It now appears that this conclusion is certainly not entirely wrong, but it is obviously biased, and it is a typical Chinese-style position. Although Simpson relied on money to build a dream lawyer team and provided strong support for his exoneration, I learned about the details of the case later that justice in the judicial process was the main reason for Simpson exoneration. . In other words, during the trial of the case, the Simpson party did not commit any obstruction of justice and was acting entirely within the legal framework. This is totally different from using power or money to manipulate justice. So some people say that only those societies under the rule of law will have the soil for the survival of triads, because triads also have human rights, and the law cannot be arbitrarily violated. And replaced by a fascist dictatorship like Mussolini, even the notorious Mafia had to flee to the United States.
The crime story has
changed over time. The "Judgment of the Century" that started in 1994 has faded away. Simpson was later sentenced to 33 years in prison for robbery. But despite the passage of time, this trial is constantly being mentioned. It is like a gold mine of material, which can always unearth new thinking and interpretation. The Americans are even more happy. For example, this year, the Americans have successively released documentaries and TV series about the trial, and I just watched the TV series-"American Crime Story Season One: The Simpson Case." This series has gathered many big-name stars, such as Cuba Gooding, John Travolta, and David Hume. However, the stars are not the focus of the show. They were selected only because of them. More suitable for the role. The real star is the character in the play. This case provides a huge and incomparable stage. All kinds of characters appear on the stage, contributing their wisdom, emotions, and the light and darkness of humanity.
Although the characters are real, the artistic creation can choose the angle it wants. In this drama, the spiritual core is not law and procedure, but racism. For this trial of the century, if the law is its bones, then the racial problem is his flesh and blood. The most important point that Simpson was able to escape punishment was because he was a black man.
Trying to explore the issue of race, which was expressed at the beginning of the series. At the beginning of the film, there was a blurry image showing the riots in Los Angeles in 1992. The cause of the riot sounds familiar to us. Four white police officers assaulted a black man and were found not guilty. This triggered a riot. More than 20 years have passed, and the same sections have been staged again and again. And just two years after the riot, the Simpson case happened, and the grievances are still over, so you can imagine the mood of the black community at that time.
The Simpson case has become a catharsis of black emotions, and Simpson himself has become a symbol of American racial issues. Simpson is the incarnation of black power, he is oppressed, the black is oppressed, and his innocence is the innocence of the black. The sense of substitution for this kind of thing is extremely strong. This incident is actually quite ironic, because Simpson didn't plan to play the racism card at all in the beginning, or to put it simply, Simpson didn't think he was still black anymore. He married a white wife and lived the life of a mainstream rich man in order to get rid of his past identity. In Thomas Sowell's book "A Brief History of American Race", he talked about the mentality of the Simpsons: "Although this group of black elites speak in the name of black people in public, they have light-skinned and high-class selves in their hearts. Consciousness, for a long time to stay away from the black people, and indifferent.” So when the lawyer team decided to play the race card, he was fiercely opposed. In the end, however, his skin color saved him.
"nigger"
This trial looks like a melting pot of American races. Apart from Simpson, the two most impressive figures in it are Simpson’s black lawyer Johnny Cochran and the judge Ito. Needless to say. , The latter is a Japanese-American. Another identity of the lawyer Cochrane is the leader of the black civil rights, so he is also a master of the racial card. Cochrane did not intervene in the case from the beginning, but he was waiting for Simpson's call from the beginning, because he was convinced that this was a case tailored for him. And he finally reversed the course of the whole case, from proving Simpson's innocence to proving that some officers of the Los Angeles Police Department discriminated against black people.
And the turning point of the whole case was when the lawyer team found a recording of an interview with Police Officer Foreman in the past. In the recording, a word that the lawyers dreamed of-"nigger" appeared in the recording. In the words of a lawyer in the play, this is The most powerful vocabulary in American English. The change in American appellation of blacks reflects the rise of black rights from one aspect, from the initial "niggers" to the later blacks, and then to the African Americans today. The skin color is constantly fading, which has become the political correctness of Americans, and the word "nigger" has become the inverse scale of black Americans. So when the lawyers found the term, they knew that the lawsuit was won.
