Pat Buchanan's Worst Nightmare

This past week I fullfilled one of my civic duties by showing up for jury duty. I had to serve only one day, and I didn't get seated on a jury (I never have managed that), so I spent the entire day in the Jury Assembly Room with about 150 other Los Angelenos chatting, reading, using one of the four computers with pay-by-the-hour internet access (we've been promised free wi-fi next year) and pretty much amusing myself for eight hours.

I'm reasonably certain Pat Buchanan wouldn't have enjoyed himself as much as I did. You see, as a white, Anglo 61-year-old woman, I was very definitely in the minority. The place was packed with people with Spanish, or Asian, or Armenian surnames, and all of them were citizens.

I had a hunch that the jury pool (at least for that day) was pretty reflective of the reality in Los Angeles County, so I did a little checking. It seems my hunch was correct. Here are some figures from the US Census Bureau for the Los Angeles area:

Population, 2006 estimate 9,948,081

White persons, percent, 2005 (a) 74.1%

Black persons, percent, 2005 (a) 9.7%

American Indian and Alaska Native persons, percent, 2005 (a) 1.1%

Persons reporting two or more races, percent, 2005 1.7%

Asian persons, percent, 2005 (a) 13.1%

Persons of Hispanic or Latino origin, percent, 2005 (b) 46.8%

(a) Includes persons reporting only one race.
(b) Hispanics may be of any race, so also are included in applicable race categories.

White persons not Hispanic, percent, 2005 29.5%

The notes for (a) and (b) are important because they do remind us that race and ethnicity are not the same thing, although that fact hardly matters to Buchanan, et al.

Here's the really important part, however. All but one of those called for duty on Tuesday showed up (I overheard the jury room assistant advising her boss of that fact). Many of us won't be paid for that day, knew it, and still came. That's what good citizens do, regardless of their background. I would imagine that many of those present were native born children of immigrant parents (legal or illegal), but I know that at least three were themselves immigrants who qualified for citizenship under the last amnesty.

And if they would blow a day's pay to show up for jury duty, they also just might show up to vote.

Chew on that, Mr. Buchanan.