So, about that holdout juror…

The Lindsay Clancy trial ended in a mistrial over one holdout juror. Everybody agrees on what happened; the dispute was whether she was criminally responsible given the postpartum psychosis defense. That’s not what this video is about.

I want to talk about a reaction I watched, where the racial makeup of the jury came up and you could see the wheels turning in real time when the answer wasn’t what was expected. That moment is the whole lesson.

My position, and it’s not the one people assume: acknowledging demographics is fine. People notice patterns, people have experiences, and I’ve never been the guy who pretends cultural differences don’t exist. Somebody having a feeling about me being black isn’t the problem. The problem is aggression, not opinion.

But when it becomes obsessive, when every outcome has to run through that filter before you know how to feel about it, you end up distraught over things that don’t involve you. You saw that happen. A guy took a position, he’s right or wrong on the merits, and you could stop there. Instead there was a whole recalculation.

There are many different walks of life and many different reasons people land where they land. That’s more complex than any filter can handle, and tying your mental well-being to it will make you miserable.