Jury Duty, Day 1
So the first thing they do after herding you into the courtroom for jury selection is to call in interpreters for the Cantonese and Spanish-speakers in the jury pool. The judge asks anyone who is not comfortable with their English proficiency to come forward, and he dismisses them.
Most of the 20 or so people who were dismissed were Cantonese-speaking, and the rest were Spanish- or Russian-speaking. It seemed ironic that suddenly I was in a place where the "dang illegal alien" types invading our country and sucking tax dollars and refusing to learn "the language" were suddenly not those !Mexican wetbacks!--the short, dark, shifty-eyed mutes that most white people I knew in Texas resented so much for having the privilege of bilingual social services and voter ballots--but people from my ethnic group.
A cloud of neurosis descended over me, and I wondered if the white people in the courtroom silently resented the Chinese, whose non-English proficient numbers are so prevalent in San Francisco that the city provided an interpreter for them. I wondered if the white people in the room looked at me and assumed that the only difference between me and the Cantonese-speakers lined up at the clerk's desk waiting to be dismissed is that I was cooperative enough to learn English as a second language. I also felt a twinge of gratefulness to the few Spanish speakers present for diluting some of the resentment that I imagined, because surely the white people would spread their xenophobia among the various ethnic groups, not just among the rude Cantonese ladies who push white people out of the way on the bus and at the market.
The then there were the chairs. Why was the judge so obsessively apologetic about the chairs? We were told many people wouldn't get chairs because they overfilled the courtroom intentionally. About 30 of us were standing, but none of us looked overburdened with it. The judge kept apologizing for the inconvenience, as if it were some essential facility whose absence was a health matter, like not having any toilets or something. It's just chairs, for Christ sake. Are we so spoiled that we feel entitled to arrive someplace and automatically have a chair to sit in? If I'd had a chair, I would have looked to see if there were any old or infirm-looking people to offer my seat to. It was a room full of able-bodied people who could bear their own weight on their feet for an hour or two. It's okay, we can stand, your Honor.
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Just like on TV, the courtroom bailiff slept at his desk in the corner.
Most of the 20 or so people who were dismissed were Cantonese-speaking, and the rest were Spanish- or Russian-speaking. It seemed ironic that suddenly I was in a place where the "dang illegal alien" types invading our country and sucking tax dollars and refusing to learn "the language" were suddenly not those !Mexican wetbacks!--the short, dark, shifty-eyed mutes that most white people I knew in Texas resented so much for having the privilege of bilingual social services and voter ballots--but people from my ethnic group.
A cloud of neurosis descended over me, and I wondered if the white people in the courtroom silently resented the Chinese, whose non-English proficient numbers are so prevalent in San Francisco that the city provided an interpreter for them. I wondered if the white people in the room looked at me and assumed that the only difference between me and the Cantonese-speakers lined up at the clerk's desk waiting to be dismissed is that I was cooperative enough to learn English as a second language. I also felt a twinge of gratefulness to the few Spanish speakers present for diluting some of the resentment that I imagined, because surely the white people would spread their xenophobia among the various ethnic groups, not just among the rude Cantonese ladies who push white people out of the way on the bus and at the market.
The then there were the chairs. Why was the judge so obsessively apologetic about the chairs? We were told many people wouldn't get chairs because they overfilled the courtroom intentionally. About 30 of us were standing, but none of us looked overburdened with it. The judge kept apologizing for the inconvenience, as if it were some essential facility whose absence was a health matter, like not having any toilets or something. It's just chairs, for Christ sake. Are we so spoiled that we feel entitled to arrive someplace and automatically have a chair to sit in? If I'd had a chair, I would have looked to see if there were any old or infirm-looking people to offer my seat to. It was a room full of able-bodied people who could bear their own weight on their feet for an hour or two. It's okay, we can stand, your Honor.
============
Just like on TV, the courtroom bailiff slept at his desk in the corner.
posted by Justina at 11:12 PM
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