Racism Running Rampant on the Airwaves
Note to Readers: My Gal and I are off on a little holiday next week. That does not necessarily mean there will be no new posts to read during the next week, things worth writing about pop up in all kinds of situations. It does mean I am going to feel free from the (admittedly self-imposed) requirement to post something every week, so there might not be any posts next week. If not, there definitely will be the following week, so do keep checking.
It has been hard to avoid reading accounts and opinions on the Lindsay Clancy murder case over the last month or more. You no doubt know it ended in a hung jury, and the ether seems to have decided that hung jury was the result of a single juror sticking to a vote of guilty of murder.
There are many things that I have read about this that appall me, but I am not here writing about any of that. I will say that I am glad I did not have to serve on that jury.
This is about what has happened since the trial ended. It appears that a number of jurors have been willing to go out and talk to the media about what happened at the trial and in the jury room, and that news organizations have been more than willing to put them on the air or print what they have to say.
So far as I can see, since this post-mistrial circus started, there has been a widespread albeit not unanimous belief among those reporting/commenting on it, that the supposed lone juror did a terrible thing in not allowing Clancy to be acquitted by reason of insanity. As things go in our contemporary culture, the people who believe that want him/her punished.
To put it differently, it seems to me that Ms. Clancy’s legal claim of being in a psychotic state when she (by her own admission) killed her three children has been taken up as a cause by much of the US’s (and western world’s) chattering classes, and they are unhappy that she was not acquitted outright.
Today I read an account of an interview done on the CBS show CBS Morning of Clancy juror Paula Devlin by TV talkperson Gayle King. It is worthy of note in this case that Ms. King is black.
Here, according to the WSJ, is part of the interchange between Ms. King and Ms. Devlin during the interview, which aired live the morning of Sept 11:
King: I’m curious about the jurors themselves, because we know it was nine women, three men. What was the age range? What was the racial makeup? I haven’t heard any of that. What was it?
Devlin: Seventy—70ish to 22, and one person of color, and then everybody else was white. A lot of the jurors had children.
King: One person of color—was the person of color a woman or a man?
Devlin: A man.
King: A man. Is the holdout juror a person of—a black man?
Devlin: Yes.
King: A black man is the holdout juror?
Devlin: Yes.
King: Well, I have to sit with that for just a second.
Let me start at the top with King’s question. Why is King curious to know about the age and racial make-up of the jury?
I can think of an answer, but let’s go first to her reaction when Devlin tells her the holdout juror was a black man.
Why does that cause King to pause? Why does she have to ‘sit with that’ for a second? In clearer language, why is she so clearly surprised?
I will give one answer to both questions: Ms. King is a racist. She operates under the belief that one’s views are largely determined by one’s demographic characteristics. Thus, it is critical to know the age, sex, racial profile of the jury in order to understand their decision.
She would, I expect, be appalled if someone – say me, for example – were to note how much black folks like fried chicken, or how clever are Asian people.
That sort of racism is….well, evil and appalling. But her view that the votes of the jurors would follow from their race, sex and age, there’s nothing appalling about that.
And, the thing is, a lot of racial, sexual, age, ethnic and other stereotypes have something real behind them. I would not be at all surprised if a careful survey of residents of the US found that black folks eat fried chicken and watermelon more often than do white folks on average. Neither would I be shocked to have any particular black person in the US tell me they hate fried chicken and never eat it. It is foolish to confuse proportions and percentages with universals, but people do it all the time.
It seems Ms. King had a clear expectation of how a black male on that Clancy jury would vote. Apparently the particular black male who was actually on that jury violated her expectation. It is impossible to say if Ms. King had contemplated or ever would contemplate the possibility that his vote had a lot to do with what he heard during the trial. Reality is complicated, and sometimes it just bites your expectations on the ass.
Coda: I will mention something else I think is obvious but that no one else seems to have said or written. There is no way to verify anything these blabbing jurors say. Jury deliberations are not recorded. And there are few more universal motivations for behaviour these days than the desire to be famous, however briefly. It is perfectly possible the holdout juror was a white chick. Hell, maybe there were two holdouts, but the jurors going on the TV shows know a lone holdout is a better story. We will never know.
Epilogue:
(I believe ‘coda’ is actually a musical term. True or not, I am grateful the English language has two terms for things that are added on at the end.)
I read deep into the comments on the WSJ piece from which I got the interview transcript above, after I had written my piece. One commenter suggested a somewhat different reason for Ms. King’s having to ‘sit with’ the info about the lone juror.
That is, Ms. King was preparing to vilify on air, even if only anonymously (and oh-so-subtly), the person who prevented Lindsay Clancy’s acquittal. Finding out it was a black person caused her cognitive dissonance. Person who voted guilty = bad. Person who is black = good. She did not know immediately how to respond in light of that.
I cannot dismiss that explanation for Ms. King’s reaction. If it is true, it still fits in with my view of racism as the key factor.