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To Kill A Mockingbird Racism Analysis

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To Kill A Mockingbird is a novel written by Harper Lee, published in 1960. Right away everyone loved it, winning many awards like; “Pulitzer Prize for Fiction”, “Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews”, “Paperback of the Year”, “Alabama Library Association Award”, and the “Quill Award for Audio Book”. The novel takes place in a southern town, Maycomb in the 1930’s, portraying various forms of discrimination. Throughout the novel Harper Lee includes many examples of racial discrimination like between the Negroes and Whites, Scout and school kids, and between Atticus and the whole White society.

The majority of the discrimination in this novel is between the Negroes and Whites. An example of this discrimination in To Kill a Mockingbird is between Mr. Dolphus Raymond and the entire White community. Mr. Raymond belongs to a wealthy white family, but married a Black woman and lives with her and their kids in a Black neighborhood. All the Whites look down upon him because of these choices. When Mr. Raymond is in public the townspeople often see him drinking something out of a bottle hidden in a paper bag, which they assume is alcohol, but really is just Coca Cola. By acting drunk he gives the people a reason to believe why he had married a Black woman. “Secretly, Miss Finch, I am not much of a drinker, but as you see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that´s the way I want to live.” (Raymond to Scout ch 20) More

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