Roughly two years apart, so the King incident was still an open wound for a lot of people. And the riots were still a frequent topic of conversation, and the OJ thing just exacerbated everything.
I was only like 12 myself but it was impossible to avoid. It was all over TV, everybody's parents were hooked on the trial coverage, shows like Roseanne were making jokes about it, it was all over the magazines at the grocery store and the 7-11... even if you weren't trying to pay attention it was pretty hard to ignore. Even the kids at school all had opinions; more so the black kids than the white kids. Suddenly these 10-12 year old kids were all legal experts who would lecture you at length about how "OJ couldn't possibly be guilty" because "My Dad says all cops frame black people" and "It's all part of the White Conspiracy, they couldn't take down Michael Jackson so they're gonna try and take OJ away from us." I'm dead serious. You couldn't make this sh*t up if you tried.
Not exclusively the black kids, though, just mostly. Most of the white kids either didn't give a sh*t, or only really cared at all because their parents were always talking about it, and like most sane people they felt like he was guilty. But I remember vividly I was at recess the day the verdict came in, one of the (white) kids heard it on the radio or something and started running through the playground yelling "OJ's going home! They said 'Not Guilty'! He's free!" And then the guidance counselor (who was also the recess monitor) pulled him aside in front of everyone on the playground, looked him in the eye and very sternly said loud enough for everyone around to hear, "What the hell is wrong with you? The guy killed two people and got away with it. This isn't a joke. Nobody should be happy about this. It's not a goddamn joke. You're happy that he got away with murder? You ought'a be ashamed of yourself." That kid was the biggest loudmouth in school, and that was the first and last time I ever saw him speechless; he looked like he wanted to crawl in a hole and disappear.
That was one of the first times I remember a criminal openly playing the race card to get out of taking responsibility for something they very obviously did, but nowadays it's become standard operating procedure. In hindsight, it should have been very easy to predict. It was just that back then, people kind of assumed that OJ's money got him off the hook. "It wasn't JUST because he said the cops were racist, that wouldn't be enough to make people think he didn't kill those people."
But yeah, turns out that really IS all you need to say to flip the script and get all the heat off of you. You can be a rapist, a terrorist, a pedophile or a murderer. But if you say "THAT other guy's a racist, though," all your sins are forgiven.
You can even jam a loaded gun into a pregnant woman's stomach and threaten to pull the trigger during a drug-fueled home invasion, and people will spin a "Cops Are Racist" narrative and build statues in your honor if you die under regrettable circumstances. Just ask ol' Floyd. I bet the woman he tried to shoot (and her kid, however old they are now) don't think he's a martyr or a hero or a "pillar of his community"; but oddly enough, nobody ever asked them what THEY think. Shocking.
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