This is Code Switch from MPR, Race and Identity Remixed.

I'm Gene Demby and I want to talk to you guys about something I've been obsessed with

for a few weeks now.

A new 7.5 hour ESPN documentary about the OJ Simpson murder case called OJ Made in America.

It's directed by Ezra Edelman and we're going to hear from Ezra shortly.

But before we do all that, I just want to talk to you guys about what's fascinating to

me about what this documentary explores about OJ Simpson, the juice.

OJ Made in America is the strange, fascinating, disturbing story of OJ's relationship to

his blackness.

And it suggests that for many years, he did not want the public to see him as black.

If you know anything about the OJ case, beyond the fact that two white people were killed,

OJ was tried and acquitted, you know that race has something to do with it.

But OJ's relationship to race as the documentary suggests is really, really complicated.

To understand that, we need to go way back before the so-called trial of the century, before

June 17, 1994, when he was in that white Ford Bronco being chased by cops at slow speed

for several hours.

Before he even met a beautiful 18 year old blonde woman named Nicole Brown at a Beverly Hills

Nightclub.

Nearly two decades before all of this, OJ Simpson was a beloved sports hero in a celebrity,

a respected brand, a household name, the guy in the Hertz car commercials, at a time

when it was hard to imagine a black man as the face for big name products on national

TV.

...