We have seen it on the streets. They had a police check on Ninth Avenue. They were stopping the black teen-agers and making them get out of their cars. Whites do not. And justice isn't always equal.
Lawyers know that, and they teach it.
Jamin Raskin, associate dean of Washington College, says it's a special part of instruction. When blacks tuned into the Simpson trial, they watched through a screen of skepticism. Ronald Walters, chairman of the Political Science Department at Howard University, says that blacks have had a particular relationship with the criminal justice system that has made them suspicious and alienated from it. When whites tuned in to the trial, they were prone to see it in a different light. After years at his listening post as a public radio talk show host, Derrick McGinty hears nothing in the wake of O.J. that he hasn't heard before.