As I sat at my desk, watching social cohesion further rupture on social media at the thought of a second Trump presidency, I took solace in a 1950s American classic: 12 Angry Men. The premise of the movie is predicated on finding justice and understanding within the nuances of human nature—as 12 jurors deliberate the life of an 18-year-old boy with only death on their minds. This movie, recommended by my professor Nasser Hussain, provided me with clarity on how to approach a divided modern-day discourse. A pivotal scene in the film features juror #10—played by Ed Begley—espousing his racist ideology as one by one, each juror firmly and quietly stands opposed to him, ignoring the juror until his own prejudice silences him. What does the quiet resistance of the rest of the jurors say? Despite vehement disagreement on the verdict and differences in lived experiences, religion, or creed in the room, they eventually come to understand, with the obstinacy of juror #8, that their verdict would not be influenced by the whims of overt discrimination and implicit biases. Nevertheless, on the edge of violence multiple times, the jurors come to value the preservation of a civil atmosphere. Our country too must bear this moral obligation and recognize the stakes at hand while we are still free to do so.
Throughout the movie, 12 Angry Men is a microcosm of the American collective consciousness. The film does not stray from magnifying the pitfalls of the current ethos of the late 1950s—with each juror representing the culture’s good, bad, and ugly. From racism to rationalism, this movie parallels the American social fabric ripping at its seams with the death of Emmett Till and the Montgomery bus boycotts. Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the pro-segregation movement was kept alive for more than a decade through the collective majority aimed to dismantle institutional prejudice. As pundits and politicians speak with rose-colored glasses about a future nation cleansed of all types of inequality and state democracy as an antidote to their ambiguous blueprint, it would alarm the likes of Alexis de Tocqueville. Tocqueville, a 19th-century aristocrat, saw the wonders of democratic ideals promoting civic virtues and a strong sense of individualism. Yet, its perils were on the horizon. The notion of democracy—the will of the majority—at its roots crumbles from social and cultural pressures leading to an overbearing collective force from the ruling majority to conform or be ostracized. Tocqueville is fortunate to dissent and diversity of thought are indispensable facets of the American milieu. The lone powerful dissent of juror #8, played by Henry Fonda, is emblematic of the brave voices upholding Western jurisprudence’s long struggle against America’s institutional prejudice. Even today, in juror #8’s words, it has become commonplace that, “wherever you run into it, prejudice always obscures the truth.”
Furthermore, today we are witnessing a two-sided political impasse fueled by mainstream demagoguery, where critical issues are voiced by ego masked as altruism and moral superiority—threatening the underpinnings of the freedom that makes civil discourse possible.
To elucidate on de Tocqueville’s idea, once individuation is crowded out by collective conformity, the abandonment of what’s at risk ceases to exist. The Founding Fathers sat for hours fiercely debating the inner workings of our federal government, preserving the thread of fate that held a vulnerable and weak Union.
America’s inception and foundation were mired with the presence of a massive divergence on the issue of slavery. The Founding Fathers too succumbed to their ambivalence towards slavery, persuaded by the dominant ideology of the inferiority of Black people—physically and mentally. The Founding Fathers are, unfortunately, some of the many leaders who did not fully comprehend the cultural and political stakes of upholding a treacherous institution. While the scourges of the Three-Fifths Compromise and the perpetuation of slavery cannot be dismissed, there is a silver lining. Meet Thomas Jefferson.
His reputation of penning the Declaration of Independence, and being a champion of liberty, is sullied by his complicated legacy with slavery. Jefferson too succumbed to his ambivalence towards slavery, as he owned 600 slaves. His mind teetered on the implications of slavery and what he perceived as an intellectual absence among African Americans. Yet, only one Black man has challenged his position—Benjamin Banneker. Thomas Jefferson’s own juror #8 lambasted his ownership of slaves as being kept in, “groaning captivity and cruel oppression,” and the philosophical underpinnings of the system, contradicting his values of the same words he wrote 15 years earlier. Juror #8’s courage in the film is symbolic of the American spirit throughout the 1850s and 1950s to actively question the institutional status quo. The words of Patrick Henry, “Give me liberty or give me death,” resonates with those throughout America’s past risking death for a precarious pursuit of liberty.
The final scene of the movie depicts juror #3, played by Lee J. Cobb, hearing the echo of the chamber he creates throughout the film and letting go of his subconscious impulses that prevent the boy from being sentenced to death. This realization wouldn’t have been possible without the 11 jurors’ collective agreement on the stakes—just like the Montgomery bus boycotters and antebellum abolitionists’ steadfast agreement of their cause. As every passing moment becomes history, contemporary culture seeks to revise history on its own demands, distilling history into a zero-sum game, fictitious binaries, and silencing resistance that seeks to dethrone its self-purported ideology. If both sides agreed to put aside their biases and come together as a society, then they could take the fire of their rage and use it to drive darkness out of the vestibules of progress.
By Alejandro Nina Duran
