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Let me repeat something for folks that didn't hear it the first time: Black people did not love OJ.

OJ was basically the Kanye West of the 80s. He even hung out with the Kardashians! He was one of those anti-Black, pro-Reagan, Black Republican type celebrities.

This is not about OJ. At all.

It's entirely possible to show empathy for the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, dislike OJ and suspect his guilt, and be against systemic racism, all at the same time.

The advent of smartphones and body worn police cameras has changed white folks' perception of how often the police lie, brutalize Black people, and plant evidence. It hasn't changed Black people's opinions, because we already knew the truth. We didn't need smartphones. We got the Augmented Reality interactive experience.

You have to understand that at the time of the OJ trial, most of the United States still believed that Black folk were making all of the stories of police brutality up.

With George Floyd, the world witnessed just one police officer cruelly asphyxiate one Black man in cold blood. The star witness in the OJ trial, the cop that found most of the evidence, was a racist that boasted about LA cops strangling about a dozen Black men to death.

"We stopped the choke because a bunch of [N-words] have a bunch of these organizations in the south end, and because all [N-words] are choked out and killed -- twelve in ten years. Really is extraordinary, isn't it?"

And he bragged that he's better than most cops because he has the "courage" to just kill suspects he doesn't like by shooting them in the back, and shooting to kill, not just to stop, and working with a partner to cover up the murder.

And he talked about a particular suspect that he plans to kill if he is ever alone with that person. That would be premeditated murder.

This "highly decorated cop" also bragged about planting evidence against Black people to secure guilty verdicts in the past.

When OJ was arrested, a sample of blood was drawn from him, to compare DNA against crime scene samples. Let's say they withdrew X units of blood. Makes sense.

But instead of that blood being taken from where it was drawn from OJ, directly to the lab, that blood was taken *to the crime scene* by the same racist officer that has admitted to planting evidence in the past.

When the blood eventually did show up at the lab, some of it was "missing." Only Y units showed up at the lab. Y < X.

After the blood took this little detour, a bunch of OJ's blood was found at the scene.

But the LAPD's own blood splatter expert testified that this blood was placed there *after the crime*, and was almost certainly blood *from a medical collection tube*.

Because it did not spatter like real normal blood would have, it didn't separate, and because the blood contained the chemical anti-coagulant found at the bottom of blood sample tubes.

When that star witness police officer was asked point blank if he had planted the evidence, he invoked the 5th amendment.

For folks outside the US: The 5th amendment is invoked when a person feels that saying anything further could incriminate themselves.

Instead of saying, "No, I did not plant evidence at the OJ Simpson crime scene," he said, "I'm not answering any more questions, because I might incriminate myself."

That star witness was also caught lying under oath during the OJ trial, committing perjury. Specifically, he lied about his racism.

Most people that are convinced that OJ did it, believe that based on evidence found by this one police officer. It really comes down to if you believe that a cop that has admitted to planting evidence in the past, is caught lying under oath during this trial, and pleads the 5th rather than saying "I did not plant evidence here again," could have planted evidence.

It was a referendum on the fairness of Los Angeles policing.

Many Black people's views on OJ:

* He probably did it
* Had motive and opportunity
* It's often the husband
* OJ is a bad person anyway
* I don't want a murderer to go free. I want people to see how evil LA policing is.
* Johnny Cochran exposed what we've been saying all along
* OJ may have killed 2 innocent people, but cops kill dozens of innocent Black people
* Cops lie in court. They plant false evidence.
* I like Johnny Cochran!

If OJ was the Kanye of the '80s, then Johnny Cochran was the Ben Crump of the '90s.

Only a fantastically racist system could get a conviction under the circumstances of the OJ trial, with the defense that Johnny Cochran put together. Cochran proved that yes, the system is racist, but with enough money and a smart enough lawyer, that racism could be exposed.

If OJ was convicted, that would be incredibly demoralizing for Black folk. It would show that justice just does not apply for Black folk.

Because of racism, Johnny Cochran's accomplishment of bringing all of this racism to light was reduced to the jury being gullible, and him being a fast-talking minstrel. All of the work uncovering this corruption was reduced to "If the glove don't fit, you must acquit!"

In the wake of the disaster that was the failure to get a conviction, the government proposed all types of changes. None of the changes involved ridding the police force of remaining cops like the one that tanked this case.

Most of the world was not ready to even begin to understand why Black folk celebrated the OJ verdict.

Now that the world has seen George Floyd, and understands what Ben Crump does for the families of George Floyd and so many others, we might be able to understand.

Read the entire transcript of that star officer, in his own words:

https://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/bh/fuhrman.htm

Please don't try to talk to any Black people, (especially me!), about the OJ trial, if you have not read this transcript in its entirety.

Also, shout out to Laura Hart McKinny, screenwriter, professor, author, and most importantly, good human being.

She watched this racist, murdering cop lie on the stand after probably planting evidence, and said, "Nope. Not on my watch. I have receipts!"

That horrific transcript is from taped interviews that she conducted. If it weren't for her, the truth might not be known.

Warning: Audio of that cop talking during McKinny CNN interview:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7O1SBXRjOR8

@deilann @mekkaokereke Don't know how old you were when O.J. was found innocent, but that EXACT question was on the lips of even white progressives when the verdict was announced. The public was positive of O.J.'s guilt and watching the trial proceedings was pretty much something for reality TV weirdos. The summaries we got on the news led us to believe first 4 stars of @mekkaokereke's referendum and no more. There wasn't a lot of searching for common ground.

