Twenty-five years ago, the nation sat glued to its TV set to await the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial.

The jury had come in so quickly and the evidence was so overwhelming that some legal commentators speculated the Black football star would be found guilty of two counts of murder.

Instead, a jury acquitted Simpson of killing his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and waiter Ron Goldman, who was dropping off a pair of glasses a family member left at the restaurant.

The cheers from the throngs of Black observers who gathered outside the courthouse to hear the verdict were so loud they frightened horses carrying policemen who lined the streets to ward off possible trouble.

With discussions of white privilege and Black Lives Matter permeating the country these days, the 25th anniversary of the O.J. Simpson verdict is an appropriate time to touch upon that touchiest of all issues, race.

As we waited for the verdict to come in, I argued with a Rocky Mountain News colleague that there was no way Simpson would be convicted. Think about it, I said, when did Simpson look his guiltiest? When he was heading down the freeway ala “Driving Miss O.J.” after a warrant had been issued for his arrest.

Yet, folks lined the freeways cheering Simpson on and hollering, “Go, Juice, Go!”

After the verdict on Oct. 3, 1995, outraged Americans argued that a mostly Black jury had acquitted Simpson because he was black.

And so what? was my response. Convicting or freeing defendants based on the color of their skin is a centuries-long American tradition. Weren’t we all traumatized when Tom Robinson was found guilty in “To Kill A Mockingbird?”

A few months ago, I watched the documentary “O.J.: Made in America.” It dwelled not only on the trial, but also on police brutality, which is such an ugly part of our history.

I never really understood the fear and resentment minorities have of the police until I traveled to Kansas in 1997 to interview folks about the upcoming Oklahoma City bombing trial in Denver. The Ryder truck used to blow up the federal building in OKC had been rented in Junction City, Kan. Two former Army soldiers stationed at nearby Fort Riley were charged with the crime.

I ended up giving a ride home to one of the people I interviewed. He was Black and by the time the evening was over I had a far different perspective on what should have been a simple ride through town. It was late at night and I made several “farmer stops,” where you lightly tap the brakes before sailing through the intersection.

“Hey, you went through that stop sign,” my passenger said the first time.

By the third rolling stop he was so riled up I pulled over, and demanded to know what was going on. Did he have a warrant out for his arrest?

No, he said, but he had previously been stopped by police when he did have outstanding warrants, usually involving traffic offenses and unpaid fines. That means a visit to city lockup and missing work, and the real possibility of losing a minimum-wage job and not being able to pay the latest fines.

Had I been familiar with the term “white privilege” at the time I might have thought this was a perfect example.

Peggy McIntosh, an associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, in 1988 wrote what is described as a groundbreaking essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Among the signs a person enjoys white privilege: Doing well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to your race.

Three decades later, Cory Collins, the senior writer for Teaching Tolerance, an education project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, followed up on the subject: “Having white privilege and recognizing it is not racist. But white privilege exists because of historic, enduring racism and biases.”

I had long prided myself on being fairly tolerant. When I worked in Gallup, N.M., didn’t I buy sand paintings from Navajos needing money for gas, although I already owned plenty of them? Didn’t I buy sandwiches when I went grocery shopping because the American Indians who followed me to my car often asked for money for food?

When I moved to Albuquerque, I lived for several months with a friend I met in Gallup. She was Mexican; her husband was Black. I slept in their 6-year-old daughter’s bed with the Strawberry Shortcake canopy until I had saved enough money to get my own place.

I didn’t really know a lot about O.J. Simpson until I watched the five-part documentary on him.

He didn’t think of himself as Black, whether he was running down the field with a football or through an airport as part of a Hertz commercial.

There would be no standing shoulder to shoulder with other Black athletes when it came to social commentary, whether it was the boxing great who came to be known as Muhammad Ali who refused to be drafted, or Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who stood on a podium and thrust their black-gloved fists in the air during the national anthem at the 1968 Olympics.

“Simpson was the counter-revolutionary athlete,” former New York Times sportswriter Robert Lipsyte says in “O.J.: Made in America.”

“White America is looking for someone who can erase the threats of seemingly angry, principled athletes who are going to create a revolution in sports. O.J. made people feel good.”

That is, until he didn’t.

I was so busy patting myself on the back for having a bit of Atticus Finch in me that I failed to see that my streak of ugly was much deeper than I thought possible.

Like most Americans, I was horrified to watch a Minneapolis police officer kneel on the neck of George Floyd for more than eight minutes, killing the Black man. His death in May and others that followed galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement, and led to protests that continue to this day.

But I seethed at the plywood-covered windows and graffiti at the state Capitol in Denver and nearby buildings.

So I reached out to former Rocky reporter April Washington, who is Black. We worked side by side covering the Capitol for the Rocky, and have spent holidays with each other’s families.

I told her that I knew the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement, but something needed to shake me out of my obsession with the vandalism. Her comment worked:

“Black mothers live in a perpetual state of PTSD,” she said.

Maybe that explains the cheers outside a Los Angeles courthouse. O.J. Simpson might have been “seduced” by white society during college, as a childhood friend from the projects maintained. But in the end, he was a Black man in America who had beaten the system that October day.