Let’s say you are a stray dog and you’re taking a stroll through the local junkyard. As you walk, a crowd of dogs with the same sparkly white fur as you started showing up. A few paces later, a black dog appears near you. Just looking at him disgusted you, he looked so different than everyone else…so you took it upon yourself to bite and kill him. Does that sound right? Nowadays it’s wrong to do that, but at one point in history, it was the right. It seemed so right that even humans had behaved in this manner. People have been (and are) dealing with racists for a long time. The story, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, explains in a brilliant manner how people should stop treating others badly. People have spent many years trying to bring equality …show more content…
Lynchings and unfair trials are the effects of the outbreak of racism and mistreatment; the way people threw out the unique and kept the twins. Until present times, people were laughed at, starved, and even killed, just for being different than their neighbor. A good example of this is when Bob Ewell is being questioned as a witness at Tom’s trial. While explaining his side of the story, he got a little off track and talked about the darker skinned people who lived in a small area of his town; He had said,” Jedge, I’ve asked this county for fifteen years to clean out the nest down yonder, they’re dangerous to live around ‘sides devaluin’ my property,” (234). What needs to be focused on in that sentence is the last part, Ewell had said that black people are evil and ruined his life by existing. He is the perfect example of people around those times, all they cared about was whether or not they got what they wanted. This can connect back to the dogs in the junkyard. Say a white man joins the hounds, and another darker dog shows his face. The man helps the whiter dog kill it. Now reverse that, with the whiter dog helping the man kill another man whom was a darker hue of skin than the first. It’s the same thing. People act like those junkyard dogs as soon as something different pops up, then they say things like Mr. Ewell did. Lucky for Scout, she realized this …show more content…
She went to Robinson’s trial and listened all through the ordeal. Scout already knew that Atticus won, but learned the sourness of the jury as each person in that section called guilty. Atticus is trying his best to teach his kids, and the rest of Maycomb, that just because the color of one’s skin is different, it doesn’t make them a criminal and a liar. Atticus managed to sneak a small lesson into a normal conversation when Jem got an air-rifle. He looked at his son and said: “Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” (119), Atticus was trying to teach Jem that since mockingbirds only sing, killing them for their innocence is the wrong thing to do. Atticus was also referring to black people and their struggles with being killed for doing nothing to hurt others. All they have done is shown their faces and tried to live
Racism is the belief that characteristics and abilities can be attributed to people simply based on their race and that some racial groups are superior to others. This has been a problem in our world forever. In to Kill a Mockingbird there are so many racist events and it reflects on the society as a whole till this day. The book setting was the 1930’s in a small county of Maycomb, where most people were racist and discriminatory. People think racism has died off, but it is still a huge problem. People choose to raise their children and teach them that racism is okay and that is how there is still racism today. There are so many statistics out there based on skin color that right there is even racist if everyone is equal why are there polls being taken separating people by the color of their skin?
The scars and stains of racism are still deeply embedded in the American society (John Lewis www.BrainyQuotes.com). In the book To Kill a Mockingbird there are real life events that Harper Lee used. There are different ideas such as the Jim Crow laws, mob mentality, and the Scottsboro trials that Harper Lee uses to help her write her book.
To Kill a Mockingbird took place during the 1930s, a period shortly after the American civil war in Maycomb County, Alabama, the deep south where black people suffered from racism and discrimination. In this book, Tom Robinson was accused of raping a white woman, which was something that he’s never done, even though all the evidence proved that he did not violate that white woman, Tom was judged guilty because he was a black man. Racism is presented throughout the entire book especially when Scout got teased by her family about Atticus taking Tom’s case, and the townspeople's perception about Atticus, as well as during the trial of Tom Robinson.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, and in the world today there is racial and social inequality going on all around us. I am sure that there will never be true racial and social equality, but I think that it will get dramatically better. Just like it has gotten better since the 1930’s, which is the time that To Kill a Mockingbird is set in.
Now don’t you be so confident, Mr. Jem, I ain’t ever seen any jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man…” (Lee 279). In this point of the book, the trail ww is coming to a close, and the verdict is yet to be reached, even though the jury is not out, Reverend Sykes already seemed to know the outcome, how? Bias, as Reverend Sykes explains, he has never seen a jury decide in favor of a colored man. Ro Back in the early to mid 1900’s, racial biases are what societies were built upon, what the laws were based on, how people lived their everyday lives. All throughout To Kill a Mockingbird, the presence of racial biases are very prominent. The major showing of a racial bias, is in the trial scene. Tom Robinson, a nice, well mannered black, is put away in jail for helping a young White woman. He is killed, because of his actions of towards that young white woman, he is killed for being a decent human being. ro Tom was never given a fair chance to win the case, he wasn't given a fair chance because of the pigment of his skin. Ro Racial biases are what societies are were based upon many years ago, and arguably still some today. Racial biases are what make towns, but are also what breaks them. Where is your argument? I am going to stop reading the essay here. I know you spent time and effort on this paper---but, without a thesis, you don’t have an argument. Also, your sentence structure and usage errors impact the reader. See me or try to get to a writing lab
In the 1962 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee, shows how racism can impact a society in a negative way through character construction because it is a reoccurring problem. In chapter 15; while Tom Robinson awaits his trial, he is transferred to the Maycomb jail. At ten o’clock pm, Atticus is on his way to the jailhouse; Scout, Jem, and Dill follow secretively. When Atticus got to the jail, he sat outside the doors and read; meanwhile the kids are hiding and spying on him. In the middle of Atticus is reading, four cars pull up, a group of men get out of the cars and tell Atticus to move away from the jailhouse doors. The men want Tom Robinson to get released; so that they can severely beat him and possibly murder him, simply because of the color of his skin. The characters in To Kill a Mockingbird are all constructed differently. Some characters are constructed to be extremely closed-mindedly prejudice, while others are constructed to be open-minded and accepting of differences. Although the book is set in an earlier generation, concepts of the book are extremely relevant today.
