This letter is in response to Robert Wayne who disagrees with the jurors who acquitted O.J. Simpson. Robert Wayne suggests that blacks want to separate themselves from American culture and that they want to live by their own standards. It seems that he was trying to say that blacks are different than everyone else and that they aren't a part of us, like they are a different people, not Americans. I disagree.
I think that O.J. Simpson is guilty and that he should be punished for what he did. I feel this way because I believe that justice is a virtue. But if I pursue my sense of justice to the extreme, then justice becomes perverted, it becomes revenge. Revenge is a perversion of justice, just like lust is a perversion of love. O.J. Simpson is legally innocent. I will leave it to God to decide if O.J. Simpson is morally innocent. It is out of our hands.Sure, I am a little bit upset at the people who cheered when O.J. was acquitted, but it's stupid to resent them for what O.J. Simpson did. There are a lot of different cultures in America. I have my cultural values, and I don't like it when people treat me differently because of my culture. I am still an American. In some respects I find that some blacks have cultural values that are slightly different than mine. But the similarities between us are a lot greater than the differences. We are all Americans, and we have the same problems that we have to overcome.
I think that as a culture, as a country, we will survive if O.J. Simpson goes free. But I doubt that we can survive if we are going to not treat one another with dignity because we are angry about O.J. Simpson. This is because we share many of the same problems, and we all need to work together to overcome them.
Daniel Longstaff
Salt Lake City