Dominion (73 page)

“Now
that’s
hard to imagine,” Clarence said. “Okay, I don’t agree with most of those beliefs, although frankly I think there may be a little truth in some of them, I’m not sure. But I can see why it’s all ridiculous to you. It’s because you trust the white men who own most businesses. You trust the system, people in authority. Your family has never been victimized or brutalized for your skin color. So to you, these things are unthinkable. But when you’re black, you know lots of your older family members who were hurt, some killed by the Klan. You remember hundreds of incidents of prejudice and discrimination and hate against you and your family. You know your ancestors were beaten and raped and given forty lashes for learning to read or write. You’ve heard about the Tuskegee experiment where black men with syphilis weren’t given penicillin, which would have cured them, so white doctors could study the advancing effects of the disease and watch these men suffer and die needlessly. You’ve heard all these stories, most of them true, so as a black you grow up being profoundly suspicious of whites. That’s no mystery—it’s completely understandable. If the tables were reversed, I guarantee whites would suspect black-owned companies and even black doctors of conspiring to hurt them.”

“Okay, since we’re being so honest,” Ollie said, “can I ask you a question? If O. J. had been found guilty, do you think L.A. and say Chicago, Detroit, and Washington would have burned?”

“If they would have, the lives lost would have been mostly black,” Clarence said.

“I know that. But it wasn’t my question.”

“I don’t know,” Clarence said.

“Neither do I. But I have friends who are sure they would have. And their attitude was, even though they think Simpson was guilty the verdict probably saved hundreds of lives. One said to me, ‘Better one guilty man goes free than hundreds of innocent people die in the backlash of his conviction.’”

“What’s your point?” Clarence asked.

“I think you know my point, don’t you? If there’d been rioting, wouldn’t the black leadership have justified it? Wouldn’t they have made it the fault of white America? I guess my question is, can white people
ever
be right? Can black people
ever
be wrong? Because if the answer is no, a lot of white people are going to give up trying. And if you think we’ve got racial problems now, look out.”

“Sounds like a threat.”

“Not a threat. Just an observation,” Ollie said, throwing up his hands. “So what did
you
think about the Simpson case?”

“I had a lot of mixed feelings,” Clarence said. “Did I believe Fuhrman was typical of a lot of white cops? Sure. Not all, but enough to pull off a small scale conspiracy, yeah. We lived with that all the time in Mississippi. My grandfather was stripped naked and tarred and feathered for no reason but to humiliate a black man. I had an uncle who was castrated by Klansmen, and the police never did anything about it. He never walked right again. He took his life a few years later. He’d fought for his country in World War II, was decorated for heroism in combat. And that’s how his life ended.”

“I’m sorry,” Ollie said. “I really am.”

“Know what black folk in most towns called the local sheriff? ‘Chief head-banger.’ Black men were arrested for no reason, and any time you went to jail you expected to be beaten. There were no black lawyers then, and who could afford a white lawyer? Or trust him? The cops beat the tar out of you, and the courts put you in jail. That’s what I grew up thinking, because that’s what I grew up seeing. So, yes, I think the police are capable of great injustice. But injustice to black men on the street is one thing. Injustice to a black sports icon who most whites saw as a hero, that’s something else. It’s hard to believe cops would target
this
black man who they put on a pedestal, a guy they paid big money to cheer for on the football field. And what about his commercials? Corporations paid him the big bucks because they knew he appealed to whites as much as blacks.”

“I agree with you there. O. J. was a hero to me,” Ollie said. “Like Hank Aaron. But remember how at first all the feminist groups hollered the police had been far too
lenient
on O. J., how they’d let him get away with wife-beating and they took too long to arrest him and all? Cops can never do it right. First, they’re too lenient on a guy because he’s their hero, then next thing you know they frame the same guy for murder.”

“I think the real racial polarization happened,” Clarence said, “when whites saw the Goldman and Brown families. It was like looking in the mirror, realizing it could just as easily be them. And when blacks saw the Simpson family interviewed, it was the same thing. They looked like their mamas and sisters and aunts and cousins and the people that live down the street and go to the neighborhood church. We identify most with the people we’re used to, the ones we know and love. And we don’t know and love enough people of other races to identify with them. All that came out in the O. J. case. I lost a lot of sleep over it.”

“But if things don’t change,” Ollie said, “courtroom tactics will all be centered on race, gender, economics, religion, everything that makes us different. Attorneys will appeal to the jury to decide based on things other than the evidence. A la Johnny Cochrane.”

“I thought the most interesting aftermath of the case,” Clarence said, “was all those calls for judicial reform made by whites. After the Simi Valley verdict that cleared the cops who beat up Rodney King, a lot of blacks brought up their usual accusations of injustice, but most whites I heard kept saying, ‘We need to trust the system.’ Interesting how it all got reversed when Simpson was let off. All of a sudden there were television panel discussions and letters to the editor and columns about restructuring jury selection to avoid racial prejudice. Remember?”

“Yeah, I do,” Ollie said. “I called for a few judicial reforms myself. But nobody listens to me.”

“My uncle Elijah made an interesting comparison,” Clarence said. “He told us about a soda pop machine at Southern Pacific Railroad where he worked. It was in the management area, but everyone had access to it. Some of the executives discovered if you gave the machine a good smack in just the right place it would give you a can of pop without having to pay Well, some of the rail workers watched the execs do this for weeks, and finally one of them tried it himself. Smack, free pop. Well, one of those same executives saw him do it. Then he said to his secretary, ‘Call the vendor. We’ve got to get that machine fixed.’”

“And your point is what?” Ollie asked.

