Color: Essays on Race, Family, and History

The 13th Juror

The 13th Juror Life rarely confirms one’s preoccupations, but last summer , after three successful evasions of jury duty, I finally had to produce myself for jury selection. It was not in New York City—where everything teems with intrigue and humanity— but in a small town in upstate New York, with a college and a well-known university, where if people do not always know one another, they do know someone, down the hill or at the shopping mall, who can attest to their child’s shoe size. The town is, in the old adage, a good place to raise one’s kids and oneself. And yet it has its problems: the schools are good, but poor children do not do as well as those with wealth. And there is much discussion—by supposed people of goodwilll— about the value of tracking, with the successful, by and large, 85 supporting their privilege, while the others—spurned and voiceless—grow increasingly disaffiliated and sullen. Still, Ithaca is a good town for America, and I do not mean this facetiously. I have witnessed the justice system in other less tranquil places: I grew up in Harlem; and, as my wife reminds me, I am the only black male she knows who has not been falsely arrested (or at least placed under suspicion) by the police. I really do not know why I have been so lucky; my brother certainly saw more than his fill of the justice system. Indeed, at age six, Paul had his first run-in with a cop: someone had her wallet stolen; my brother was convenient; he was also young and black. However cogent his small protestations, Paul was subsequently detained at the police station until my father arrived . Can you imagine being in police custody, at age six? From that moment on, my brother never liked the police. Indeed, I recall how he would always say, his contempt seemingly bottomless, “See the City’s finest. They love to help you.” And then his body would tighten, the rage seeming to harken from a depth prehistoric. “I’d kill those white motherfuckers if I could,” he would say. Paul would later die of alcoholism, in a tale too dreary to recount here, but I can’t help thinking that his fate, however embrionically, was sealed in that first police encounter. In Ithaca, where I live and teach, such things rarely happen . It is a university town, and for that reason the police are disposed to treat the citizens with respect: the police know for what they are paid and by whom. The police in New York City realize the same thing: they are paid to keep order, which means, if you live in Harlem, the South Bronx, or BedfordStyvesant , then you are always suspect. But in Ithaca, New York, the police and the court well understand the community in which they reside. If you are called for jury duty and are a college teacher, they appreciate that a professor cannot easily miss weeks of classes: students pay to learn about litera86 c o l o r ture from a specialist; a university—no matter how rich it is— does not have spare scholars available for any calamity. And so, in Ithaca at least, the faculty are routinely excused from jury duty during the academic term, from September to June; and I, through luck and bureaucratic caprice, had evaded “the call” for three years. I, unlike many, did not mind the obligation to serve as a juror. I welcomed it. As someone who had always been interested in human psychology and our fragile human attempts at community, participating in the justice system possessed obvious attractions. I would see how people came to be judged in a small town; I would witness the complex—albeit often difficult—deliberations of human beings as they tried to understand the actions of another; and I would have the opportunity to see if I, as a participant, could act judiciously. A trial in a small town—despite the general degradation of American institutions—is a miraculous paean to democracy , one that would make the Founding Fathers proud. The jury I was to serve upon was asked to adjudicate a case involving a young woman accused of driving while intoxicated. The woman had recently been divorced, and she had other attendant problems—including a dislike for authority, which her...