@jonathanpeterson @mekkaokereke

i was young, but your response completely misses my point. i listened to radio coverage primarily, though, not TV.

firstly, that question could not have been on the lips of white progressives if there wasn't a lot of searching for common ground - searching for common ground is baked into it.

secondly, it's not about discussing it at the time although it could have been.

if you are holding two sets of facts that seem conflicting (Black folks celebrated the OJ verdict) and (OJ got away with murder) and your response is to not try to reach common ground, that's racist. because the potential answers to this conflict are either projecting some pretty racist shit on black people or your understanding of the full picture is lacking.

so, rather than trying to splain the OJ trial at Black folks, pointing out that you're confused and not asking a single Black person to speak for the community is the only reasonable approach

@jonathanpeterson @mekkaokereke

i was confused at the time and my response was to assume i was missing something.

a few years later, it came up in a political discussion between two family friends who were arguing while cooking. they were discussing it from a shared point of understanding despite one being Black and one white, so i admitted my lack of understanding and asked them how they saw the verdict.

and they broke it down for me.

when i'm not part of a demographic and i see that demographic's response to something (either as represented by the media or personally witnessed) differs from what seems to make sense i generally assume i'm missing something. because i usually am.

that's the nature of perspective. and it'd be really bigoted of me to think i know better or more.

@jonathanpeterson @mekkaokereke

Yes, I was aware. I'm not sure why you think that takes away from my point, rather than bolstering it.

@jonathanpeterson @mekkaokereke

Your argument keeps boiling down to "but people didn't have the information to understand why Black folks might have responded the way they did." Correct. I fully agree with that.

But that's also why the only non-racist response to the information "many Black folks celebrated the OJ verdict" is to assume they had good reason to do so and thus you must be missing something.

Because assuming what you know is the full story implies either "Black folks are stupid/uninformed" or "Black folks hate white folks so much they see a murderer getting away with it as something to celebrate."

Those are both pretty fucking racist.

@deilann @mekkaokereke Exactly. Which which is pretty much what the response was from most white folks and the national media at the time. Rodney King riots we understood. OJ, not so much. Partially because of coverage ignoring LA police history.

I'm the 58 year old child of white, southern, civil rights activists. I knew how racist the judicial system was in Mississippi, where I grew up. I assumed northeastern cities and the west coast were far better. I was very wrong.

@jonathanpeterson @mekkaokereke

you say "exactly" but nothing you've said demonstrates understanding.

your focus on making a case for white ignorance is making me incredibly uncomfortable at this point, especially in the context of this being a Black man's thread talking about the OJ trial

you keep implying that i don't know the extent of white ignorance at the time as if it matters

but it doesn't

there are situations where a discussion of white ignorance can make sense

this is not one of them.

@drahardja @mekkaokereke Yes, thank you. I was a senior in high school/freshman in college during all of this, and didn’t follow it closely because lawyer stuff/adult stuff/blah blah. Didn’t realize ANY of this was the real part of the story. Had NO IDEA the implications. I’ve learned so much from your threads the last couple weeks!

@rdillon76 @drahardja @mekkaokereke +1 to these thanks. I was familliar with Fuhrman via Rodney King, when he got involved in the OJ case (which BLEW my young mind at the time). I refused to press charges against my rapist in high school, because of how corrupt cops were. Yet it took until very recently for me to accept Abolition as the only option—because policing is THAT beyond repair. Holy shit. That transcript. I am sorry, and I thank you.

@drahardja @mekkaokereke in fact to be more specific, the implication in our media was "OJ got away with murder because rich people can afford tricky lawyers who will get them out of anything"

What happened in the intervening time was, my understanding went from "expensive lawyers are devious conniving pieces of shit" to "police will do a shit job and routinely get things wrong and expensive lawyers know how to call their bullshit" to "actually the cops are literally the bad guys"

@http_error_418 @drahardja @mekkaokereke I was a kid at the time and "rich people can afford tricky lawyers who will get them out of anything" was definitely what I learned from it. Zero faith in The Justice System :tm: because money buys "justice."

I still don't think that's _wrong_.

It took a whole lot longer to get to "actually the cops are literally the bad guys"

@Magess @drahardja @mekkaokereke oh definitely, and it's an issue that's gotten ten times worse in the UK of late with the systematic defunding of public defenders and the court system as a whole. It's not bad in quite the same way as the pretrial detention horror show in the States, but it's still really bad.

@BenAveling @drahardja @mekkaokereke i like this summary

@scottjenson @mekkaokereke support Black people and institutions with money

@klausfiend

Yep.

US media works hard to give the impression that US Black folk have a child-like and simplistic view complex systems like voting or criminal justice. It's presented as if Black folk have less knowledge about how things should work. "We lost the King verdict, so we should win this one to come out even!" Or Johnny said "If it don't fit, you must acquit!"

The reality is that necessity forces US Black folk to have a much more complete and accurate picture of these systems.

@klausfiend

I haven't presented any new evidence in this thread. Nothing that wasn't known to every single journalist covering crime and the OJ trial at the time that it was happening. All of them.

Any newspaper could have lead with the Fuhrman tapes, or the evidence tampering, or the other forms of racism.

But they didn't.

Derek Chauvin killed one person. LA cops laughed about killing over a dozen. 80s Black film and rap is filled with references to these intentional murders. No one cared.

@lispi314 @mekkaokereke

I could totally see my parents (The "Greatest" Generation) buying into the exceptionalist thesis.

But then, they also fought WWII, had 3 whole broadcast channels to choose from, & lived through the Eisenhower era & John Wayne, so the mainstream cultural narrative was much more thoroughly laundered than what we have today.