In more serious news...

Hip-Hop Wired has been all over the Oscar Grant murder trial. As noted here, no Black jurors have been selected in the trial of his shooting death, where Johannes Mehserle, a former Bay Area Rapid Transit official, and a current White guy, is accused of the New Year's Day 2009 killing. I may be wrong, but I thought the jury pool was supposed to be reflective of the demographics of the area where the trial is supposed to take place. I also think that there just might be a Black guy or two in Los Angeles (11.2% of the population, according to the Census Bureau). Would it have been too much to take away one White guy and have one Black guy??

The deal is, in situations like these, where a White person harms or kills a Black person, Blacks are usually excluded from the jury pool, because they are the ones who are most likely to say that the cannot separate race from the conditions of the crime. Now I understand that not EVERY White-Black conflict is racially motivated, but is it a stretch to assume that some are? There would be no point of a "hate crime" if that wasn't the case. So if that is the case, why should race ALWAYS be excluded? That can create a loss of objectivity at times (read: White dudes getting reduced time, if any). Now I understand where the hate crime can be overdoing it; if you hate someone to kill them, your bias on them because of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. doesn't really matter. Hate in that situation is hate. In this situation, if it can be determined that he had a negative bias toward a guy because of his race which prompted him to reach for the gun instead of the taser, I think that race should be a factor. Excluding a Black person from the jury pool because of that thought is not fair. I don't know how the questions are answered, but maybe if they were put so eloquently like yours truly, there would be more Blacks in the jury pool...

...or maybe not. As The New York Times reported last week, a new study by the Equal Justice Initiative determined that Blacks and other minorities were excluded from juries in the South (shocker!), for a number of reasons, like:

Seeming "arrogant" and "vocal."

Not appearing to be "sophisticated."

Looking "like a drug dealer."

If you don't believe me, scour the study yourself. There's a find option there, and the drug dealer reference is on page 17. Here's another cute excerpt:

"For example, in Albert Jefferson’s capital trial in Chambers County, Alabama, prosecutors segregated potential jurors into lists titled “strong,” “medium,” “weak,” and “black,” and then struck all 26 African Americans on the black list. The trial judge found insufficient evidence of racial bias. Mr. Jefferson was tried by an all-white jury and sentenced to death."

Do I really need to type more?

Segregated jury pools: a reason why...America is Racist!