Picking Up The Pieces

It will be the question of our generation. Not, "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" but, "Where were you when the verdict came in?"

And you won't need to ask what verdict.

On Tuesday afternoon, clocks stopped, walkmans whirred and enclaves of people shushed each other as we waited those 10 minutes for the conclusion of the most publicized trial in history. We all watched--150 million of us, analysts said--as the jury handed down a double "not guilty" verdict and as Orenthal James Simpson walked free.

Once it was over, regardless of our opinions, we needed closure. The television stations helped, with their broadcast of O.J.'s victory lap back to Brentwood in the white van--eerily reminiscent of the Bronco that began it all.

So did the radio news stations, with their hours of analysis and discussion that eventually, unfortunately, faded into blather. And the hubbub hadn't died by morning, when the New York Times ran 10 separate stories on the verdict and the Boston Globe devoted an entire pullout section to it, or by yesterday, when the jurors' explanations dominated front pages across the country.

But after we have listened to more talk shows than we could stomach, have read enough articles to cross our eyes and have seen enough Los Angeles freeways for a lifetime, one question remains: what do we make of it all?

As with Kennedy's assassination, the verdict will go down in the history books as a turning point. But while the president's death united this country in mourning, the jury's verdict splits us by alerting us to deep racial rifts in our society.

Of course, the trial will be remembered for other things: its mockery of the legal system, its saturation of the media, its message that money can buy you justice, its shirking of the domestic violence issue yet again.

But a discussion of what will be remembered about the trial would be pathetically incomplete without a serious consideration of race. Throughout the trial, polls consistently showed that a majority of whites believed Simpson was guilty, while a comparable majority of blacks believed he was innocent. More critically, nine of 12 people on the jury were black. This racial split of opinion is an indication of much more than one man's guilt or innocence.

Speculation runs rampant on why so much depended on race: was it that blacks have more distrust of the police than their white counterparts because they have been badly treated by officers in the past? Was it that blacks wanted to stand by one of the few black heroes in American society? Was it that they had too much of a reasonable doubt? Or none of the above?

This time, there were no riots, but the case rent the fabric of race relations in America as much as if angry people had taken to the streets. How else to explain the scenes, witnessed over and over again in bars, offices and homes across the country, of blacks yelling for joy at the verdict and whites shaking their heads? Now, when a white person passes a black person on the street, race will be more at the front of their minds; when lawyers choose juries, they will weigh white and black even more carefully. For advocates of a race-blind society, this case was a tragedy.

But there could be hope: if the verdict allows whites and blacks to talk about race more candidly, it will be a blessing. If blacks and whites can discuss race openly and honestly in public and private without fearing they will offend someone else with well-intentioned questions, that at least will be a victory out of a trial that had very few.

If not, the Simpson trial will likely go down in the history books under "African-American Mistrust of the Police in the 1990s," just above the Rodney King beating and just below the larger heading of polarized race relations in the 1990s. To prevent such a record from being written, we must take the trial and its trappings as a call to questioning: not just "Where were you on Oct. 3, 1995, at 1 p.m.," but "Where can we go from here?"

Sarah J. Schaffer's column appears on alternate Fridays.