Republican Senator: Native American Jury Will Not Try White People Fairly? Racist? (VIDEO)

[egbertowillies]

When Republican politicians and portions of their Tea Party base are accused of being insensitive ethnically, culturally, by gender, by sexual preferences, or racially, more so than the public at large, they usually scream with righteous indignation. Yet they continue to overtly display these attitudes both from constituents in their town hall meetings as well as in their legislations.

Last week, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was one of 22 Republican male Senators that voted against the Violence Against Women Act. During a town hall meeting in Indianola, Iowa, Senator Grassley did not disappoint. He was able to justify his no vote on the Violence Against Women Act in stark racist terms.

Grassley in his own words (ThinkProgess)

One provision that non-Native Americans can be tried in tribal court. And why is that a big thing? Because of the constitutionality of it, for two reasons. One, you know how the law is, that if you have a jury, the jury is supposed to be a reflection of society. [...] So you get non-Indians, let me say to make it easy, you get non-Indians going into a reservation and violating a woman. They need to be prosecuted. They aren’t prosecuted. So the idea behind [VAWA] is we’ll try them in tribal court. But under the laws of our land, you got to have a jury that is a reflection of society as a whole, and on an Indian reservation, it’s going to be made up of Indians, right? So the non-Indian doesn’t get a fair trial.

VIDEO HERE

Of course in his frame of mind he was just stating a fact as he sees it; Native Americans are incapable of holding fair trials. In the Senator’s mind, could a Hispanic or Black jury hold a fair trial for a white person? Based on his assessment it is fair to infer that he does not believe so. Such is the mindset of many in his party that seem to be documented almost on a weekly basis.

That Grassley is a Senator creating and voting on laws that affect all Americans while having little knowledge of the constitution speaks volume of the caricature many elected politicians in Congress have become. ThinkProgress made the reality quite clear.

There is actually no requirement that juries reflect “society as a whole.” The Sixth Amendment requires juries to be drawn from the “State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed,” and Supreme Court decisions establish that criminal defendants also have a right to a jury which is “drawn from a fair cross section of the community,” where the trial court convenes to hear their case. But this does not entitle anyone to be tried by a jury that reflects the whole of American society.

In order to solve a problem one must acknowledge that there is a problem. When different perspectives are brought in, a Party can maintain relevancy. Because the Republican Party has become insular, it is unable to be introspective. Unchanged the Party’s demise is closely approaching.
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[midwest irish]

1. Hey senator

Check out this link



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_and_ethnic_discrimination_in_the_United_States

[dsc]

2. say for the sake of argument he is right

so what. Those reservations are sovereign states and we have no business telling them how to run their affairs, any more than we have the right to tell China how to run theirs. The solution is for white men to stay away from native women.

[Igel]

3. True.

On the other hand, I have heard outrage at the idea of a all-white jury sitting in judgment of a black man accused of assaulting a local woman.

It makes for some interesting asymmetries, that kind of comparison. Every justification of the black/white outrage just moves the asymmetry in perspectives one step along but they never eradicate it.

[dsc]

4. It depends greatly on how the all white jury comes about

If it comes about because the area has no blacks that is one thing. If it comes about because of systematic exclusion of blacks that is quite another. The reservation would be an example of the first case.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

5. What are his thoughts about the fairness of the American justice system towards native Americans

historically?