O.J. Simpson showed white Americans just how conditional their comfort with black athletes

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O.J. Simpson is back in the news, joining Twitter and promising in a video that he had “a little getting even to do,” 25 years to the week of his most infamous moment. But he’s far from the household name he was on the night of June 17, 1994. That night, an epic battle between two of the best centers in National Basketball Association history — Hakeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing — was interrupted when NBC shifted to live footage of retired football great O.J. Simpson fleeing the Los Angeles police in a white Ford Bronco driven by his friend Al Cowlings. Only about 8 million viewers watched NBC’s coverage of the game, but about 95 million tuned in across networks to see whether a distraught Simpson would surrender, clash with the police or kill himself.

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The car chase, coming in the middle of the fifth game of the NBA Finals, cast a brief pall on what had been a watershed moment for black athletes. To suggest that Simpson overshadowed a decade’s worth of goodwill toward black athletes would be an overstatement. But Simpson, arguably a major source of this goodwill, certainly made clear the conditions white Americans put on their goodwill, even as the nation’s greatest black athletes continued to thrill and amaze.

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Over the years, the Bronco chase has been viewed as a galvanizing moment, as a third of the country tuned in to watch the tragedy unfold. That night, NBC concluded that O.J. Simpson’s fall from grace was important enough to disrupt an epic battle between two of the greatest NBA players of all time. The chase not only disrupted the NBA Finals — it also unsettled the comfort white Americans had developed for black athletes. For years, black athletes, and Simpson in particular, were held up as signs of the progress made toward bridging America’s racial divide. That night, however, he served as a stark reminder of how conditional that comfort was.

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Although Simpson’s Twitter video catapulted him back into the news this weekend and probably will turn him into fodder for late-night talk shows, it is unlikely to be resonant. His moment in the spotlight — both as a personality and pariah — has passed. The means by which Simpson won over America are antiquated, especially in an era in which black athletes such as Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James not only have embraced social justice but also have convinced their leagues and sponsors to do so as well (to an extent). Twenty-five years ago, Simpson held enough cultural cachet that his travails drew the attention of millions; today, he is a novelty act.

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