Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Floyd and OJ: One victim, one perpetrator

The trial for murder of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin will undoubtedly fill the cable news airwaves for the next several weeks. It started over the last weeks with coverage of the minutiae of jury selection. We've seen nothing like this since the OJ Simpson double homicide trial, which speaks of course, to what's at stake. Chauvin, after all, killed George Floyd, and it was witnessed by millions thanks to cellphone cameras. He slowly choked the black man to death under his knee for a reported 8 minutes and 46 seconds, which it now turns out was actually 9 minutes and 29 seconds. So what does the murder of George Floyd, a drug-using nobody made into a tragic celebrity by thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters last summer, and OJ Simpson, a beloved, superstar athlete and wealthy celebrity who disgraced himself, have in common if anything at all? (I mean apart from the over-the-top news media coverage.) OJ and Floyd could not be more opposite in almost every respect, except that they are both African-American men. In OJ's case the focus was on the alleged murderer, in Floyd's case it's on the victim. In OJ's case he murdered his white ex-wife and her friend, and in Floyd's case he was the unfortunate black victim of white police brutality. And yet there is something that undeniably connects OJ and Floyd that relates to what's at stake. Both trials have turned into a highly political cause celebre of the African American community, and in exactly the opposite way. Getting OJ off, irrespective of whether he was innocent or guilty, became the point. They saw the OJ trial as retribution for the brutal beating by the LAPD cops, also captured on film, of motorist Rodney King. The cops in that case got off, so for many African -Americans, getting OJ off was needed to balance the scales of justice. It had nothing to do with what the preponderance of evidence actually showed or didn't show. For Georges Floyd only a conviction (for 1st or 2nd degree murder) will balance the scales, for all the black men and women who were murdered by white police and got away with it. Both trials symbolize the injustice done to the black community by whites in power. So, where this Venn diagram of two trials overlaps is that in both cases it's really the police  and a system of white privilege that's on trial. OJs A-team of high priced defense attorneys managed to cast the LAPD investigators as both inept and racist, especially lead investigator Mark Furman. For George Floyd, the tactic is essentially the same, prosecutors will show that Chauvin went beyond his training, was excessively and unnecessarily forceful, and behaved with wanton disregard for the life of Floyd, with the implication that he was motivated by racism. When you consider the two trials together, there is a larger socio-political message at play. OJ symbolized something exceptional that was extremely important to the African-American community. He was a  black man with the extraordinary personal power and means to be able to game the system, just like whites of privilege have done for hundreds of years at the expense of blacks. OJ's ability to get away with his crime, a sort of lynching in reverse, demonstrated that a black person could turn a corrupt system to his advantage. In a way, if he could get away with murder, it showed that blacks had arrived, in the form of injustice for the perpetrator. Floyd's importance is that he symbolizes exactly the opposite, he is utterly unexceptional, without personal means or power, and in fact suffered from the failings of many black men. Where OJ represented what his community could aspire to, Floyd represents the condition that many black men are struggling to leave behind. While OJ, using his wealth and fame, carried the hopes of the community on his back, Floyd's fate, whether or not his death will be just another racial tragedy, has become a rallying point for the black community. And so, almost 30 years after the OJ trial, the Chauvin trial is another socio-political watershed for the black community. OJ's acquittal showed that a black man had arrived in America, and depending on the outcome of the Chauvin trial, it may or may not demonstrate, that the African-American community as a whole has finally arrived in the form of justice for the victim, which in America is a heavier lift than injustice for the perpetrator.

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