think overall the trial was good for the country because it did bring some things to the surface.
I was in my twenties when the Rodney King verdict went down, and there was plenty of cheering. Plenty of cheering after the Zimmerman verdict too. To say there was no cheering probably means you weren't paying attention.
