The Michael Eric Dyson Reader

by Michael Eric Dyson

  Nicole’s martyrdom can certainly aid other victims of domestic abuse. Her martyrdom might also help restore her family to wholeness. The Browns’ helplessness and willed ignorance about Nicole’s abuse—their neglect of her living body, bought in part by O.J.’s generous patronage—helped to make her a symbol of domestic violence. Her bloodied body obviously gave the Browns the energy they needed to speak up, to act. Martyrdom lifts a person’s life beyond her body. Her suffering supports those who draw strength from her life’s purpose—even if that purpose is only fully realized after death. The Browns must now join with others who identify, beyond blood ties or biology, with the fight against domestic violence to which Nicole’s life and martyred body have become connected. Without the Browns’ acknowledgment of complicity in Nicole’s suffering, her martyred body becomes an empty tablet on which her family’s guilt is written.

  As serious as the Browns’ failure was, Simpson’s was by far the greater sin. His beating of Nicole marked a vile sexual obsession. Simpson apparently believed he owned Nicole. She was a trophy. She was a commodity O.J. bought with his considerable earnings. Such logic might suggest that Nicole was interchangeable with most of the other women to whom Simpson was attracted. Like her, they had blonde hair and big breasts.

  But sexual obsession is not offset by potential—by what one might have or get in the future to replace what one lost or can’t have. This makes it difficult to defend Simpson by saying that he didn’t have to kill Nicole because he could have had any woman he wanted. Sexual obsession can never be satisfied. The obsessor fixes on the object of desire as a way of realizing his own desire. Hence, sexual obsession is a disguised form of narcissism. It ultimately refers back to itself. Such self-reference contains the seed of the obsessor’s dissatisfaction. By projecting his desire onto an erotic interest, the obsessor surrenders the means of achieving fulfillment to a force outside himself. Hence, the obsessor employs various forms of control, including seduction and violence, to bring the erotic interest in line with his wishes.

  The obsessor ultimately requires the collapse of the erotic interest into himself. This feat is rarely possible, and certainly not desirable, at least not from the erotic interest’s point of view. It means that the erotic interest will have to surrender her self and identity completely to the obsessor. In the obsessor’s eye, to be rejected by the erotic interest is to be rejected by himself. This is a narcissist’s nightmare. Such rejection is perceived as a form of self-mutilation. Or, more painfully, it is a form of self-denial. Nicole’s final rejection of the sickness of her own, and O.J.’s, obsession a month before she died was the doorway to her freedom and her martyrdom. If the same act of independence led to her liberty and her death, it suggests something of the lethal obsession that millions of women live with and die from.

  A similarly lethal obsession—compounded by an even more sinister and convoluted history—shapes the course of race in this country. The responses to the verdicts were misrepresented in the media as an avalanche of emotion determined exclusively by color. Such simple scribing must never be trusted. Nevertheless, the responses showed just how sick and separate race makes us. O.J.—the figure, the trial, the spectacle, the aftermath—was a racequake. It crumbled racial platitudes. It revealed the fault lines of bias, bigotry, and blindness that trace beneath our social existence. The trial has at least forced us to talk about race. Even if we speak defensively and with giant chips on our shoulders. Race remains our nation’s malevolent obsession. Race is the source of our harmony or disfavor with one another. Black and white responses to O.J. prove how different historical experiences determine what we see and color what we believe about race.

  For instance, even as many blacks defended O.J., they knew he had never been one of black America’s favorite sons. He didn’t remember his roots when his fame and fortune carried him long beyond their influence. (Or, as a black woman wrote to me, “O.J. didn’t know he had roots until they started digging.”) On the surface, the black defense of Simpson can be positively interpreted. It can be viewed as the refusal of blacks to play the race authenticity game, which, in this instance, amounts to the belief that only “real” blacks deserve support when racial difficulties arise. But black responses to O.J. can also be read less charitably. They can be seen as the automatic embrace of a fallen figure simply because he is black. If you buy this line of reasoning, Simpson has a double advantage. He is eligible for insurance against the liability of racism, and he is fully covered for all claims made against him by whites, including a charge of murder. But all of these readings are too narrow. Black responses to Simpson must be viewed in light of the role race and racism have played in our nation’s history. Race has been the most cruelly dominant force in the lives of black Americans. Racism exists in its own poisoned and protected world of misinformation and ignorance. Its fires of destruction are stoked by stereotype and crude mythology.

