The verdict comes down and reactions are heavy from relief to disbelief: Paul James Simpson walks free. November 29th, 1996.

Audience attention turns to another case where two Americas watched the same evidence but reached opposite conclusions. One jury cleared the officers who beat Rodney King on videotape and another cleared O.J. Simpson. This hour pulls that contradiction apart in public, from the host's own account of the backlash he absorbed for standing with the victims' families, to the charge that a 'white racist media' criminalized and dehumanized black people.

Do whites preside over the 'wrongful death of the black male image'? Dr. Jewel Taylor Gibbs — Berkeley clinical psychologist and author of Race and Justice: Rodney King and O.J. Simpson in a House Divided — argues American justice is "color-coded" and that the Simpson verdict exposed spousal abuse, racial conflict and rich-man's justice in a single stroke.

Tavis smiley , host of BET Talk and author of Hard Left, says Black Americans believe conspiracy theories because history keeps confirming them. He measures the country's failure through the crack epidemic, the Texaco slurs and the Avis lawsuits.

Charles Grodin pushes the question that outlasts the OJ Simpson verdict : not who won, but why so few Americans of different races have a friend across the line at all.

The audience takes center stage — a woman asking why nobody is prosecuting the men who hurt women, a challenge over Black-Jewish tensions after Jewish organizations opposed affirmative action, and a Philadelphia man who asks whether Black men should take up arms against white militias. The host refuses to let that question be answered on his air and calls it appalling, then steers toward the Kerner Commission's two Americas, Proposition 209, income and health-care gaps, and Dr. Gibbs' proposal that America treat racism the way it treats addiction — by admitting it out loud.

The hour closes on the Dreyfus affair, and the argument that this case will change the country for good or ill.

Guests:
Dr. Jewel Taylor Gibbs Clinical psychologist, UC Berkeley professor; author of Race and Justice: Rodney King and O.J. Simpson in a House Divided
Tavis SmileyHost of BET Talk; author of Hard Left: Straight Talk About the Wrongs of the Right; named one of Time's 50 Future Leaders of America
Charles Grodin Actor, author and social commentator; CNBC colleague

Chapters:
00:00 Not guilty: the verdict stuns the studio
00:13 Rodney King and O.J. Simpson: two cases, one justice system
02:17 The backlash: the night in Washington
04:37 "The wrongful death of the black male image"
05:54 Meet the panel: Dr. Jewelle Taylor Gibbs, Tavis Smiley and Charles Grodin
09:13 Tavis Smiley: conspiracy theories and systemic racism
11:24 Charles Grodin: injustice and the absence of interracial friendships
12:57 The "litmus test" of blackness and how the media framed it
15:21 Can you criticize a jury? The question nobody wants
22:27 "What do we do about it?" Economic disparity and incarceration
26:44 "Where does a female fit in?" The audience takes the table
27:50 Black-Jewish tensions and affirmative action: an audience challenge
31:07 "Should Black men take up arms?" The question that stops the show
35:19 Two Americas: income, poverty, Prop 209 and health care
38:32 The "Recovering Racist" idea
40:09 Dreyfus in America: what this verdict changes

This episode courtesy Geraldo's Television History.

The white racist media is guilty of attempted lynching of O.J. Simpson, guilty of the criminalization and dehumanization of black people, guilty of intentional infliction of ....Geraldos own account of how he got there: In early November I brought — smack into an ambush of my own creation.
Full episode: O.J. Simpson and Rodney King: The Verdicts That Split America.
#OJSimpson #TavisSmiley #90sTV

She says the image we make for ourselves in high school years stays with us, even if naturally people take after their parents.

#tv #talkshow #1990s