Prejudice Is A Disease?

Prejudice will always be apart of human nature. Prejudice is when one has a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. Many citizens in the world do not realize they demonstrate prejudice in their life. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee illustrates prejudice through racism, social class, and sexism through certain characters, to emphasize not to judge a person before being placed in their shoes.

Prejudice is embedded into society and is taught from generation to generation. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee the setting is 1930’s in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama. The people in this town look down on those different from them and have been taught prejudice for generations. Even though it was set so long ago the lessons are still applicable to many situations today. In this story a young girl named Scout is the narrator and her father is a lawyer who is representing a black man accused of raping a white girl. It is obvious what the fate of the man will be but the story highlights how and why an innocent man is sent to prison and later murdered.

Harper Lee’s novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” is set in a small, southern town, Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The story is told through the eyes of a girl named Scout about her father, Atticus, an attorney who strives to prove the innocence of a black man named Tom Robinson, who was accused of rape and Boo Radley, an enigmatic neighbor who saves Scout and her brother Jem from being killed. Atticus does his job in proving there was no way that Tom Robinson was guilty during his trial, but despite Tom Robinson’s obvious innocence, he is convicted of rape as it is his word against a white woman’s. Believing a “black man’s word” seemed absurd as segregation was a very integrated part of life in the south. The social hierarchy must be maintained at all costs and if something in the system should testify the innocence of a black man against a white woman’s word and win then what might happen next? Along with the prejudice amongst blacks and whites, the story also showed how people could be misunderstood for who they truly are such as Boo Radley. Without ever seeing Boo, Jem and the townsfolk made wild assumptions on what Boo does or looks like. Even so, while “To Kill a Mockingbird” shows the ugliness that can come from judging others, its ultimate message is that great good can result when one defers judgement until considering things from another person’s view. Walter Cunningham, Mrs. Dubose, and Boo Radley are all examples of how looking at things

Prejudice is an opinion in which is not based on any reasoning, and may cause harm. Prejudice can be seen just about anywhere, and it affects our daily lives. There are many different ways a person can show prejudice beliefs, but why do they believe things they have never experience? Some may say it’s something personal with one’s self that causes prejudice thoughts, or some may think it their surroundings contribute as a motive.

Imagine being a white lawyer in the 1930s and being asked to defend a black man who has been accused of raping a white woman. This is exactly what occurs in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, when Atticus Finch, a white lawyer, chooses to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, who has been accused of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell, in 1935. Many people may believe Atticus Finch was wrong to have defended Tom Robinson because it put him and his family in harm’s way. However, Atticus was right to have defended Tom Robinson because Atticus knows very well that all people must be treated equally. and Atticus has to set a good example for his children.

In Harper Lee’s historical novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the main protagonist, Atticus Finch, delivers his final argumentative response to not only prove the innocence of Tom Robinson, who was allegedly convicted of raping Mayella Ewell, but to address the inequality and immoral code of conduct against African-Americans faced in society. Finch’s purpose is to publicise the unethical treatment blacks receive from whites and to show that they should not be the culprit of society due to their race. He adopts a passionate and sincere tone in order to emphasize the discrimination African-Americans face in society to the people in the courtroom.

In a world where the color of your skin determines whether or not you are guilty of a horrible crime, a white man tries to defend an innocent black man from being convicted. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Atticus Finch adamantly defends a black man named Tom Robinson from being wrongfully convicted of raping a white woman, an unspeakable crime in that time. The racism embedded in many of the citizens of Maycomb makes Atticus’ job of convincing the jurors of Robinson’s innocence almost impossible but through the challenges, he makes an impressive closing statement. Atticus Finch effectively uses ethos, logos, and pathos to create an exceedingly convincing argument and final statement that Tom Robinson was wrongly accused of an awful

