Examples Of Discrimination In To Kill A Mockingbird

Children Will Not See the World as Black and White, But Adults Do
In the 1930s, in which the Harper Lee’s iconic To Kill a Mockingbird is set, de jure and de facto segregation was common across America, especially in the deep south of Alabama. Black Americans were constantly told that they were inferior to white people and deserved to be treated as so. The majority of America’s white population found nothing erroneous with their derogatory actions and environment of mistreatment that they helped curate. In To Kill a Mockingbird, the atmosphere of segregation and discrimination affects Scout and the other children through their interactions with Dolphus Raymond, Tom Robinson and his trial, and the Ewells. The way that the white population of
Scout and the other children’s interactions with Tom Robinson teach them no issue is black and white; except in the case of a black man versus a white man, in which the white man will always win. Tom Robinson says something that is seen as inherently wrong when he being cross-examined. He says that he helped Mayella because he “felt right sorry for her (Chapter 19 264).” This shocks Maycomb’s white populous because the idea of a black person feeling sorry for a white person is completely unknown to them. They cannot understand how a black person, who is intrinsically “less than” in their eyes, could ever show pity for someone who is white (and therefore better.) Scout sees the way that the white viewers erupt when they hear that a black man felt sorry for a white women. Even though the Ewells are at the bottom of the Maycomb social pyramid, they are still seen as better than an honest, kind black man. Scout and the other children realize that no matter what in the majority of the white people in Maycomb will never be able to see black people as anything but less than them. When Scout, Jem, and Dill cannot find a seat in the white ground floor, they sit in the colored balcony with people who they met through their visit to Calpurnia’s church. Even though they are
The atmospheres in which children grow up shape who they will become in adulthood. A culture of systemic racism and oppression does not begin with a single person but with an environment that regards mistreatment as traditional and okay. Racist tendencies are not something that people are born with; they are taught behaviors. Some people manage to break the cycle of oppressing and discriminating, but if the environment in which racism is taught never existed than with it racism would cease to exist. Children’s minds are malleable and shaped by the world around them; the best way to raise children who are strong enough to stand up to injustice is to raise them in an environment in which injustice is seen as wrong and equality is prioritized. The atmosphere of discrimination and segregation that the child in To Kill a Mockingbird are raised in affects them, just as any child’s environment