RACISM IN AMERICA

Racism in America
Sean E. Withers Sr.
Professor Sarah Louise
Devry University

Racism in America

Racism is just as much a part of America as baseball and apple pie. Racism has been around as long as the country. Unlike baseball and apple pie, racism is a part of the country’s history that many would like to put to rest. The events behind racism have left the country with a black eye. Many may suggest that the nation is no longer a victim of racism, but it is and racism is just as strong today as it was in the 1960’s. The only difference between today’s racism and the racism of the past is that it’s hidden better. There were three particular events over the last twenty years that suggest that racism is still a part of America’s DNA: the O.J. Simpson verdict, the James Byrd dragging death, and the slow response to Hurricane Katrina. The majority of the people wronged in these events were African Americans. The aftermath of Katrina did keep the media from covering another important anniversary in American racism: the ten year anniversary of the O.J. Simpson verdict. Almost everyone in America can say what they were doing when the O.J. Simpson verdict was read. The verdict left white America stunned and angry, and black America cheered and celebrated. Although O.J. was acquitted, the O.J. story exposed the hidden issue of race in America. What did the verdict mean? Frontline was an hour long program, but at the end of the program it was understood that the reaction to the verdict only scratched the surface of an even bigger problem going on in America (Doyle, 2005). Frontline produced a show about the O.J. verdict by Ofra Bikel called The O.J. Verdict. While the program gave a great synopsis of the case against O.J. and the behind the scenes view of the greatest legal team ever assembled, O.J.’s dream team, it wasn’t about the courtroom drama. New Yorker legal writer Jeffrey Tobin says, “The only reason that we will care about O.J. Simpson 10 years or 20 years after, is what it told us about race in this country. Who cares what O.J. Simpson thinks or does or says? It’s what the case represented.” The O.J. Simpson case was so tainted and so much evidence was altered, that even if he did do it he got away with murder because of the many mistakes the prosecution made. O.J. Simpson had money. O.J. spent more than $8 million dollars on his defense, the “dream team” of lawyers and special investigators who were able to put enough doubt into the jurors’ minds to win the unanimous not guilty verdict. If the majority of Americans had O.J.’s money, the jails would be half full. More than half of the population delivered a guilty verdict, three-quarters of them were white. Most had watched the trial on television and saw the same evidence that the jury saw. The blood and hair samples, the bloody glove found at O.J.’s house, were all evidence compiled by the prosecution against Mr. Simpson. The evidence would have probably convicted almost anyone else with a public defender. It is still not known what O.J. was doing at the time of the murders. He never presented an alibi. The prosecution apparently had so much evidence against O.J., so why wasn’t he convicted? The only possible conclusion to this mystery is that the jury believed the case was motivated by racial hatred. The police investigators were believed to have planted evidence on Mr. Simpson’s property. The police investigators had given a sufficient amount of suspicion, during the trial, that their investigation was tainted. This made it hard for the jury to render a guilty verdict. The tireless investigation of Mr. Simpson’s private investigators revealed to the court that Detective Mark Fuhrman had lied on the stand about using or saying the word “nigger” in the previous ten years. Simpson’s legal team, led by Johnnie Cochran, changed the focus of the jury three-quarters through the trial, effectively, from Mr. Simpson to Mr. Fuhrman, the man