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Been a week since the Chauvin verdict and I don’t have to tell you that it's felt longer. In my quiet hours, I’ve thought about the minor miracle of the Chauvin jury. The diversity was or at least felt like an anomaly.
A few years ago I wrote about black juror exclusion in capital trials—how causally, routinely and systematically Black folk get blocked from jury service https://bit.ly/2PvgeFe A Black woman said she was struck even though her brother was a police officer.
Prosecutors believed that her father’s murder had instilled her with negative feelings about the law. Adding insult to injury, a white juror who explicitly stated that her brother’s murder would affect her ability to be fair was selected.
I finished the piece two years after starting it shook up on two counts: 1. prosecutors still rely upon crude racial stereotypes rooted racist ideas about Black intelligence (we are too emotion driven to be reasonable) to game the selection process.
2. the selection system punishes people for being exposed to and victimized by their proximity to violence. It was necessary to see a more diverse jury and the outcome at which it arrived.
But the selection system overall is still fraught with inequities that burden people who just want to exercise their rights within a democracy. Blaming Black folks for having less than favorable views of the law does not protect the integrity of our system.
