To Kill A Mockingbird Racial Discrimination

In 1995 the FBI counted 7,947 incidents of hate crimes, and in 2013 they counted 5,928 incidents (www.nbcnews.com). These statistics show that the issue of discrimination has gotten better, but is still an issue where more action needs to be taken. In the past, we got to see the true face of racial discrimination in Harper Lee’s famous novel, To Kill A Mockingbird. In this novel we could see how everyday interactions, romance and the criminal justice system were influenced by racism, and how people made decisions based on racial prejudice. Nowadays we know that many governments and groups are trying to stop discrimination, and many new studies have been conducted to see if this is working. Based on the level of racism in To Kill A Mockingbird
In this town people were influenced by racial prejudice, and hatred, something that does not happen as frequently nowadays. In this novel when Atticus, a lawyer is defending a black man in court he says “She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man.” (Lee 272). The way a that Atticus describes what she did shows us how society in the past viewed people of different races and what they thought about interracial romance. Nowadays in modern society people would never think this way, or speak this way in court. This is an example of how our society has evolved, and how racial discrimination has become less of an issue in North America. Another quotation shows how the criminal justice system treats African-Americans and shows the extent of racism at this time; “In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins. They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life.” (Lee 295). Nowadays, in modern society courts are a safe place that treats everyone equally, and are not influenced by racial prejudice. There have been cases of unfair trials, but not as many as in the past. This proof from the book shows readers how commonplace racism was in the past, and how people were treated unfairly. Today, people do not act this way and
When reading the novel readers saw how people nowadays have changed, and no longer use people’s race to judge their behaviour. Readers also saw how the criminal justice system has changed and left racism in the past. We also saw, in recent news articles how groups of people are becoming more integrated with one another, and how the government reacts to racist comments towards other ethnic groups. The issue of racism has become much smaller over the past few years, but still an issue where people need to work together to stop it from