Saturday, October 4, 2008

OJ Simpson: Fine, he's guilty - I hope you're happy now



I sat in the airport early this morning, waiting for a flight to NYC. Besides a surprisingly fun trip away for the weekend, I also get a chance to appear on my favorite network, Al Jazeera International. This is no disrespect to CNN, but I have to be honest. Al Jazeera has a great global audience, and the news is actually intelligent. We Americans have become allergic to truly educational news, and have fallen in love with the worthless sound bite. On Al Jazeera they actually ENJOY hearing me as a scholar, and my being a Black Financial expert is not some kind of oxymoron. On CNN and Fox, on the other hand, you are as likely to see a Black Financial expert as you are to see Sarah Palin getting a PhD at an HBCU.

As I sat working on my laptop, I noticed that good ol OJ is back in the news. It appears that White America is going to get what it's been praying for since that fateful day in 1995: That "horrendous negro" is finally going to prison. I noticed the chuckles from the other people in the lounge as the verdict was announced. I listened to my cab driver tell me that "it's about damn time they got that guy."

I clearly remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when the first major OJ verdict was announced 13 years ago. I was walking across campus, and I ran into a buddy of mine, who happened to be a White male. He was FURIOUS, as were the rest of the students on my campus, The University of Kentucky. If you don't know much about The University of Kentucky, just picture a campus created and run by borderline Klansmen for over 100 years that is just now figuring out that Black students can do more than play basketball.

I remember the outrage being expressed that this "monster" had gotten away with "killing that lovely and beautiful woman." Give me a damn break. Here are my thoughts on OJ:

1) I've never liked OJ. I didn't like him before the first trial and I don't like him now. He has, throughout his career, shown very little respect for the Black community, and I found it disturbing that he and Rodney King became symbols for Black civil rights in the early 1990s.

2) OJ and his wife were, based on the evidence and for lack of a better word, "coke heads". Neither of them were the pure and perfect human-beings some of us believed them to be. Those people who think there is no chance that OJ killed his wife need to think twice about that conclusion.

3) I believe OJ knows what happened to his wife, but I don't think he killed them. If you stab someone, you're not just going to have microscopic blood samples on your shoes. You're going to have blood on your face, in your hair, up your nose, and all over the place. I don't think he did it, but I think he was right there when it happened. Whether he was complicit or framed, we will never know.

4) It is not out of the question that this was a drug kill. Again, when people are so deeply involved in drugs, you don't know what you're going to get. Washed up actors work as drug mules all the time, and I always wondered how a man receiving just a few thousand dollars here and there for endorsement deals and cameos could afford to maintain expensive homes and an expensive drug habit.

5) Mark Furman's perjury and the fact that the murder glove didn't fit show clearly that there was reasonable doubt. If you believe in the American justice system, you HAD to let OJ go. It's not about what you THINK happened, it's about what the evidence SHOWS BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT. The concept of reasonable doubt is fundamental to our justice system. Mark Furman alone created reasonable doubt that he and the LAPD could be trusted.

6) The lynch mob mentality shown by America after the OJ trial is nothing new. All throughout history, most Black men believed to have committed a crime were not given fair access to justice. If the alleged crime was atrocious enough, people would hunt him down in the middle of the night and kill him. The remnants of this mob mentality showed itself clearly during the mob mentality exhibited after the OJ trial.

7) If OJ had killed a Black woman, the trial would have not have been the global sensation it was. There is something that lies deep within the psyche of many Americans that becomes frightened and angry over the idea of a big, evil, dirty Black man killing a pure, sweet and innocent White woman. That's just a fact. But here's another fact: Black men are not evil and dirty, and not all White women are as pure as the driven snow. Neither OJ nor his wife were angelic in their behavior, and it appears that there is a reason they chose to be together in the first place.

At the end of the day, the punishment must fit the crime. OJ is not a man I respect. But there is a strong correlation between the treatment of OJ Simpson and other prominent Black male athletes: Jack Johnson, Muhammad Ali, Terrell Owens, Ron Artest, Barry Bonds and Michael Vick. The "Black Males are Monsters" mentality shows itself all over America, which is why the prisons are full of Black men, why Black boys are 5 times more likely to be placed in special education and why my university treats my Black Public Scholarship as if I am some kind of menace to society. It's all part of the same package, and nothing new in America.

14 comments:

Elrancho78 said...

Dr Boyce, I totally agree with your post and your suspicions about what really happened to his wife and her friend. (A lawyer friend working in California back then gave me the same explanation).
At the time of his murder trial I was astonished at how every (and I mean every) white person I knew was convinced of his guilt. They felt that they 'knew' more than the experts, more than the evidence and their behaviour showed an arrogance that in 'olden' days would have ended in a lynching. I said to them 'what if it were Clint Eastwood or some white actor accused of murdering a black wife -would you then be so convinced of his guilt? Would you not be willing to accept the verdict?' They couldn't answer that one.
I was glad he was acquitted. After decades of black people being falsely accused and convicted of crimes they didn't commit I was glad to see one person get off - even if he was guilty!
But you are right, Boyce; white America will now get what they want. Their bloodlust might be satisfied (for a while) until the next time, the next opportunity to express their inner hatred and to kick someone while they're down.

