Correction: Jury pools for state courts in Arkansas are drawn from registered voters, licensed drivers and those with state-issued identification cards. This column refers to a rumored reluctance of people to register to vote out of fear they will be called to jury duty.
So Dre, my history-buff husband, wanted to see Selma, the new movie based on the 1965 voting rights marches in Alabama.
I felt it was a movie we shouldn't miss, but I felt a bit reluctant to go.
Big confession here: I tend to cringe at the thought of seeing movies depicting the struggles of black people in the civil rights era or before. I'm afraid of what I'll feel. Afraid that as a black person I might be tempted to be angry ... and not so much lash out with that anger, but simmer in it. Be rendered stagnant by it. Compromise my health and shorten my life with it. (I still haven't brought myself to see 12 Years a Slave.) I've got too many relatives (by blood and marriage), friends, acquaintances, co-workers, neighbors, readers and associates of other races and creeds to be giving anybody the side-eye because of the hue of his skin.
I kept my reluctance to myself and squelched it. On a recent Saturday, we hit the theater. And I do agree with Facebook friends and others who have said Selma -- which has stirred controversies I won't discuss here -- is a must-see.
It especially deserves to be seen by a special group of people: those who can vote, but don't. The more I watched the movie, the more I began to wish that anyone of any color who refuses to vote could be shanghaied and dragged to see it. I saw where, in the 2014 elections, nationwide voter turnout among those eligible to vote was just 36.4 percent -- a 72-year low according to Time magazine.
One reason said to be why people don't vote: They don't want to do jury duty. I've done jury duty, and yep, there are funner things to do. But I sat up in my seat when it was pointed out in Selma that denying a race of people the right to vote had resulted in juries that lacked diversity, and therefore, unfair acquittals of racially biased crooks who'd committed crimes against the disenfranchised race.
I also thought about Mama, the great-grandmother who helped raise Dre and whom I did not have the privilege to know. Dre and I are in possession of Mama's hard-won Louisiana voting card, which we should at least get off our duffs and have nicely framed or shadow-boxed.
Had Mama been alive, she might have reacted to the movie the same way as an elder who sat in the row in front of us. Her companion shushed her several times as victories were won during the movie and she exclaimed her enthusiasm. I wondered how many times this woman, also black and advanced enough in age to have suffered the harsh racial bias of the Jim Crow South, had been denied the right to vote and how she felt the first time she was able to exercise that right.
As I've stated in this space before, voting is a right we all should exercise. I'd almost call it an obligation. Watching Selma was enough to even make me ashamed of my tendency to want to skip the minor elections. Too many people suffered for the right to do what too many people now want to blow off.
Nonvoters aren't the only ones who'd benefit from seeing Selma. I can think of a few others, and I don't just mean those who harbor racist views.
• Anyone who believes in dispensing violence just for the "hell of it."
• Anyone who naively wants to put leaders and heroes on a pedestal, without seeing them as humans with all apropos warts, bumps, flaws and faults.
• Anyone who thinks that having the same goals as another party, but differences in how those goals should be met, simply can't work together ... especially those parties with common goals who refuse to work with another due to suspicion, egos, control issues and what I call fiefdom-ism.
• Anybody -- anybody -- who believes the late 20th-century introduction of Caller ID by phone companies is a bad idea.
• And certainly anyone tired of Hollywood's never-ending supply of Hot Tub Time Machine sequels and Wedding Ringer types. Now those are cringe-worthy.
Email:
hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style on 01/25/2015