MISSOURI COMMENTARY: ATTITUDES TRANSCEND POWER OF LAW

I am white. Like most other whites, I thought O.J. Simpson was guilty. Had I and my white friends been on the jury, we would have found Simpson guilty -- perhaps in a record time of three or four hours. But we weren't on the jury. The 12 Californians (nine blacks, one Hispanic and two whites) who heard the case for nine months found one of two things. Either they found that the prosecution failed to achieve its burden of proof (beyond a reasonable doubt) or they found that whatever the measure of proof against Simpson, it was time to punish the racist-infested Los Angeles Police Department. Maybe it was a bit of both.

No doubt the police and the lab technicians bungled the case. The medical examiners were called too late; the blood was mishandled; the matching glove grew less compelling as the history of Mark Fuhrman was revealed. If one were predisposed to find reasonable doubt or if one were predisposed to send a message about the LAPD, then there were enough blunders and gaps in the prosecution's case to satisfy such predispositions.

The cover of Time magazine showed a picture of Simpson with the title "O.J. and Race -- Will The Verdict Split Americans?" America is already split. It can't be split much more. The races are separate and apart in mind and body. All of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s -- voting rights, housing, job opportunity, public accommodations -- hasn't fundamentally changed the distinct separateness of black and white America.

Yes, blacks have greater access to the white world, but even that access has a high degree of separateness within it. When black city kids are bused to white suburban school districts, the black kids associate with other blacks. When classes are over, the black students are returned to their racial isolation and their separate lives. At the college and university level, African American students associate primarily with each other. Integration is nominal. Cornell University, for example, provides a dormitory where black students are free to self-segregate.

First and foremost, there is the overriding question of the relationship of black citizens to the police. We should remember that Los Angeles may be the starkest case of a black community embittered about and estranged from law enforcement, but it is by no means the only example.

Recall the 1991 incident when a distinguished prize-winning professor of literature at Washington University, Gerald Early, who is black, was stopped and questioned by Frontenac police in suburban St. Louis while his wife and children were inside a shopping center. The officers were called because it was "suspicious" for a black man to be waiting outside that particular mall. Since he was black, shopkeepers thought he was "casing the joint." In commenting on his humiliation, Professor Early wrote, "It is the odd yet plain burden of most blacks in America that they must carry the weight of their own fears and frenzies and panic-stricken flights as well as the weight of the same fears, frenzies and panic-stricken flights of whites."

The Simpson case didn't create racial division; it merely portrayed it. Johnnie Cochran played the race card because it was already in the deck, ready to be dealt. With or without Mark Fuhrman, the Simpson trial was destined to be remembered by a different caption. No longer would it be the People vs. O.J. Simpson. Rather it became O.J. Simpson vs. the Los Angeles Police Department.

Blacks and whites see things with different eyes. They see things from different backgrounds. They see things with different experiences.

Race consciousness remains deeply ingrained in the American people. It is a two-way street. The suspicion or antagonism of many whites against blacks is mirrored by equal suspicion and antagonism of many blacks against whites.

Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and the other African American leaders of the 1960s felt that this antagonism could be ameliorated by legislation. They believed that laws mandating equality would, in a generation, be effective in changing personal attitudes as well. It is thirty years later and attitudes haven't changed all that much.

As we see pictures of African Americans cheering and whites cringing at the announcement of the Simpson verdict, we realize that polarized attitudes are more powerful than laws. We realize how black America viewed the acquittal of O.J. as a victory for the black race. We realize how separate America is now and will most likely remain into the future.

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator from Missouri.