In fact, Lawyer Cochrane is the same person as Simpson. He strives to get rid of his former identity and class. But reality tells him that it is easy to change the system, but it is even harder to change the prejudices of others. There are two details in the drama. One is that the lawyer Cochrane took his two daughters to the restaurant for dinner, but was stopped by the police and handcuffed him on the grounds that he suspected that the high-end car he drove was stolen. Coming. Another detail is that the Cochrane lawyer went to the southern state to obtain recording evidence, but was rudely rejected by the local court. His white partner told him that this is the South. Are you a black man still wanting help? The American South still has deep-rooted discrimination against blacks, and the votes of black Americans have never been voted for only by the Democratic Party.
Affirmative act
When it comes to the changes in the social status of black Americans, one cannot fail to talk about the "Affirmative Rights Act" introduced in the 1960s. The "Affirmative Rights Act" completely abolished the apartheid system in the southern United States. However, the political gap is easy to smooth out, but the psychological gap is difficult to smooth out, and the overcorrection of the "Affirmative Rights Act" has even deepened the rift between ethnic groups.
The so-called "Affirmative Rights Act" is not a law, but a series of laws, norms and policies on equal rights based on the Civil Rights Law. Specifically, it refers to enrollment, employment, promotion, joining the army, and receiving government loans. When assigning government contracts, blacks, Indians, Hispanics, Asians, and women have priority in admission, employment, promotion, or priority in obtaining loans and contracts when their competitiveness and qualifications are the same or similar. For example, many universities have adopted a quota system, which is to ensure that a certain percentage of ethnic minorities are enrolled, so that they can go to universities according to quotas instead of relying on grades. Of course, these are mainly public universities.
Are you aware of the "Affirmative Rights Act" problem? If a white student wants to be admitted to college, he must have scores much higher than that of a black student. President Lyndon Johnson once defended the "Affirmative Rights Act": "You cannot take a person who has only been rescued from many years of handcuffs and shackles, and immediately take him to the starting line alongside others and say to him, "You Can freely compete with others' and believe that it is absolutely fair to do so. Because we have to do more than that to open a fair gate. If all of our citizens can pass through the fair gate, then the so-called fairness is not It’s just power and theory, but more facts and results.”
Perhaps President Johnson’s defense was sonorous in those days, but now, the "Affirmative Rights Act" has actually formed reverse discrimination against whites. So so far, eight states in the United States have banned the implementation of the "Affirmative Rights Act" in public universities. The black civil rights leaders also reflected on this, and concluded that in today's society, the "Affirmative Rights Act" has not only deepened the gap between blacks and white mainstream society, but this "welfare" has also weakened the enterprising spirit of blacks.
The warmth and warmth created by the "Affirmative Rights Act" can easily be torn apart in extreme cases. In this drama, there is a whole episode of the story about the internal work of the jury. Simpson's ability to be released has a lot to do with them. The 12-person jury responsible for the Simpson case includes 10 blacks, one white, and one Latino. The prosecutors agreed to this arrangement because the jury was mostly women. They believed that women might sympathize with Simpson's murdered ex-wife. However, the results showed that the jury's skin color defeated gender. Coincidentally, in the 2014 case of a white policeman shooting and killing a black young Brown, the jury consisted of 9 whites and 3 blacks, because this was only a hearing to determine whether to be prosecuted, not a criminal trial, and only 9 votes were required to reach a final decision. . Needless to say the result. Another coincidence is that in 2014, the Chinese American police officer Peter Liang manslaughtered the black man Akai Gurley by a bullet rebound during his mission. And Peter Liang was prosecuted. This double standard angered the Chinese American community, and they launched a massive demonstration. All these scars make American society look bloody. At this point in the
Asian American
language, let us return to the Simpson case and look at another high-profile figure in this drama, the judge in court. In fact, in the real case, Chinese detective Li Changyu also participated, but he was invited to exonerate Simpson. Arranging an Asian to serve as the presiding judge of such an important case shows from one aspect the improvement of the status of Asians, or more simply, the improvement of the social status of Japanese Americans. And they paid no less than the blacks.
