Justice Is a Process That Never Ends

The day before, Zedar Broadous had spotted his oldest brother on TV, a distinctive face in the crowd, this crowd being the 400,000 black men who had gathered between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument. Abdullah Rhaman, born Hillery Broadous, was working security and standing near the Rev. Jesse Jackson. A few weeks ago, the Nation of Islam member was a bodyguard for Johnnie Cochran.

The Rev. Broadous, associate minister of Calvary Baptist Church of Pacoima, chose another spiritual path, one that led him Tuesday to stand before a special meeting of the Los Angeles City Council at Pierce College in Woodland Hills. He delivered the invocation, asking God to bless the council. Then he thanked the Lord for inspiring the council to visit the San Fernando Valley--”to show this is one city, that we are one people. . . . Strengthen our resolve to make Los Angeles the place you would have it to be.”

Even an atheist might have felt like saying amen.

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“Oh, I’ve been cussed out since the verdict. I’ve had folks who claim to be white and say they’re going to go out in the streets, and I better watch my back.” Rev. Broadous gave a soft chuckle. “For us it’s not new. It’s regular standard operating procedure. It’s the same silly stuff that always happens.”

If race makes headlines, and if one of the races involved is of African origin, the phone jumps at the San Fernando Valley offices of the NAACP. Zedar Broadous is the branch president. The Valley’s African American community is so small that the venerable National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a convenient target.

The first time we talked it concerned the police search nearly two years ago for a man dubbed the “Valley Molester,” a black suspect who had victimized children walking to school. Tens of thousands of Los Angeles residents could have fit the description. One man spent a few days in jail before he was exonerated of the crime. Rev. Broadous could relate. Two decades ago, he was held for 48 hours as a suspect in a quadruple murder. When he saw the police illustration of the suspect, Broadous had to admit there was a strong resemblance. The police, he figured, were just doing their job.

Born and raised in the Valley, Broadous is a 47-year-old father of six and grandfather of seven. On Tuesday, he wore pins signifying support for the NAACP and the Los Angeles Police Department and a button saying “Support Affirmative Action Now.” This time, I asked him to address a question raised by a number of people upset by the acquittal of O.J. Simpson.

John R. Carter of Woodland Hills put it this way in a letter: “What is the substantive difference between the O.J. Simpson outcome in the inner city and the Koon/Powell outcome in Simi Valley? Unless the federal government brings civil rights charges against Simpson I have to believe there are now two standards for civil rights--or have whites simply lost theirs?”

The technical answer is that no federal statutes could be applied in the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman. In the King beating, the pertinent statutes exist expressly to police law enforcement officials, not private citizens.

Carter’s question is polemical. Commentators have picked up on this theme too. White people, they suggest, would riot in their own way--at the ballot box. The Brentwood murders, it was suggested, would be avenged by efforts to gut welfare and health care for the poor, and to bury affirmative action.

Rev. Broadous has a few reactions to those who seek parallels and dichotomies between the verdicts in Simi Valley and the verdicts in the Simpson case. The latter was a whodunit; in the former, the question concerned motive. In both cases, the defendants were certainly given the benefit of the doubt.

And although the minister urges respect for the verdicts of the Simpson jury, he notes that an acquittal is not a declaration of innocence. If you believe in a just God, he says, you have to believe something else: “Whoever did it will not get off scot-free. They’ll pay for it when the time comes.”

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The less spiritual among us find little comfort in such sentiments. What dismays Zedar Broadous is the way people perceive a big news event as a vehicle for social change. The jubilation of many African Americans was a celebration over the likes of Mark Fuhrman, but it hardly means racism as gone. Many whites, meanwhile, thought that a conviction would be proof of progress toward the American ideal of equality.

Too many people expect instant gratification, the minister complains. Even before the so-called “Million Man March” was over, he notes, pundits were pontificating on what it means. Zedar Broadous, who in the 1970s was a member of the Nation of Islam himself, suggests that justice is something to be sought day in and day out--that it’s a long, never-ending journey, with many turns along the way.