Juror # 866389501 - race: white

I got a jury summons today. Call-in, for June, by which time I will have completely forgotten everything about it and will spend a few gut-wrenching days worrying that the federal government is going to come to my door and take me away to be locked up in a prison for nonconformists because I forgot to call. Recently I had put my contempt for the stupid things written on government forms on the backburner, but I just filled out the jury summons questionnaire and it all came flooding back, began boiling, if you will, to avoid a mixed metaphor. There are so many things wrong with the summons and questionnaire that you will think I am just splitting hairs if I list them all. You would probably be right; I lose more and more patience with both the government and stupidity with every passing minute and am un-inclined to give either one any benefit of the doubt. The icing on the cake is that I, in my civic duty, have been reduced to a number and a barcode – every patriot’s dream.

They make you fill out your race on the questionnaire. Well, first they make you answer whether or not you are a citizen and whether or not you are over 18 which is proof of their incompetence because why the hell would they be sending jury summons’ to someone who is neither a citizen nor over 18. But then they make you fill out your race. It’s a weird policy of mine to never fill out the race section of these bubble-in forms because (I’ll admit ignorance here) I am never certain of exactly what they mean by race (white is a race?), and because it annoys me that they ask this question because the only two things it could possibly be used for are a) their own curiosity which is a waste of my time, and b) some sort of discrimination (most probably to screw over the whites and to give preference to minorities). Usually these sections are optional and so I can go on my way feeling as though I have stuck it to the man in my own small way. On the jury summons questionnaire, the race section is mandatory. Their explanation is this:

“Federal law requires you as a prospective juror to indicate your race. This answer is required solely to avoid discrimination in juror selection and has absolutely no bearing on qualifications for jury service. By answering this question you help the federal court check and observe the juror selection process so that discrimination cannot occur. In this way the federal court can fulfill the policy of the United States, which is to provide jurors who are randomly selected from a fair cross section of the community.”

There is so much wrong with this explanation that I almost give up on it, but let’s face it, this is me and I have to blather. First of all, I cannot fathom what kind of reasoning allows that they have to KNOW your race in order to AVOID discrimination. This is such a perfect example of how the people and the government (which are supposed to be the same thing but have never been farther from it) find a problem and try to fix it by creating an even worse problem. It’s Einstein’s whole “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” concept, except that apparently we are going to try to until we run ourselves into the ground. Let’s backtrack…wouldn’t it be much simpler, and make much more sense, if they DIDN’T know your race and so could pick jurors based on their actual qualifications and the randomness that is supposed to be involved in the jury selection process?

But no, the government has redefined discrimination. What they mean in saying “to avoid discrimination,” is that they are going to ensure that there are not too many white guy jurors beating up on criminals. What they mean by “to avoid discrimination” is that they are in fact going to discriminate based on race so that they have an even distribution of races within a jury. Why didn’t they just say so? Discrimination is “the act of distinguishing differences,” according to Webster who is, I think, still considered an expert by both liberals and conservatives. So, the government is in fact discriminating in order to have jurors of multiple races. Discrimination is also “a showing of partiality or prejudice in treatment.” By specifically choosing, for example, 1 white guy, 1 black guy, and 1 Hispanic guy, instead of 3 white guys, isn’t the court showing partiality? I’m not arguing whether or not the practice of having an even distribution of races within a jury is the right thing to do. Rather, I am arguing against the way the government and all stupid organizations use buzz words to get away with doing whatever they want. DISCRIMINATION is bad. Thus, if the mandatory race section of the questionnaire is “to avoid discrimination,” it must be good.

Which leads me to my personal favorite buzz word FAIR. I am saddened and disheartened (and I’m not being sarcastic in either of these two words) that our JUSTICE SYSTEM is using the word “fair” as justification for their actions. What the hell is a “fair” cross section, anyway? The implication of a cross section of a population is that the percentage of races represented within the cross section is proportional to the percentage of these races within the entire population. How do you make this fair or unfair? But fairness…we all want fairness, right? Thus it must logically follow that, if the race section of the questionnaire ensures fairness, it is a good thing. This is not just semantics. This is not just me bashing the incompetent, but probably relatively innocent writer of the questionnaire because I am a crazy English major who has spent the last four years dissecting the way people should and shouldn’t write. I honestly believe that misused language supporting faulty reasoning is a technique for pulling the wool over peoples’ eyes and that peoples’ acceptance of this technique leads to the demise of democracy. Do I really care about the race section of the jury summons questionnaire? Not a hoot. It took me two seconds to bubble in “white,” I got over the fact that I hate filling out race sections and I moved on. Please see that that is not the issue, it was only my springboard.

There is a separate box that asks you to check yes or no to the question, “are you Hispanic?” I have no idea why they ask this question. But can you IMAGINE the outrage if they instead asked you to check yes or no if you are white. Even if they were using the question to screw over all the white people, the whole world would be up in arms over such a racist question. Racism in this country is misused in the same way as discrimination is misused, not as it pertains to all people across the board, but only as it pertains to majorities screwing over minorities. When the discrimination, or racism, is in the other direction, everyone averts their eyes.

I have more, but this blog is getting too long. I’m still saving the notice from the tax commissioner to all law abiding citizens that was on my federal tax form this year (and probably yours too, you were just smart enough not to read it). I’ll admit that I almost forgave the jury summons people because the envelope that I had to send my questionnaire back in was one of those ones that tastes faintly of watermelon instead of the kind that makes you think of public toilet seats. But then I flipped the envelope over and saw that I had to pay postage. As a potential juror fulfilling my honorable civic duty, apparently they still see me as a regular old chump who has to pay postage. Big surprise!

