GUEST COLUMN: A Different World

Not Guilty. Immediately after the verdict of the "trial of the century" was read by Deirdre Robertson, the law clerk to Judge Lance Ito, CBS news conducted a poll, later published in The New York Times, concluding that "six in ten whites believed the wrong verdict was reached, while nine in ten blacks said the jury had come to the right verdict." On Wednesday Oct. 4, 1995 the front pages of newspapers all across the country were adorned with elated African American faces alongside shocked and dejected white faces, all reacting to the controversial ruling. Immediately and entirely, the country became racially divided. As illustrated by the CBS poll, Americans' reactions were, much more often than not, contingent on their race as opposed to any of their other characteristics such as class or education. I spent many hours tossing and turning in bed that night trying to figure out how a nation that had watched the same proceedings, the same evidence, the same arguments, and the same testimony could feel so differently about the outcome? There seemed to be a fundamental difference in the way that African Americans and whites interpreted the evidence. It was as if African Americans were given one pair of glasses and whites another, each of them presenting juxtaposed and completely irreconcilable versions of the same story. The problem is one of perspective. For many years, American political scientists have been warning us that African Americans and whites view the world increasingly differently. In some cases, these differences in perspective involve even the most fundamental systems of our government. One example is the serious mistrust of both law enforcement and judicial systems by some of the black community. Growing up in a suburban neighborhood, I was taught to trust and respect the police, whereas it is easily conceivable that an African American child growing up in the inner city would mistrust, if not fear them. As a result of these experiences, I reacted much differently to the Furhman tapes than did most African Americans. While I was disgusted by his actions, I was convinced that Furhman was one of a minute and despicable minority of policemen who acted as such, while a large majority of African Americans saw it as business as usual within the precinct. For this same reason, while I found the defense's proposed scenarios of police-planted evidence preposterous, for all too many African Americans, it is a reality. The most disturbing consequence of this problem is that it directly challenges our concept of an American nation. Many prominent political scientists have described nationality as an identity generated by a group of people all sharing common experiences. The discrepancy between African American and white perspectives threatens to destroy the common experiences necessary for the cohesion of a nationality. If these two groups cannot reconcile their differences in agreement of such fundamental American institutions as justice and law enforcement, then we are in for an uncertain and dangerous future. Although it is easy, and often tempting, for me to dismiss the African American attitude as paranoid and fanatical, the fact of the matter is that I've never viewed the world from their perspective. I have no idea what the world looks like from behind their glasses. However, regardless of how justified or unjustified either perspective is, it is enormously important that we work as a country, and on a smaller scale, as a community to draw these perspectives closer together. Maybe then future cases like the O.J. Simpson trial can be judged without such dramatic differences in perspective. If nothing else, this case must give us all new incentive to inspire conversation to "break down the walls" between "us and them." Unfortunately, history has proven time and time again that old habits die hard.

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