Racial Discrimination And Its Effects On People And Society

People around the world are faced with being treated unfairly because of qualities society considers different. These can include something that the person is born in towith, or a decision they made later on in their life. Nelle Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird shows how prejudice views destroy the lives of many. In the town of Maycomb, blacks are mistreated for their color, while others are excluded fromfor not being “normal whites”. Although every character ofin the novel is not treated unequally, three main characters that are victims of prejudice are Tom Robinson for his race, Dolphus Raymond for intermarriage, and Boo Radley for mistakes he made in the past.

People have been stereotyped into a certain group because of their skin color or they have been discriminated against because of how they dress, their name, or even their hairstyle. Minorities such as African Americans deal with this type of racial discrimination every day because of their skin color and the way they might sound despite if they do not sound as the way they appear. For example, if an African American person walked into an interview dressed nicely and clean and a caucasian went in for an interview dressed just as nice and clean, the Caucasian application is more likely to get the job and receive a higher rating than the African American applicant. (Zimmerman) It might seem to the naked eye that minorities in general somewhat have the same opportunities as Caucasian people but in fact they do not really have them. All in all, there is still racial discrimination in America and African Americans do not have the same opportunities as Caucasians in housing, education, and jobs.

Discrimination, it has been part of human nature for a long time, especially relevant subject in literature such as To Kill a Mockingbird. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the main character of Scout Finch was exposed to different types of discrimination as she grows up. Discrimination affected the lives of characters in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird because of society’s prejudicial views of race, gender, and class.

We have issues: more specifically , the United States has issues, continuous and all-encompassing issues of racial inequality.The United States is experiencing a outburst of racism, as can be seen from the 2014 killings of two unarmed African-American men, to the brutality of white supremacy in Charleston and the string of arsons in black churches across the South. Of course, it’s nothing new for a nation with a long history of extreme racist violence—the most recent lynching-related death occurred in 1981, hardly a lifetime ago, when Michael Donald was hanged by two members of the Ku Klux Klan.The United States, however, continues to avoid its history on race, refusing to confront its past in a “post-racial,” “colorblind” society, and that policy of systemic ignorance is particularly strong when mention of racial equality is brought up. Although the concept of equality has never truly existed in this world, as can be traced back to the very beginnings of recorded history we see the nobles ruling the commoners, conquerors reigning over the conquered, the will of man dominating women; the United States needs to acknowledge the fact that racial inequality still exists within our country and has in no way progressed towards betterment.

In To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, discrimination is present in the town of Maycomb. As a lawyer, Atticus Finch defends Tom Robinson, an African American man falsely accused of raping a white woman. He risks his job, reputation, and life defending Tom, portraying his refusal to accept the evil mindset of society. Atticus’ stance against the mistreatment of others reveals his sustaining morality throughout the novel.

In both of the stories The Help by Kathryn Stockett and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee the effects of empathy and prejudice are seen in many different ways. The most evident is prejudice, especially racism. Other forms are also prejudice based on social class, education, and gender. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee shows the terrible effects that prejudice has on people.

For hundreds of years there has been a lot of racial things going on they throughout this novel like blacks were not as equal as whites; there were laws that aided segregation and also unjust treatment of African Americans in the American society. Within Harper Lee’s fictional novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, The people are subjected to the harsh impact of Jim Crow in Maycomb, Alabama through the innocent narrator Scout Finch. By evaluating the impact of Jim Crow laws on black rights in America during the time period of the novel and present day, it is revealed that the influence of these laws remains the same on black rights today.

In the book “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Harper Lee shows that people can easily discriminate others based on information that they have obtained from others. This story takes place during the Great Depression in a small town named Maycomb where Scout and Jem, two youngsters, grow up and learn how the world around them contrasts with what they previously believed. As life goes on they start to notice the way people are treated and how in some cases, some are unfair, as shown when their father takes up a case that is centered more towards the race of the people involved than the actual case. As in this world, discrimination takes place every day, preventing people from becoming equal to each other and creating a rift between people getting along

For instance, take Tom Robinson. He was an average hard working southern black man, except he was crippled. Mayella Ewell accused him of raping her and was sentenced to court for trial. Tom was wrongly convicted of a crime even though there was “not...one iota of medical evidence”(203). This displays how people on the jury at the time convicted Tom of a crime they knew he didn’t commit and the only reason he wasn’t a free man was because he was black. Some people might think that the jury was not racist when convicting Tom and did so of their own collective opinion on the case. But when you consider that there was not one black man on the jury and that Mayella Ewell’s story didn’t match up with the Sheriff’s and Tom’s, you can infer that she was lying about it the whole time to cover up her guilt of “tempt[ing] a Negro”(203). Similarly, after Tom was convicted and sentenced to prison, he was shot soon afterward. We see how the Maycomb community thinks that “Tom’s death was typical. Typical of a nigger to cut and run. Typical of a nigger’s mentality to have no plan, no thought for the future”(240). This is a clear example of discrimination on blacks in the book, they even use a racial slur to describe Tom running away which further proves the point. As a result of the examples above, we see multiple times how people in Mockingbird discriminate based on whether the color of your skin is darker than

There are various forms of discrimination talked about in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Racism is the primary source of discrimination in the book. The story centers around the trial of Tom Robinson, who is a black man accused of rape. Another example of discrimination is sexism. Jem constantly tells Scout that she’s acting like a girl when she gets scared or emotional. Harper Lee also uses social class discrimination in To Kill a Mockingbird. In Aunt Alexandra’s eyes the Cunninghams are trash because they are poor.

Racial discrimination formed a thought that white people had all the power distributed to them while the colored people didn’t have any power, leaving them vulnerable to harassment and abuse, but it also involved whites who had helped the colored people. This like how Atticus’s kids were targeted by Bob Ewell because Atticus had defended Tom Robinson during the trial. “Don’t like to contradict you, Mr. Finch—wasn’t crazy, mean as hell. Low-down skunk with enough liquor in him to make him brave enough to kill children. He’d never have met you face to face” (Lee 360).

With this in mind, the problem of racial discrimination is a massive issue in the book To Kill a Mockingbird. Knowing that Tom Robinson is a black man, everyone automatically dislikes him despite knowing what kind of man he is. Everyone in Maycomb seems to be against him, except the Finch Family. For example, in the book Scout said, "A nigger-lover.  I ain't very sure what it means, but the way Francis said it..."This shows how Scout cares for Tom Robinson, even when everyone else doesn’t. Although Scout is young, she begins to understand what is right and wrong.

Although racism has improved a lot since the 1600s, America still has some progress to make. Racial discrimination is the hatred of one person by another—or the belief that another person is less than human—because of skin color, language, customs, place of birth or any factor (adl.org). Americans try to overlook the inequalities of the world and pretend that racism does not exist anymore, only it very much does.

The government that directs the country of the USA is declining towards the side of racial characterization. The current president Donald J. Trump who is the head of the US government, must be a person with the lowest level of ignorance. The history of racial characterization gives us the idea that it is a bad road for those who acquire it and lead a country towards a better future. The US Constitution has been changed with amendments not to characterize people, granting freedom to American citizens.

Civil rights activist Al Sharpton said, “We have come a long way from the days of slavery, but in 2014, discrimination and inequality still saturate our society in modern ways”. This quote rings true where equality in the workplace is concerned. In Toni Cade Bambara’s short story “The Lesson”, we see what social discrimination looks like through the eyes of children who are observing a wealthier part of town. In their eyes, they see and injustice and question why it is not being altered into something centered more on equality and equal opportunity. Toni Cade Bambara’s story “The Lesson” is written to make a point about racial discrimination in the workplace and social inequality.