Memories and Race
There’s an astute race story on the front of the NYT Metro section today about jury selection taking place for another ex-officer charged in the Abner Louima case. Here’s the crux:

The contrast between the memories of many of the black New Yorkers who were summoned and those of many of the white potential jurors displayed a racial divide in perceptions about the case. Many of the blacks described Mr. Louima's ordeal as they would a cultural touchstone, like the case of the Scottsboro Boys or the Birmingham church bombing. A black hotel worker remembered reading about the case in Jet or Ebony magazine and knew, without hesitation, that Mr. Louima had been sodomized with a broken broomstick.
For some of the whites, the Louima case was a half-forgotten news story.

However, the story does later say that there were “some whites who remembered a good deal about the case and some blacks whose memories were cloudy.”
- posted by Amy @ 9/20/2002 04:28:00 PM