It seems almost like deja vu, seeing all the clips of the O.J. Simpson trial on TV during this past week. The trial, which for better or worse, took its place in both history and pop culture, dragged on for almost one year.

Even if you wanted to escape it, you couldn’t. It was a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week analysis of DNA, Simpson’s love life, Johnnie Cocharan’s fancy suits and Marcia Clark’s hairstyles (should she go frizzy or straight — you be the judge).

Last week marked the sixth anniversary of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, and O.J.’s sixth year of desperate searching for the real killer.

O.J.’s been all over the news, not just in clips and retrospects, but he’s been partying all over the state of Florida with a very, very young blonde who’s obviously not too fazed by Simpson’s well-documented history of abusing women. I saw one picture of Simpson in a karaoke bar with a giant sombrero on his head.

And this is the man who became a political touchstone?

Whenever anyone thinks back about the Simpson case, the issue of race takes precedence over any other issue, pressing or otherwise.

It’s obvious why it does, the defense made the color of Simpson’s skin the crux of its case, while the prosecution had to at once figuratively embrace LAPD Detective Mark Furhman while trying to distance itself from him.

The fact that race became the major issue of the case offends me more than a little bit. While the Simpson case brought up issues that middle-class, white America ignores or avoids (i.e. racial profiling, discrimination against minorities by the police, the men and women who are supposed to protect all of us), Simpson wasn’t targeted by the LAPD because of his race.

In fact, the former Buffalo Bills running back had been distancing himself from the black community for years and years before the murder trial. His often-repeated refrain of “I’m not black; I’m O.J.” shows exactly where that man stood when it came to his heritage.

Also, it was reported that O.J. Simpson had a very healthy relationship with many members of the LAPD, which is definitely a conflict of interest when it’s considered how many times officers had to come to his residence to stop him from beating his wife.

O.J.’s becoming a martyr took attention away from the issue that should have been foremost on people’s minds, the issue that should have gained national prominence: domestic violence.

Whether you believe O.J. killed his wife Nicole Brown or not, there’s conclusive evidence (911 calls, witnesses, photos, etc.) that O.J. was a possessive, severely abusive man.

Sure, the issue of domestic abuse was broached. Media outlets incessantly played Nicole’s 911 tapes, and the prosecution tried to make it the main point of its case — of course, O.J. would have had a motive to kill her — he was incessantly jealous and violent.

For some reason, the domestic-violence issue never got the kind of play that the race issue (which was largely a fabrication by the defense) and the celebrity issue did.

There’s many possible reasons for this, the best explanation probably being that it was hard for the media and the general public to think of O.J. Simpson as a violent man who abused his wife, let alone killed her and her friend. He was a hero to millions and his public face was an amiable one.

Maybe Nicole Brown Simpson wasn’t the “right” woman to become the icon of the domestic-violence cause.

She wasn’t a college graduate. She never held a “real” job. She was, by many accounts, a California beach baby who liked to party and enjoyed the luxuries that came with being a superstar’s wife.

Even if this stereotype has some truth to it, Nicole Brown Simpson lived as a virtual prisoner in her own home, and many people believe she paid the ultimate price — her life — for falling in love with an abusive man.

That was the real story of the O.J. Simpson trial, one that was largely ignored in favor of the gloss and fluff that went with a celebrity trial. The Brown family tried to raise some awareness about domestic violence (remember the “angel pin” campaign?), but today people remember the absurdity of the trial, the media circus. They don’t remember the victim’s suffering.

Nicole Brown Simpson deserved justice. The issue of domestic violence deserved to have been broached in a sincere way, not as a footnote to a historical embarrassment.

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Kate Kompas is a junior in journalism and mass communication. She is editor in chief of the Daily.