  That history may help explain black support for figures like O.J. and Clarence Thomas, who have denied the lingering impact of race. Many black folk know that, in the long run, such figures remain trapped by race. Still, it is unprincipled for blacks like Thomas and Simpson to appeal to race in their defense when they opposed such appeals by other blacks in trouble. Many blacks support such figures because they think they discern, even in their exploitative behavior, a desperation, a possible seed of recognition, a begrudging concession even, that race does make a difference.

  The ugly irony is that such figures get into a position to do even more harm to blacks because of the black help they receive. (Look at Thomas’s judicial opinions against affirmative action and historically black colleges and universities.) For many whites, the example of race exploiters symbolizes how black Americans use race in bad faith. The problem is many whites see this only when their interests are being undermined. Simpson’s offense—allowing race to be used on his behalf—is as obvious to many whites as Thomas’s injury to blacks is obscured. By contrast, Thomas looks just fine to many whites. His beliefs and judicial opinions protect conservative white interests. But Thomas’s cry of “high-tech lynching” when he was seeking confirmation to the Supreme Court choked off critical discussion of his desperate dishonesty. Thomas’s comment was a callous, calculated attempt to win Senate votes and public sympathy by using race in a fashion he had claimed was unjust. Thomas’s dishonest behavior—gaining privilege because of his blackness only to unfairly deny the same privilege to other blacks highlights the absurdity of race for black Americans.

  A small sense of the absurdity of race came crashing down on many whites when the not-guilty verdicts were delivered. A surreal world prevailed. Clocks melted. Time bent. Cows flew over the moon. The chronology of race was forever split: Before Simpson and After Simpson. October 3, 1995, became a marker of tragedy. For many whites, it is a day that will live in the same sort of infamy that Roosevelt predicted for the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. It is hard to adequately describe the bewilderment many blacks felt at white rage over the verdicts. As difficult, perhaps, as it is for whites to understand how so many blacks could be deliriously gleeful at Simpson’s acquittal. For perhaps the first time, the wide gulf between legality and morality became real to many whites. At least real in a way that most blacks could see whites cared about. That gulf is one blacks have bitterly protested for years, with only moderate support from most whites. The day of the verdicts, many white people were forced to think of themselves as a group—one denied special privilege rather than guaranteed it—for the first time. As a group, these whites tasted the dread, common to blacks, that follows the absolute rejection of the faith one has placed in a judicial ruling’s power to bring justice. The fact that the decision officially took four hours only heaped insult on the injured souls of white folk.

  In reality, however, that decision was much longer in the making. That jury decision was set in motion the first time an American citizen, acting on behalf of the state and supported by public sentiment, made a legal judgme
nt about a human being where an interpretation of the facts was colored by a consideration of race. The O.J. verdicts are an outgrowth of the system started in that moment. They are, too, a painful exposure of, and a stinging rebuke to, the unjust operation of the judicial system for blacks throughout the history of our nation.

  One might conclude from what I’ve just said that I believe the jury’s decision was a rightful thumb in the justice system’s eye. That it was sweet black revenge for white wrongdoing. I don’t. Nor do I believe that that’s the best way to read the jury’s verdict. The confusion surrounding the verdicts, indeed the entire trial, reflects the confusion about the meanings of race in our culture. As far as I can see, race is being used in at least three different ways to explain the trial, especially the meaning of the verdicts. But since we haven’t taken the time to figure them out, we end up collapsing them into one another in ways that are confusing and harmful. That confusion exaggerates the differences between blacks and whites. It also masks differences within black and white communities, especially where class privilege and gender are concerned.

