Can racial solidarity aid pain and suffering? (op-ed)
Can racial solidarity aid pain and suffering?
For
example, supermodel Beverly Johnson said her reluctance to come forward against
Bill Cosby was tied to her allegiance to African Americans, but I’ll get back
to Cosby.
Days
before the 2016 TV series The People v. O.J. Simpson aired, actor Courtney B. Vance
(Johnnie Cochran) recalled his reaction to the 1995 Simpson verdict in an
interview. Vance and actor Tony Goldwyn
took a break from filming to watch the News.
When it was announced Simpson was not guilty of murder, Vance said he
screamed “Yes!” while Goldwyn screamed “No!”
The two men, who were friendly, were astonished by the other’s reaction
and wondered “what the great divide was about.”
Vance
justified his glee, “I wasn’t cheering for O.J.
It wasn’t about O.J. at all (That also implied, it wasn’t about the
murder victims or the pain and suffering of their families.) We grew up with
Black History (He mentioned Emmett Till.) There was no justice, there was no
recourse for African Americans for centuries.
And that’s what African Americans were cheering about.”
Really?
When
the interviewer asked Vance about Simpson’s guilt or innocence Vance offered no
opinion. If Vance believed Simpson was
innocent, there’s no need to justify his reaction with a historical argument. But the historical rage was more recent than
Emmett Till. A few years before the
Simpson verdict, four white police officers were acquitted for beating black
motorist Rodney King. This sparked the
1992 LA riots. The consensus in black
America was that four white police officers beat the system (like always), and
the lingering rage at that specific injustice transferred into jubilation for a
black man (O.J. Simpson) found not guilty for the murder of two white
people. The Simpson verdict was viewed
as a “black victory” over a historically unjust system without any regard for
those still mourning the deceased.
Now,
in between the Rodney King and O.J. Simpson verdicts was the trial of Damian
Williams and Henry Watson. Williams and
Watson were two of the four black men charged with beating white truck driver
Reginald Denny during the LA riots.
The
Denny beating was captured on film like the Rodney King beating, and just like
the King recording revealed blatant police brutality the Denny footage revealed
clear attempts to murder. There was no
racial solidarity behind the violence inflicted on Denny but it slowly built up
behind the legal defense of Williams and Watson. The lawyers argued Williams and Watson were
victims of poverty and racism, and Williams and Watson were being used as
scapegoats for the LA riots. The “poverty” defense led to light sentences
for the defendants. Of course, Williams
and Watson’s families cheered in the courtroom, whites questioned if justice
was served, and this leniency for stomping and bricking a white man nearly to
death was viewed as a “black victory”.
Williams
was released from prison early for good behavior after four years of a ten-year
sentence, and in 2003 he was sentenced to life in prison for a murder he
committed in 2000. (I wonder if the
family of this murder victim was devastated by the irony that “poverty” excused
Williams from attempted murder and good behavior led to the actual deed.)
Recently,
Bill Cosby was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault
stemming from drugging and molesting a woman, and his publicist tried to round
up racial solidarity against an unjust system regardless of the pain and
suffering of Cosby’s accusers.
The publicist
said Cosby’s trial became a “public lynching”.
When asked if all 60 women who accused Cosby of sexual assault were
lying the publicist replied, “Since when are all people honest? Since when are all women honest. We can take a look at Emmett Till, for
example. Not all people are honest.”
This
type of intellectual dishonesty is the price we pay for not getting along.
First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 5/2/18
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