“All men are created equal”, one of the most ignored statements that our founding fathers wrote in the Constitution. People exercise prejudice everywhere in the U.S. Prejudice is a topic that is constantly revisited in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Her novel focuses on Scout, the daughter of Atticus Finch, living her life in the 1930s of rural Maycomb, Alabama. Scout witnesses the injustice and prejudice against many people, not only Negroes. The heat of prejudice rises when Atticus decides to defend Tom Robinson, a black who is going under trial for allegedly raping a white girl. Despite the clear evidence that Robinson is innocent,

Prejudice is a very prominent motif throughout To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Lee conveys the message that prejudice deprives us of understanding reality and the world around us. One of the most noticeable cases is the prejudice against Tom Robinson due to his skin color. In the trial, the jury had agreed Tom was guilty because of his race, even though there was no substantial evidence to prove so. Atticus knows the men on the jury are blinded by prejudice and racism, so he says to them, “The witnesses for the state...have presented themselves to you gentlemen...in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted...on the assumption that all Negroes lie” (273). Although the men of the jury understood that the Ewell’s testimonies

In this modern world, prejudice is still a universal problem we still have yet to overcome. Although it is true that our society is much less prejudiced than it was 40-50 years ago, we are still struggling to create racial harmony in a world that is so diverse in terms of racial group, sexual orientations, ethnicity, nationality, religions, and so on. I think the core of prejudice comes from stereotyping, which is the generalization of motives, characteristics, or behavior to an entire group of people. In the world where media propaganda is ubiquitous, often times most stereotypes are not formed on valid experiences, instead they are based on images publicized by the mass media, or even created within our heads after seeing and hearing examples from many different sources, like movies, or even hearsay. Stereotyping is more powerful than we think, because it allows those false pictures to control our thinking that leads us to assign uniform characteristics to any person in a group, without consideration of the actual difference between members of that particular group.

The most common prejudice people encounter is that of race. During Tom Robinson’s trial this type of prejudice is shown. Tom was a black man accused of raping a white woman, a crime that is punishable by the death penalty. Even though all of the evidence should prove him innocent, the jury still found him guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. The justice system didn’t allow this man to have a fair trial because of racial prejudice. The character Jem was heartbroken by consequence of racism “His face was streaked with angry tears, ‘it ain’t right’ he muttered.” (212). The jurors had disregarded Tom’s credibility or that of the other witnesses. All they could focus on was his race because they could not see though the frost in that window.

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a black man, Tom Robinson, is convicted of raping Bob Ewell’s oldest daughter Mayella Ewell. The protagonist, Atticus Finch, is defending Tom and his argument which, based on what the defendant witnessed, is that Mayella tried to seduce Tom and was caught by her father and brutally beat. During the trial Atticus, gives a speech about equality to the jury and the courthouse. But even with this, Tom is accused with rape and is hanged. Throughout the speech Atticus talks about the truth of racism and discrimination. But in reality there’s a different story. Racial discrimination is everywhere in the South. Atticus shows the jury Truth vs Reality to win the case.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible. (Maya Angelou) By definition prejudice is a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. Prejudice to others is hate, judgement, and evil. The effects of prejudice are shown in the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the play The Merchant of Venice, and the tragedy known as the Holocaust. Prejudice affected all people differently, but one thing is true for all; prejudice is crippling and disables those who experience it from being who they truly are and doing as they please.

In psychology, prejudice is different from discrimination. Prejudice is an unjustifiable and often negative stereotyped attitude that a person holds against the members of a particular social group. Whereas, discrimination is when prejudicial attitudes cause members of a particular group to be treated differently than others in situations that call for equal treatment. Thus, prejudice leads to discrimination. There are several factors that contribute to prejudice and discrimination, and there are many techniques for reducing the development of prejudice and discrimination.

Prejudice is the negative attitude based on false generalizations about members of different racial and ethnic groups. From prejudice, discrimination is born. We all are guilty of discriminating other people, but one can only speculate the factors that bring about this hatred towards one another. Although a single cause cannot account for the presence of racism, factors such as socialization, self-justification, and competition are a few human attributes that lead to acts of racial discrimination.