  The three uses of race I have in mind are race as context, race as subtext, and race as pretext. Race as context helps us to understand the facts of race and racism in our society. Race as a subtext helps us to understand the forms of race and racism in our culture. And race as a pretext helps us to understand the function of race and racism in America. Of course, these categories are not absolute. They are impure and flexible. They often bleed into one another. But if we’re aware such distinctions exist, we have a better chance of reducing the anxiety around a highly charged subject. I’m using these categories as a tool to analyze race and as a way to describe how race and racism have affected American life. I’ll briefly explore these uses of race before explaining how they might help us sort through the racial mess that the verdicts revealed.

  Race as context shows how arguments have been used to clarify the role race and racism have played in our nation’s history. To view race as a context leads to racial clarification. With racial clarification, we get down, as nearly as we can, to the facts of race. When did the idea of race emerge? Why did America choose to make distinctions among people based on race? What happened during slavery? What was Reconstruction really about? What were Abraham Lincoln’s motives in freeing the slaves? How did the civil rights movement get started? What was the role of black women in the black freedom struggle of the ’60s? How was black sexuality viewed during the early part of this century? How many black men were lynched before 1950? When did affirmative action start? And so on. By having these facts in hand, we’re more likely to weave them into an accurate account of how race has shaped our culture. Such an account helps us tell the complex, compelling story of how race influenced ideas like democracy, justice, freedom, individuality, and equality. It also helps us to understand how racism began and spread. The most valuable use of racial clarification may be the vibrant historical framework it gives our discussions about race. It is stunning how much ignorance about what really happened in our racial past poisons present debates about race. Of course, we don’t benefit from a Joe Friday “just the facts, ma’am” perspective of the past. There will be disputes about the facts and what they mean. But we certainly need to work as hard as possible to figure out what happened as we interpret the history of race.

  Race as subtext highlights how arguments have been used to mystify, or deliberately obscure, the role of race and racism in our culture. To view race as a subtext aids our understanding of racial mystification. With this view of race, we can describe the different forms that racism takes, the disguises it wears, the tricky, subtle shapes it assumes. Race and racism are not static forces. They mutate, grow, transform, and are redefined in complex ways. Understanding racial mystification helps us grasp the hidden premises, buried perceptions, and cloaked meanings of race as they show up throughout our culture. (I realize that race and racism are not living organisms. But they have, besides an impersonal, institutional form, a quality of fretful aliveness, an active agency, that I seek to capture.)

  For instance, terms like “enlightened” and “subtle” racism have been used to describe one transformation of racism: the shift from overt racism to covert forms that thrive on codes, signals, and symbols. And racial mystification was certainly at play when Charles Stuart in Boston and Susan Smith in South Carolina deflected attention from murders they had committed—Stuart of his wife, Smith of her two sons—by claiming a black man was at fault. What made their stories believable was not the fact, but the perception, of black crime. Statistically speaking, blacks overwhelmingly murder blacks, just as whites overwhelmingly murder whites. Since black males have become racially coded symbols for pathological, criminal behavior, the Stuart and Smith stories found millions of white believers. Such beliefs about black males are subtle updates of an ancient belief about black men as beasts and sexual predators. Race understood as a subtext allows us to get a handle on the changing forms of racist belief and behavior in our culture.

  Finally, race as pretext shows how arguments have been used to justify racial beliefs and to defend racial interests. If the context of race is tied to history and the subtext to culture, then the pretext of race is linked, broadly speaking, to science. Race viewed as a pretext increases our understanding of racial justification. The stress in racial justification is on how race functions to give legitimacy to racial ideas. The proponents of racial justification drape their arguments about race in the finest garbs of science: objectivity and neutrality. After all, they are dealing in the realm of the empirical, those things that can be proved true or false by experiment and observation. Their work is often developed in the name of the sciences, natural or social. In some cases, racial justification simply seeks to supply a reasoned argument for racial preconceptions. Such arguments form a pretext to justify deeply rooted racial passions, and often give a scientific glow to racist beliefs.