A story

The sun was brisk and burning on Jonas’ shoulders as he bent over his work in the clay-ridden soil that consumed this long coastal valley. He leaned up to stretch his sore back, taking in the thirty acres that were his life and had been his father’s life before him.

“A farmer can’t be faint of heart,” his grandfather had once told him, “But the land repays you, boy, if you give it all you’ve got.” Jonas had learned that a farmer’s payment had little to do with monetary wealth, but he had come to consider his grandfather’s words truth. With just he and his wife, Annie, on the farm, their pains were more than enough for them both. As he knelt over his work, Jonas heard a faint breeze toil gently around the tall grasses as though it was speaking to him. It filled his spirit with the strength he needed to finish the field.

Jonas didn’t hear about the plans to build Highway 57 through town until a man wearing a black suit and pasty white skin knocked on his door and asked for the thirteen acres they would require through his fields.

“No, thank you,” Jonas told him and shut the door. But the man returned with more government people in more expensive suits who cajoled and preached and threatened him. Finally when the men were nearly defeated by Jonas’ obstinate refusal, one of them in the back stepped forward waving a paper like a victory banner in Jonas’ face. At the top of the page was printed, in bold, swirling font, “5th AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.” These were pages and pages of explanation about how and why the government could take Jonas’ land and they gave him a week to read them. Jonas read every word. The government men returned in a jovial mood, willing to be friends now that Jonas had surely come around, even if he had been rude and unaccommodating at first.

“Public good,” the man in the black suit misquoted, and nodded his head, certain that now finally, Jonas understood their altruism. But Jonas still didn’t understand. It hadn’t been for the public good, for example, when Eastern Port had been attacked from without and the government hadn’t sent the military because it might incite war. The bombed wreckage of the three square miles around the port was like a dark hole burned out of the country’s landscape and it whispered across the nation the message that they hadn’t until then been able to convince the public of. It whispered that the government’s modern role was regulation, not protection. And Jonas suspected that the Constitution was as good as lost in the wreckage.

“Your signature, sir,” said the official, clearing his throat, and Jonas’ hand, signing away the deed to his grandfather’s land, didn’t shake.

“Drought,” he told himself. “The drought of ’74 dried up the entire farm, not just thirteen acres.” The only solution then had been to work harder. And Jonas did work harder, now, as he had then, until the exhaust from the motors and the shaking ground from the incessant traffic permeated across the remainder of his land and the crops curled up into black rolls, like ashes, and the farm was ruined.

Jonas was 45.

“Only 45,” he said to his wife when he told her he’d have to get a job in town.

“Only 45,” he told himself the day he left his home and walked onto his first building site. And he put the thirty years he had devoted to the land behind him.

When Jonas was 47, he was allowed to become an equipment operator.

When he was 50, he became a mason.

By 55, he was foreman, and had never been paid as much money before. He tried not to notice the farm, overgrown, and still patched with black from the old ashes, and it wasn’t too painful because hard work was what he had been taught, and as long as he was doing that, and providing, he knew he had everything a man should have.

It was for the debt, at first, the national debt, that they raised the taxes.

And then the schools, because there were more kids now, and they were entitled to college, not just grade school.

The hospitals needed it next, but not the hospitals, really. The insurance companies needed it because healthcare was a right, not a privilege, but some people couldn’t afford it.

And this time, a tax-collector came to the door and waved a form in Jonas’ face.

“Wrong tax-bracket, sir,” he said, “You filled out the wrong form. You’re in the upper bracket now.” And Jonas found that this meant that he paid for twice as many doctor visits for people he didn’t know.

And then one day Annie died. Jonas’ Annie. And he finally knew what heartbreak was. The muscle inside him seemed to be ripping out of his chest like the roots of an ancient tree that has survived hurricane and blight, but finds – at the last – that time itself is more than it can bare. The tears fell down his face in rivulets, running the course of each work-worn wrinkle on each long cheek as he knelt by her coffin. For three days straight. Until, on the fourth day, his forehead resting on his arm against the coffin, he heard the preacher whispering to a sympathetic parishioner.

“They say this kind can be treated, if it’s caught fast enough,” the parishioner said, “But each day counts with these things.”

Jonas knew then that it wasn’t the cancer that had killed Annie. It had taken them eleven months to get her an appointment with an oncologist. When Jonas raised his head, his eyes were dry, even as he watched them lower the coffin into the ground. Foreign ground. Because family burials on private land were no longer legal.

Eventually, business moved away from that bustling city on to another, as business will. Route 57, that ran across Jonas’ thirteen acres, was all but abandoned. He watched people roll out of town. First the truckers and workers; then the homeowners and their families; then the business-owners and public officials. Each parade of cars fancier, shinier, than the one before. He recognized the tax-collector leaving in a convertible.

Jonas was left on what was left of his farm, supporting his countrymen through forced charity what he would have given them freely out of his own hand. And that was how it was. That each good, hardworking man worked for naught. That his neighbor – whom he would have liked to befriend – was ashamed to show him his face, for for each new motion of laziness and ineptitude that he committed, his neighbor worked harder and more futilely than before.

They called it kindness, fairness, humanism, that each man might live unconditionally granted the rights with which he was born. But it was just a more vicious kind of injustice.