This same disgruntled white witness purportedly said
that the grand jury room looks "Like a Bernie Sanders rally"
or that, "These jurors were found from central casting.”
It is to be noted that grand juries draw their members
from the immediate surrounding community and in D.C. where
the population is majority black, the grand jury that
Mueller is using is composed of 11 minorities out of a total
of 20 persons.
Now think about this: This white witness said that
there was only, "One other white male in the room and that
was the prosecutor."
Can't you just feel his angst? This bugged-eyed white
witness was both seemingly amazed and concerned or maybe
even frightened that he was only one of two white males in a
room full of "those people."
Taking his observations from a vantage point of white
privilege, this beleaguered male was taken out of his
comfort zone and placed in a situation in which he was the
minority; and probably being a minority for the first time
in his life... and he did not like it one bit!
This white witness was, for a moment, thrust from his
position of entitlements and perks and privileges due to his
white skin and America's legal cocooning of those privileges
initially designed for white males in particular.
To be placed as a white male minority in a sea of
brown and black people was uncomfortable to this witness and
from his statements one can infer that somehow such a
composition of grand jurors would mean that they are not
favorable to Trump.
Oh? Nothing was said about their ability to take an
oath of office and to be fair and to hear and see the
evidence and make a decision according to their life
experiences and the instructions of the law.
No, the image that will be put out to the general media
is that Bob Mueller, the special prosecutor, is stacking the
deck against President Trump by having these so-called
liberal, black people decide against Trump!
Isn't it always amazing about the gall of certain white
people when they are placed in situations by which or in
which they are not the puppet masters but must patiently
wait for the acts of those "other people" to decide
something?
This white witness is very comfortable complaining
about what he may perceive as biases against his fellow,
white citizenry but he has no clue or historical knowledge
about the reverses of this same grand jury or legal system
in America.
One of the most sordid times in the history of
American jurisprudence has been and still is in some cases,
the total lack of due process (fairness) and justice that
was not meted out to people of color in courts across the
land and especially so in the South.
How many tens of thousands (that we know of) black
people were wrongly accused and put to death, lynched or
imprisoned due to a grand jury hearing the biased testimony
of prejudiced white people while those black people had no
recourse or appeal from such mean-spirited and race-baited
trials?
What historian could have enough books to fill the
pages of the gross miscarriages of justice that black people
daily faced in their centuries-old struggle to make America
work for them via the court, the judges and the all white
grand juries?
You could run 24/7 specials on the gross injustices
done to people of color via juries who did not think blacks
had any rights to be respected (The Dred Scott decision) and
as such those oppressed people were routinely and
systematically denied medical care, housing, jobs, travel
rights, marriage rights, voting rights and access to basic
rights to get a foundational education.
No, the above did not cross this white witness's
mind. He did not give a second thought to those deprivations
since he was not under the nail boot of those raw decisions.
He only saw that he was not in the driver's seat and that
did not make him happy in the least.
He further did not understand the limited role of a
grand jury which is only to present indictments while the
final fate of a defendant is determined by a judge or a
sworn jury.
How wonderful it could and would have been if black
people from the time that they arrived in ships hundreds of
years ago could have been afforded basic human decency and
fairness in their plight as chattel and slaves.
No, this white male witness, whom I shall now name as,
"Mr. White America" saw only himself greedily eating all of
the goodies that America offered to those who voluntarily
came to its shores as immigrants or indentured servants.
If you were black, Indian, brown or poor, your designation
was, "other" and as we know, "others" do not sit at the
grownup's table and equally partake in the conversations.
Rather, our Mr. White America seemingly took offense
that justice could be colored with a crayon other than white
and that black and brown crayons were now coloring in the
pages of America judicial history via the Mueller
investigation.
Our Mr. White America was forced (albeit for only a
brief moment), when he was a witness in that room with the
"only other white male", to come to terms that justice is
supposed to be color blind and regardless that if all of the
twenty persons on that grand jury were black, that should
not make a wit of difference in justice weighing the scales
evenly, even if your last name may be Trump.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at tolliver@juno.com
|