Better Public Understanding of Domestic Siolence Was the One Ailver Lining of O.J. Simpson’s fall

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Apr 15, 2024

Since most of the change in opinions occurred with Blacks who were polled, I can only respond as an African American that I am relieved. Most Black folks I know seem to have swung in the same direction.

My own attitudes also swung against Simpson’s credibility, as evidence surfaced of his lying and dozens of reported episodes of domestic brutality, allegedly played down by police officers responding to Nicole Simpson’s multiple calls for help.

In October 1993, a year after the Simpsons divorced, she called 911 when her ex showed up at her home “ranting and raving,” we learned in court.

“He’s in a white Bronco, but first of all he broke the back door down to get in,” she said. “He’s O.J. Simpson. I think you know his record.”

Eight months later, she and Goldman — who had stopped by to return eyeglasses left at a restaurant that night — were fatally stabbed outside her Brentwood home. Her two young children with Simpson were inside.

If there is anything positive to be taken from the tragedy of Nicole Simpson, it is the long-overdue attention it gave to the plague of domestic violence.

“You won’t ever know the worst that happened to Nicole Brown Simpson in her marriage,” wrote self-described radical feminist Andrea Dworkin in a tribute to Nicole Simpson, “because she is dead and cannot tell you. And if she were alive, remember, you wouldn’t believe her.”

Dworkin, who died in 2005, sometimes could be a bit too radical for my tastes. But that time I think she nailed it.

Although race quickly crowded other issues in our national conversation about the O.J. Simpson case, we can’t overlook the importance of how it helped change the national conversation around domestic violence.

As much as O.J. absurdly talked about finding “the real killer,” a truly real killer is our own failure to take the complaints of domestic violence victims seriously — an issue on which we’ve made progress, but not enough.

========

(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)