Playing the "Culture Card": Trials in a Mutli-Cultural Democracy

As I write, the racial divide in America is said to be greater than at any time in the past 25 years.' Two events are blamed: the O.J. Simpson criminal trial and the Louis Farrakan led "Million Man March." That these events should exacerbate racial division is extraordinary. The Farrakan led march brought together between 400,000 and 800,000 black males to pledge that they would take the kind of responsibility for their actions and their families that white Americans have long argued they should take. The O.J. Simpson trial was more a "who done it" than a racial morality play. At the outset of the trial it would have been hard to find a black defendant who got along easier with whites individually or who had a better image among whites generally than O.J. Simpson, and on the issue where race inescapably became a part of the trial - the impeachmentof Officer Furhman - whites appeared at least as offended by and condemning of police racism as their black counterparts.