When we acted out the play “12 Angry Men”, I played the role of juror number ten. I played a Caucasian male born and raised in America, in who was instilled since a young age a racism and bigotry that grows more and more pronounced as he grows older. He is a man who has been nowhere and is going nowhere, and knows it deep inside himself. This man originally voted guilty, on the basis of his deeply seated racism, without considering other evidence. Constantly throughout the jury deliberation, he brings up his racial prejudice as if it was a solid foundation on which to condemn a possibly innocent teenager. While juror number ten undoubtedly hoped to peg the boy as guilty, the lack of evidence for the guilt of the suspect causes him, eventually, to see past his racism and to realize that it is morally incorrect to sentence a boy to die because you do not like the neighborhood he lives in. The evidence that eventually made this juror change his mind was not actually evidence for the court case, but evidence that no one in the room and no one else with a sense of decency would sentence a boy to death because of their own racism. When juror number ten saw that, he merely stayed silent for the rest of the trial, eventually voting “not guilty.” It is hopeful that in his life after that singular court case he will attempt to learn to overcome his racism and bigotry; however, this is doubtful.
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