The Young Turks

Here we go again. OJ Simpson was arrested on Sunday morning in Las Vegas on robbery, assault, burglary and conspiracy charges, according to police.  According to entertainment website TMZ.com, Simpson led a group of armed men in to a hotel room full of sports memorabilia collectors that knew OJ.  They had several of his belongings from the past and OJ claims that he simply wanted back what was rightfully his.  One of the men even recorded the exchange with an audio recorder, which captured the ex-NFL star yelling profanities while continuously asking the men if they thought they could steal his "stuff" and sell it.

Ok, time for the Black Americans to get in their corner and the White Americans to get in theirs, and have another 13-year battle over whether or not OJ is the anti-Christ.  Whenever the name OJ Simpson is mentioned, it becomes almost mandatory for White folks to start talking about decapitation, while Black folks to refer to Mark Fuhrman and a tainted crime scene.

Saying OJ's name three times while staring at a mirror will instantly make all of the suppressed racial tension that still exists in this country to resurface.  It will work on you, try it tonight!  If you're White, all of a sudden, you'll think that your Black co-worker must have gotten the job because of affirmative action since he came from a bad neighborhood, and then you'll remember your favorite pen has been missing for a couple of days.  Check your pockets and count your money.  If you're Black, you'll...well, you'll be just fine, you will see things just as crystal clear as you always have about the rampant racism instituted, facilitated, and condoned by the government in America. (Sorry, I've already said his name, I'm powerless.)

Its ok to admit it, we've come a long way in this country from the days of segregated water fountains and unfavorable seating arrangements on buses, but when a murder occurs involving a Black and White person, each race tends to blindly take the side of Team Black and Team White for an argument that convinces no one of anything.

The truth is that the friends and family of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown can dislike Simpson and never think of anything else except for finding a way to get payback.  For everyone else in the country to associate their deaths as something that personally made their lives worse is bordering on insanity.  These people have no emotional ties to these families or victims; it's based in subliminal thinking that Team Black got an unfair victory over Team White while the justice system let it happen.  Adding insult to injury and pushing the racial divide even wider was the sight of almost every Black person celebrating the verdict.  Black people won the biggest upset of the century on the road among a hostile crowd and danced in their faces.

All of a sudden, it was thought that Black folks loved to see a White woman get her head damn near chopped off.  In reality, there was no reveling in the Black community that the murders took place and that there were two less White people in the world.  Black people wanted the other side to finally feel what it was like to see your country's justice system blatantly screw your entire race over with a murder acquittal that seemed so open and shut.  They've felt this pain for most of the century, headlined by the murder of Emmitt Till in Mississippi in 1955.  These acquitted murderers that arguably committed a more heinous killing than OJ Simpson was accused of, even openly admitted to the crime 1 year later, much like Simpson did in his book this year, outlining how he did it if he had done it.

Now that OJ has had his 236th lapse of memory that he is the poster child for racial tension and payback for a majority of the country and he rushes a hotel room with accomplices, the discussion goes far away from this arrest and alleged crime, and on to beheadings and an arranged crime scene.

Look forward to seeing Fred Goldman on TV and in interviews about this crime that has absolutely nothing to do with him or his tragically murdered son.  This is going to be like talking to Eddie Murphy about the struggles Dave Chappelle went through with his show.  Sure, Murphy and Chappelle were in a movie together 11 years ago, but what does he have to do with Chappelle's show?

It's because we really don't care about the victims of this hotel robbery, and we don't care that they had guns pointed at their faces and were shoved around the room.  Hell, we don't even care about the group of men that accompanied OJ into the room who were holding the guns that aided the crime.  Justice for this crime is not what's on the minds of opponents to OJ Simpson.  The sooner everyone admits that the obsession over this is based upon race and revenge for the system working their way or not working their way, the sooner we'll be able to honestly hear what's being said.  This issue is black and white, literally.