Anonymous said...

Ouch!!!

Elrancho78 said...

To anonymous at 11.31; it always pleases me when because I don't hold the views of the majority of white males, I'm assumed to be black. It lets me know that I am on the right track. Anyone who considers Dr Boyce to be a clown and baffoon is sadly not on the right track.

Anonymous said...

I knew Boyce when he went to University of Kentucky (go cats!). I'm surprised that he is as militant? as he appears to be in his blogs. Back in the day it seemed like his number one concern was 'getting with the white honeys' on campus. Nothing wrong with that, just curious as to why he is so pro-black now.

Anonymous said...

You say if OJ had killed a black women it wouldn't have gotten all the publicity. Yeah and black women wouldn't have been high-5ing each other and acting like it was a tailgate party when he was found not guilty. Now, if Nicole had killed OJ and was acquitted LA would have burned to the ground and a mob would be folling her everywhere she went screaming "no, justice, no peace" until the day she dies. Remember the black women on the jury who said that even though Nicole said OJ would one day kill her and get away with it, well, she didn't see how that might be relevent to the murder? Imagine if it was a white women who didn't see anything noteworthy in a black person stating they would be murdered by a certain white person, who would later get away with it. She would be the posterchild for white ignorance and racism forever.
Mark Furman was a bigoted slezeball. So is Isiah Washington and he got an award from the NAACP.

Anonymous said...

To the people who think we should stop talking about slavery consider this; Tell the Jews to forget about the Holocost, tell them for that matter to stop remembering the exodus from Egypt. What happened to them was wrong and they can express that and nobody has a problem with that. Check out this statement from a Hispanic person in New Mexico;

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The chairman of the Republican Party in New Mexico's most populous county resigned Thursday, nearly a week after saying "Hispanics consider themselves above blacks" and won't vote for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
Fernando C de Baca's resignation as GOP chairman in Bernalillo County was announced by state GOP Chairman Allen Weh, one of several top New Mexico Republicans who had called for him to step down.


"Mr. C de Baca has worked hard on behalf of the party, and his contributions should be appropriately recognized," Weh said. "We are glad this matter has been resolved and wish him well."
C de Baca, 70, was quoted in a BBC News blog last week as saying: "The truth is that Hispanics came here as conquerors. African-Americans came here as slaves. Hispanics consider themselves above blacks. They won't vote for a black president."
C de Baca had maintained his comments were taken out of context, explaining he was referring to views held by some in the generation of Hispanics who grew up before the civil rights movement. "Those were not my beliefs," he said Tuesday.
A spokesman for the BBC defended the report as accurate. Pressure on C de Baca to resign grew with the release of audio from a second BBC interview.
In that interview, he said older Hispanics would not support Obama "primarily because there is a strong feeling that African Americans during the civil rights movement took advantage, full advantage, of all the benefits and programs that the government offered, that were supposed to be offered to all minorities. But we were left behind, we were left sucking air, and we resented that ever since the '60s, and I don't see how a black president is going to change that."

What? why do Hispanics feel like this? Whites started this mess when this country was started and every group that comes in feel they are better than Blacks.

Anonymous said...

When we received equal rights we should have strengthened our own schools and communities. Instead we couldn't wait to rush to the nearest white schools and communities, places where we are clearly not wanted. All the while are own institutions were/are crumbling because we want/wanted to spend money in the white folks hood. And you wonder why other races hold is in contempt and have absolutely no respect for us unless it is on stage or an athletic event. Thats the cold hard truth about racial relations in the 21st century. PEOPLE WAKE UP!

Anonymous said...

Powerful and beautiful article. Dr. Boyce is right on every point.

Anonymous said...

Quick notes: This article wasn't repping for OJ.

I love Black women, and I've only dated them. Not that white women can't be attractive, but if I were to ever get married, I would want to preserve the Black family.

I don't like OJ very much, but I don't agree with the attacks on him. The lynch mob mentality in the OJ case is no different from what people have done to Black men for hundreds of years.

Either deal with it or keep lying to yourselves, it's entirely up to you.

Respect,
Boyce

Anonymous said...

SOLID!

Anonymous said...

OJ simpon is probably guilty, but this a good balanced point of view. I think that he is a bad person, but white people overreacted.

Anonymous said...

And we are also going to overreact come election day.

SoulOnIce said...

Anyone who thinks Dr. Boyce is condoning OJ did not do a great job of reading this article in its entirety.

One of the best remedies (if not the best) for us not to continue to add to more of us being jailed and in prison is to do something very simple: to stop putting ourselves in situations that we know we're not supposed to be in. At least, we can control THAT MUCH of what goes on. The courts will most likely never be in our favor, so the best thing to do is stay the hell outta trouble, period.

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