The article Racial Segregation is making America Sick, published by The Atlantic magazine, discussed racial segregation in the Unites States of America and the many effects it has on the quality of life of civilians. The topic of the article related to one of the major themes in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird: Racism. Lee used racism as a major theme throughout the novel and as the main reason for the false accusation and persecution of one of the characters, Tom Robinson. This case heavily affected the Finch family and Tom Robinson's widow Helen. The man defending Tom Robinson, Atticus Finch, was affected by this case because it altered his reputation in the town and put his children's safety at risk. After agreeing to take on the case,
The slave mindset of white families and slaveowners continued after the abolishment of slavery in 1865 in the form of segregation which was enforced by state and local governments through the use of Jim Crow laws. The levels of racism in the 1930s versus the lower levels of racism in the present correspond with the decline of Jim Crow laws beginning in the mid-20th century, which affected the societal status of black people, their economic status, and their continued effect on today’s laws.
Not much has changed in almost a century. Minorities are still being treated poorly. Harper Lee shows this many times throughout To Kill a Mockingbird. In her novel Lee portrays racial prejudice by showing the relationship between whites and blacks.
After Scout’s first day of school she doesn't understand what it means when people called her dad a “nigger lover” and say that he “defends niggers” (79, 88). Southern society was racist and while Scout understood racism, she didn’t recognize why what her dad did was wrong. Atticus Finch was called the town disgrace and a family disgrace, because he defends a black man. Later Atticus explains the social injustices and how society thinks “all Negroes lie [and] all Negro men are not to be trusted” but in reality this is true for all people causing Scout to recognize all the prejudice in Maycomb. Jem suggests that courts should get rid of juries, Atticus says it won't happen and if it did Jem ”[would] be an old man” by the time it did (244).
In this story it is noticeable that there is a lot of tension and racism that the white woman has with the young black boy. She is making certain remarks such as calling him a murder, a thief, and yet she barely even knows the young boy who is just innocently riding the subway along side of her. She says with in the passage that she is in fear of his life due to the fact that she believes that the boy of color can snap at any moment and commit a crime that is directed at her. , This passage reflects on the problems of today with racism, as of lately there has been plenty of racism, according the media.
Following the occurrence at the jail came the actual trial of Tom Robinson. During the trial Scout felt an assurance that Tom would be set free. After all, no solid evidence that Tom’d committed the crime had surfaced. However any hope that the townsfolk would make up for their prejudice vanished when the guilty verdict was read. “It was like watching Atticus walking to the street raise a rifle to his shoulder and pulled the trigger but watching all the time knowing the gun was empty.” (Lee 211) In this quote Scout compares the trial to the mad-dog incident, indicating that she understands Atticus 's bravery in that she knows he never had a chance at overcoming Maycomb 's prejudice. Scout demonstrates a new understanding of Maycomb in that she is able to
If you’re in high school, how many times do you hear the expression “Yo, what up nigga.” This is the word that travels through the hallways of many schools and on the streets in many cities. However, do people know what the word means? That’s the problem. They don’t know what it means yet they still say the word. What does it help them achieve? Does it help them be cool? Does it help them fit into a group of people? Now we all say this word to whites, Asians, Hispanics, and even blacks, but do we think how it makes them feel? Imagine if you were African American and had ancestors get whipped, have to use a separate bathroom, and much more, and still be called a nigger. This is a problem we had back then and that we still have today. We used one word to describe
Discrimination: a noun that is defined as, “the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex”. There are many types of discrimination in To Kill a Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird is a story that is taken place during the Great Depression . Scout is the main character and her father Atticus is defending a man named Tom Robinson, who is a Negro. There are three main topics that are discriminated in To Kill a Mockingbird. The three main topics that are discriminated are socioeconomics, gender, and most importantly, racism.
Harper Lee wrote To Kill A Mockingbird during a time where racism was prevalent. The book highlights many different ways racism occurred. It also shows what growing up as a child, in this case specifically a young girl, is like in the south during the time of the great depression.