I'm not an O.J. Simpson supporter, but can we talk about cancer?
1999 to 2019: More than 1 million black men and women ages 20 and older died of cancer
When I saw the Scripps News alert that 76-year-old O.J. Simpson died of cancer, my first thought was, “I didn’t even know he had cancer.” I don’t pay attention to the man at all. After he wrote the“If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer” book in 2007, I was super done talking about him in any “we weren’t there that day” light. I shrugged when he was sentenced to 33 years for kidnapping and armed robbery on Oct. 3, 2008 after the casino hotel chaos. (He served nine years in jail before being released on parole in 2017.)
Still, while I was listening to the two white women broadcasters talk about O.J. Simpson, I didn’t hear one word about “cancer” in the first five minutes of their report after the initial announcement. It was all about Court TV and his wife Nicole Brown Simpson. However, I remembered what news reports were like when Johnnie Cochran died of a cancerous brain tumor in March 2005. There was some talk about actual cancer awareness in between the “glove” quote.
I kept waiting for one of the reporters to bring up how cancer has killed more than 1 million black men from 1999 to 2019. I kept waiting on some stats about how black men were 1.2 times and 1.7 times, respectively, more likely to have new cases of colon and prostate cancer, compared to non-Hispanic white men.
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As an Amazon affiliate, I earn a percentage from purchases with my referral links. I know some consumers are choosing to boycott Amazon for its DEI removal. However, after thinking about this thoroughly, I want to continue promoting cool products from small businesses, women-owned businesses and (specifically) Black-owned businesses who still feature their items on Amazon. As of the first date of Black History Month 2025, each new post will ALWAYS include a MINIMUM of one product sold by a Black-owned business. (I have visited the seller’s official site to verify that Amazon Black-owned logo.) I am (slowly) doing this with older, popular posts too. If you still choose to boycott, I 100% respect that decision.
But then I paused and thought, “If this was George Zimmerman, and I was listening to two black women doing this report, would I give a damn about health statistics or how he died? Or, would I be thinking of Trayvon Martin the entire time?”
Same energy for Carolyn Bryant Donham, who actually is dead. I neither know nor do I care about how it happened. All I think about is how Emmett Till didn’t live past 14. So I get it.
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If you’re a fan of “Diarra from Detroit” and have watched Episode 5, the way those three black women talked about O.J. Simpson is pretty much the way every black woman in my social circle talks about him. Nowadays, when I hear O.J. Simpson’s name, I think of the Jay Z song instead of his NFL career. So even connecting “black men” to his cause of death is a controversial comparison anyway.