O j simpson interracial relationships

Among the legions of devotees of the O. Simpson trial in the United States, some of the most devoted are the five classes of sophomores I teach at an inner-city high school in Jersey City. For my students, the Simpson trial is something of an obsession, a sentiment that is, I concede, encouraged by this self-confessed O. This fascination is not simply prurient or voyeuristic though there is no doubt some of that ; the trial has been a terrific teaching tool that has helped to illuminate aspects of the American history curriculum I teach.

But as OJ Simpson walks free, does he still stir a meaningful debate about race? OJ Simpson walked out of prison on Sunday a free man in a country which on the surface seems ready to treat him as a subject for macabre comedy rather than psychodrama. He petitioned for books for the library, he coached a softball team, he never got in trouble. The cable news countdown to the release has a theatrical air closer to soap opera than breaking news, with speculation about how many cookies Simpson ate during nine years inside. The United States, after all, has moved on, though not necessarily forwards. A black man occupied the Oval Office for eight years and the Los Angeles police department is no longer the overtly bigoted institution which turned LA into a racial cauldron and prompted a mostly African American jury to acquit Simpson of murder in in apparent payback for the Rodney King verdict. In this climate the year-old former athlete who emerges from jail may seem more a pop culture phenomenon — a TV ratings machine — than source of actual debate about race.

An emotionally charged and highly personal courtroom battle erupted today between a black prosecutor and a black defense lawyer in the O. Simpson trial, over whether the jury should be allowed to hear a racial epithet. The unusually heated exchange came as defense lawyers sought a ruling allowing them to introduce evidence during the trial that Mark Fuhrman, a detective who was one of the first investigators at the crime scene, has racist tendencies. They want to cite several instances in which Detective Fuhrman is said to have used the word "nigger.

By John Semley April 27, Closeup casual view of San Francisco 49ers O. In her book Playing the Race Card , scholar Linda Williams, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, examined the Simpson trial as a contemporary iteration of American racial melodrama. From the moment Simpson was formally charged with murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman, the case immediately fit itself to archetypes of the barbarous black man attacking the white woman, she argues. He was constantly trying to erase, or transcend, his race.