Luo Yonghao once recommended a book. As we mentioned earlier, the American scholar Thomas Sowell's "A Brief History of American Race". This book was very expensive in Luoyang after it was recommended by Luo. You can say that if you want to understand American society , This book is very worth reading. There are two chapters in the book, introducing Chinese and Japanese Americans.
The book introduces that when the Chinese and Japanese came to the United States, the Americans' attitude towards Asian immigrants was harsh and even rude. This is firstly because they are neither white nor Christian, and at the time, these two items were indispensable. Therefore, both culturally and physically, Asians are considered to be a race that cannot be assimilated. Americans regard it as a competitor, because Asians suffer hardships and stand hard work, but their wages are very low, which will reduce the wages of American workers. And they do not participate in the union, which makes the strikes organized by the union lose its deterrent power, because you do not go to work and others go to work. Therefore, American labor unions have spared no effort to stand in the forefront of rejecting Chinese immigrants for a long time, and want to drive out Chinese residents. This eventually led to the promulgation of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Someone may ask, what about Japanese Americans? Why not get kicked out together? This is why the expatriates living overseas hope that the motherland will be strong, because it will make the life of the expatriates easier. At the end of the 19th century, Japan became stronger through the Meiji Restoration, and the country had the ability and prestige to support the diaspora. China was too weak at the time, and it was inevitable that it would be divided up, and it was impossible to speak for overseas Chinese at all. The reversal of this situation occurred during World War II. Because China and the United States were an anti-fascist alliance, the United States abolished the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. It was not until 2012 that the U.S. Congress apologized to the Chinese for the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Also during World War II, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, driven by the fear and anger of the people, the U.S. government imposed wartime detentions on Japanese Americans. Approximately 100,000 Japanese expatriates were placed in detention camps. With the development of the war, the U.S. military intends to recruit Japanese expatriates to join the army, and a total of more than 300,000 Japanese Americans participated in World War II. In order to prove their loyalty to the United States on the battlefield, they fought extremely hard. The 442 regiment composed of Japanese descent has become the most honored powerhouse in American history. On the Pacific battlefield, thousands of Japanese interpreters played an important role. It is especially worth mentioning that no Japanese betrayed the United States during the entire war.
The tragic experience in World War II proved to be a turning point for the Japanese Americans to gain a firm foothold in the United States. Because no nation has ever proved its loyalty to the United States under such difficult conditions. In the end, although the first generation of Japanese immigrants suffered huge losses, for the second generation, the internment camps became the beginning of their entry into American society, and they have since moved up the social and economic ladder. Judge Ito, who presided over the Simpson trial, is the descendant of the Japanese expatriate who was held in the detention camp.
Lose a country?
On the stage of the Simpson trial, behind the lawyer Cochrane, Judge Kato, and Inspector Li Changyu, half of the history of the suffering of American minorities was condensed. Coupled with the fact that justice was not done in the end, just like the "Vietnam War", this "Judgment of the Century" has become a permanent trauma to American society. The academic circles and the literary and artistic circles will also open up this wound time and time again at different times, for different reasons, from different angles, with different texts and images. Facing the trauma, this is the way Americans reflect on history.
The election of Obama cannot heal this trauma. It merely uses a symbol of political correctness to make people turn a blind eye to the trauma. Scholar Zhou Lian said: "One of the biggest problems in Western society is the formation of a very stubborn'political correct' discourse system, and the content of this discourse is constantly increasing, which will eventually lead to the political life of the entire society. That complexity and richness are lost.” As Trump stepped onto the stage, all political correctness was torn apart, and the American elites were surprised to find that racial contradictions and dissatisfaction from the bottom of the population had accumulated to such a level, and then It broke out in such an irrational way.
The first time that helped me open the Simpson case in the correct way was Linda’s "Worries in the Deep of History." At the end of the article, Linda raised her worries: "If Simpson is the murderer, the justice of the two victims will never be recovered, justice will never be done, and the voice of old Goldman (the father of the deceased) is desolate and indignant. It will always make conscientious Americans uneasy. While "letting go of a thousand", people must face the crying souls of many victims. People will always suspect that they have lost a lawsuit against the prosecutor. At that time, were they losing a country, as the old Goldman had accused them of?"
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