Of course, OJ's crime (and I believe he DID commit the crime) was really just another one of those husband-shoots-wife-and-presumed lover-in-fit-of-jealousy things. The color of the perp and of the victims had nothing to do with it.
But the fact that the black community as a whole was so easy to convince that "racists" in the police force had "framed" poor OJ does not prove that blacks expect to "get away with murder," but rather the opposite.
Crime statistics show that blacks are more likely than whites to be stopped for searches; that they are more likely to be arrested and convicted than whites charged with the same crimes; that, on average, they receive longer terms than whites convicted of the same crimes; and, if the crime is murder, they are more likely to get the death penalty than white murderers. And the last time I looked, it was still true that blacks who killed whites tended to get harsher sentences, on average, than whites who killed blacks.
Under the circumstances, one can understand why it is easy to whip up paranoia in the black community, to convince many blacks that this black criminal or that one is merely the victim of racial discrimination, even when that is demonstrably not true, as in the OJ case. It's easy because in many cases it has been true. |