  For instance, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve claimed to be a work of science, a work of cool, dispassionate reason. Murray and Herrnstein simply translated racist beliefs into empirical arguments about the limits of black intelligence. Their book has been widely debunked as pseudoscience. But the enormous interest that greeted it suggests the intellectual appeal of the claims they make. The case of black psychiatrist Frances Cress-Welsing is instructive as well. In her book, The Isis Papers, she argues for the Cress Theory of color—confrontation and racism. She links the development of white supremacist ideology to white fear of genetic annihilation. It is a biologically based argument, linked to the superiority of black skin because of its ability to produce melanin, to explain the rise of white supremacy. Cress-Welsing’s theory is certainly an example of contorted reasoning used to justify racial beliefs. Viewing race as a pretext helps us to identify scientific, empirical work that attempts to justify racist beliefs.

  These three uses of race and racism might help us figure out key elements of the trial. Take the bitter dispute over the “mountain of evidence.” For most whites and some blacks, there was more than enough evidence to convict Simpson. Simpson had brutally battered Nicole. The blood of the victims was in his Bronco. Simpson’s blood was at the crime scene. A bloody glove was found at the crime scene, its match on Simpson’s estate. And above all, there were highly sophisticated DNA tests that seemed to prove Simpson’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But for most blacks and some whites, there was substantial doubt about the validity of the evidence, for several reasons. The reckless manner in which the evidence was collected and tested. Defense experts who testified that the evidence was questionable, inconclusive, or plain contrary to the prosecution’s interpretation. And above all, the star prosecution witness, police detective Mark Fuhrman, a major collector of evidence against Simpson, who turned out to be a bigot of the worst sort.

  Most whites and blacks conceded that Fuhrman’s bigotry was awful. Both whites and blacks admitted that the police work was sloppy. Bu
t for most whites and a few blacks, these factors didn’t matter enough to keep them from believing in Simpson’s guilt. Most blacks and some whites believed that Fuhrman’s mean-spirited bragging about harming, possibly killing, blacks in the past—plus the fact that he collected crucial evidence—was reason enough to doubt Simpson’s guilt.

  What are we to make of how black folk viewed the evidence?

  Right away, race as pretext, or racial justification, makes it clear that evidence never speaks for itself. Evidence never exists in a vacuum. It is used for particular purposes.

  In the Simpson case, as in any case where race is a source of contention, how we see evidence is shaped by ideological and racial interests. Evidence must be viewed through a lens of interpretation. Such a lens is surely colored by the history of race. Race as context, or racial clarification, helps us understand the facts of race that might influence how blacks view the evidence in the Simpson case in sharply different fashion from whites. There are many. The unjust treatment thousands of blacks have received at the hands of the justice system. The manufacturing of evidence against black defendants in the past. Judicial indifference to compelling evidence of a black defendant’s innocence. The unequal application of punishment to black and white defendants convicted of the same crime. And repeated instances of police brutality in black communities.

  Of course, the Rodney King case had already made Los Angeles blacks, indeed blacks throughout the nation, skeptical about the uses of evidence in the judicial system. Particularly when black bodies were at stake. There was, as far as most black folk were concerned, indisputable proof—if not quite the mountain of evidence amassed in the Simpson case—that police brutality was the plague they claimed it to be. After all, nobody saw Simpson murder two people. But the world saw King getting his skull smashed over and over and over again. Millions of black folk, along with the outrage they felt at the King beating, breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, here was the case that would ring the death knell for police brutality and bring the curtain down on the terror that millions of blacks feel when they’re stopped by a white cop. But it was not to be. With a barrage of shrewd legal arguments, lawyers for the cops accused of King’s beating made the white jury disbelieve what they saw with their own eyes. Neither could millions of blacks believe what they saw. At the trial where King’s molesters were acquitted, the roar of evidence barely whimpered. Objectivity was crushed. Reason was sullied. Racial justification abounded.