“The pop machine is the justice system. For hundreds of years white juries convicted blacks who were innocent and acquitted whites who were guilty of beating and lynching blacks and burning down their houses. Not many whites called for judicial reform. Then the Simpson case comes along, and a black man whites think was guilty is found innocent by a mostly black jury So what happens? All of a sudden, white America says, ‘Hey we’ve got to get this pop machine fixed.”’

“I never thought of it like that,” Ollie said.

“Neither did the management at the railroad. When you’re in the power position you’re used to getting things your way.”

“But two wrongs don’t make a right,” Ollie said. “White juries were wrong to acquit people just because they were white. And black juries are wrong to acquit people just because they’re black.”

“I agree with you a hundred percent,” Clarence said. “I’m just saying after hundreds of years of it going one way and them doing so little about it, it’s interesting what a hard time white folk have when it goes the other way.” Clarence sighed. “The thing I hate is after the O. J. debacle and the Million Man March there was so much talk about racial issues, but out of it came more hard feelings than ever. It seems like dialogues of the deaf.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ollie said. “We just talked about it, and you said some things that helped me. Seems like we agree on a lot when it comes down to it. I guess when I hear you say blacks are still responsible for their choices and not every problem is due to white racism, it helps me be more open to those cases when it is.”

“And hearing you say you know racism is still around helps me to be able to see the other side too,” Clarence said.

“I have a question for you, sort of personal,” Ollie said. “As much as you know about media bias, why did you automatically believe what the
Trib
said about me brutalizing that guy?”

“Because of my experience with cops, I guess.” Clarence took a deep breath. “My earliest memories of police officers go back to Mississippi. Some of them were nice. But a lot of them weren’t. They’d mock us, call us names—spooks, shines, spades, jigs, coons, and niggers. They’d always intimidate black folk, I mean law-abiding folk. I could have probably gotten over that, but … there’s one story I didn’t tell you.”

Clarence sighed, as if he needed to draw on reserves to tell his tale. “One night my daddy heard about one of my cousins, Seth, Uncle Elijah’s oldest boy. He’d been hangin’ around a white civil rights activist that came down from New York. All the authorities hated him. Well, word got out they arrested my cousin and this white boy and were holding them in the jail. Daddy went down to the jail with my uncle. Mama begged him not to go without witnesses, but just he and Elijah went. They got there and asked to see the boys. The sheriff was a big fat white cop.”

“Like me,” Ollie asked, “but not as muscular?”

“Yeah, sort of. Anyway they ended up accusing my dad and uncle of trying to break the kids out of jail, which was ridiculous. Uncle Elijah was just like Daddy Strong as an ox, but gentle as they come. Well, these cops decided they were going to teach those colored men a lesson. So they let out the boys and locked up the men. Then they proceeded to beat up Daddy and Uncle Elijah. They beat them with their hands and sticks and a baseball bat. They urinated on them. They tortured them by jamming a fork up their nose. I’m not going to tell you the rest, because it rips me up to even think about it. Sometimes Daddy still doubles over in pain from what they did to him that night.”

Clarence tried to contain his tears, which now streamed down his face. Ollie looked stunned.

“When my cousin came to tell us Daddy was in jail, he drove Mama and me down there. We were on the outside of those thick walls, but we could hear Daddy and Uncle Elijah … they were … screaming.”

Clarence sobbed. Ollie wasn’t sure what to do. He sat quietly. Finally Clarence spoke again.

“Daddy was firm when we were growin’ up. He disciplined us when we deserved it. But he was the kindest man. He never so much as raised his voice to us. I know what he went through that night. And I guess I’ve never trusted a white policeman since.”

“Your daddy’s a fine man … fine a man as I ever … “Ollie’s chin trembled, and he cleared his throat and wiped his eyes. “I’m sorry for what they did to him. I wish we could go back there right now, you and me. I wish we could get our hands on that shenff, on those dirty cops.”

“If we could,” Clarence said, “when I was done you’d have to arrest me. I wouldn’t stop until I killed them. I know. In my mind I’ve done it a thousand times.”

“I’m glad you came by, Mr. Abernathy” Andrea Taylor said, her eyes hanging as if heavy weights were attached. “The last years have been hard. Wouldn’t have made it without Ebenezer Church, that’s for sure. I’m glad you’ve been comin’ there. And I’m sorry about … how my son influenced your nephew.”

“It’s all right, Andrea. It wasn’t your fault. I know that.”

“The hardest part,” she said, “is always wondering if there wasn’t something else I should have done. Anyway, I’ve been thinking there’s something I should tell you.” She looked away and took a deep breath. “One night Raymond was on the angel dust. Devil dust they should call it, that’s what it is. But he was hallucinating, and I didn’t know whether to hold him or slap him. But I held him in my arms, and my baby said to me somethin’ real strange. I asked him about it later. He said I imagined it, but I know I didn’t. He kept saying, ‘It wasn’t
her
; they got it wrong; that’s not what I told ’em.’”

Clarence tried not to appear as anxious as he felt. “So … what does that mean?”

“Well, at first I didn’t connect it with anyone. But then when my baby shot himself,” she choked up, “he whispered somethin’ to me just before he died. He said, Tell Li’l GC I’m sorry about his mama.’ It didn’t seem like he was just saying he felt bad for Tyrone. It seemed more like a … deathbed confession. It’s been on my mind ever since. I don’t know what it means, but I started thinking maybe it related to what he said before. I can’t believe my boy would have hurt your sister and your niece, Mr. Abernathy. But I don’t know. I just don’t know. He hurt a lot of other people. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about my boy.”