Room 1121, 111 Centre Street
On Tuesday, a number of us were gathered in a small room in city hall to watch television. We did what any television viewer does: clapped and cheered for the good guys, booed and laughed at the bad guys, and cried, shook, and sniffled during a Moment in History.
The event occurred on January 20, 2009, at 12:00 p.m., Eastern Standard Time.
In a graduate seminar I once took on Chinese historiography, words such as “event” and “occurrence” were prodded, sifted through, scratched not with the tip of a nail but with the shaft of a knife. What does it mean, asked the professor, to describe or to transcribe history? How does an event “occur”? By witness? Through imposition of will and determination? As a birth, as death? And what does it say about the describer or the transcriber when a word like “event” is used to point to massacre or genocide or assassination or famine, or to glory or transfer or change? The professor was unable to hide his excitement, already knowing how this class would respond, the answer or rather the lack of one written all over his face. And indeed, like true historians, not a single student could respond succinctly, producing instead more questions about the use of subtle euphemisms in a text, or blatant moral passions in a speech, or attempts at objectivity in reportage even while fully acknowledging objectivity’s limits.
It is a monumental event in our history. It is a momentous event. It is an uplifting event.
When the inauguration speech was over, Room 1121 was quiet. Nobody sang. Nobody danced or shook his neighbor’s hand. We were strangers to one another, idling in a federal building on 111 Centre Street to be judged whether we were capable of passing judgment. Later, in a cavernous courtroom where microphones had to be used, I thought constantly of my seat back in the television room, where I had bitten my lip to keep the sobs in check, where my torso shook from the effort to be still, where the echoes of the televisions in the other rooms colored the event surreally and anticlimactically. But inside this courtroom for jury selection, drained by the emotion of witnessing History occur, I had to keep my eyes dry and hard, my brow furrowed, and my face, reddening once during a moment of impotence, ascowl. In small sans-serif lettering, “In God We Trust” had been pressed like a swatted fly onto the wall behind the judge’s bench. The defendant was a young African American male. The crime in question had occurred last year. We had not been told what time of day or where, only that three witnesses would testify, all of them police officers. The facts, the judge intoned, would be presented to the jury one by one, and the jury would listen to these facts without bias and then prepare an unbiased verdict. “Is there anybody who cannot adhere to these rules?” he asked.
It was here when my face reddened. My arm twitched, but I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t raise my hand, that I did not voice my objection to the idea of trying a young man, ashamed that in keeping my hand at my side I had given in to the system—I had started wondering what it would be like to be impartial, to see an event as just that, something that had happened.
Obama is the event of a lifetime.
Several things had been asked of us in the jury box: Sit, stand, raise your right hand, swear that you’ll tell the truth, the whole truth, promise that you will convict or acquit based on the evidence provided—no matter your biases, no matter your personal experiences with the subject matter, no matter the language with which the defense or the prosecution will use to sway you. Do you promise? Sit.
One friend likes to argue the law with the judge, another argues how the system is fundamentally flawed and biased against people of color, while yet another baldly states “I hate cops.” I was waiting for somebody to speak up like that in my group, but all of them promised—guaranteed—that they would judge the case with an impartial eye. I was astonished, a little impressed, and a lot skeptical, which made me confident that I could express my objection in the least objectionable way possible, because no matter how politely I framed my words (by nature, and to my chagrin, I am a polite person), my bias, raised from within this most impartial group, would be loud and clear.
So when it was my turn to tell a story, I recounted the one about my family having been robbed twenty years ago and the subsequent negative experience with the police who’d handled the matter—that is, we were angry that the gang had never been caught. The lawyer murmured some sympathy, then asked me if I could be impartial to the police officers who would testify in this trial. My answer was: I can’t promise, but I will try. The lawyer sighed. “We don’t want our pilot to say, ‘I’ll try to land this plane.’ This courtroom here is the plane. You are the pilot. We are relying on you to safely land this plane. So please answer this question with a yes or a no: do you promise to be impartial to the facts, to the witnesses, and to the events so described?”
“My answer is the same,” I said. “I will try, but I can’t promise.”
History is a single event, branching off into beforeshocks and aftershocks of new and old experiences. History is a repeated event. History is the result of change. History is before us. No one can interpret it the same way as his neighbor. No one can be unaffected by it, and everyone has the power to alter it.
