OJ’s case forced us to look at our racial divide. Have we learned anything since? | Opinion

Back when O.J. Simpson was one of the most polarizing figures in the country, after a trial that forced the nation to confront the social, racial and legal divide between Black and white America, he headed to South Florida.

He made his home in Miami-Dade — Kendall, to be exact — starting around 2000, after his acquittal of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1995 but before his 2008 conviction after a botched Las Vegas robbery attempt involving his sports memorabilia.

Simpson, who died of cancer Thursday, didn’t hide during his Miami years. Far from it. He popped up on area golf courses, at Roasters N’ Toasters deli with his kids — and in Miami-Dade courts, after what police said was a road rage incident. When he left jail on bond, a corrections officer shook his hand, the New York Times reported, and someone asked for his autograph after a news conference.

It wasn’t surprising that Simpson, whether you saw him as famous or infamous, made his way to South Florida, after the “Trial of the Century” in Los Angeles. He came to Florida to dwell in the land of sunshine, golf — and generous asset-protection laws.

Miami is an elastic kind of a place, open to all comers. It’s been home to Madonna and Julio Iglesias, yes, but also to gangster Al Capone and exiled Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. Is our transiency part of the appeal — the knowledge that many of us aren’t rooted deeply enough in Miami to make a fuss if we bump into an ex-dictator? Or someone whose trial became a national Rorschach test about race in America?

Simpson’s move to Miami did actually raise a few eyebrows — not just about his past but also about what he did here, like when a Florida judge ordered him to pay $25,000 for stealing satellite TV signals from DirecTV at his four-bedroom Kendall home.

In any case, the NFL star — whose trial made “slow speed chase” and “if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit” into household phrases — sought safe haven in Miami for a while. The abundant golf courses probably had a lot of appeal, but also, he was found civilly liable for Goldman and his ex-wife’s deaths in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the victims’ families. He faced a $33.5 million judgment, so being able to hang onto his home under Florida law was probably the main attraction.

Simpson had it all, for a while. He rose from a tough childhood to become a football superstar, considered one of the best running backs of all time. He was an actor, too, turning his nickname — “The Juice” — into a Hollywood career, including roles in the “The Naked Gun” franchise and the TV series “In the Heat of the Night.” He was a sportscaster and a TV spokesman for Hertz car rental, dodging and weaving in a business suit through a crowded Atlanta airport to pick up his car. He made a fortune but lost it.

What will he be known for now? The televised murder trial, certainly — a national that no doubt instilled a far greater distrust of police, especially in the Black community. His arrest (and conviction, eventually) after an armed dispute in a Las Vegas hotel and casino in what he said was a self-organized sting operation to reclaim his own sports memorabilia. The appalling attempt, at one point, to sell his story in a ghostwritten book and an accompanying TV interview tentatively titled “If I did it,” described by the publisher as a “hypothetical” confession. Both projects ended after a public outcry.

Simpson’s trial in 1995, when reaction to the verdict split along racial lines, showed that Black Americans and white Americans were living in different Americas. Almost 30 years later, we seem to have made little progress, with the lessons of the “Trial of the Century” still unlearned.

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