Examples Of Minorities In To Kill A Mockingbird

For centuries now, minorities have been judged due to them looking and/or acting differently from the rest of the world. An example of this would be during the early nineteen hundreds when Chinese immigrants first started coming to America to be able to get better jobs, only to be excluded from society, causing them to make ethnic enclaves. All these immigrants wanted was a place where they can feel accepted and safe, that is why they made their own small towns so they can feel that safety and familiarity they used to before they moved. Minorities like these are very similar to damsels in distress. Damsels in distress are people who are in danger, needing some sort of safety. A lot of the time, minorities are in danger, either from society

America, especially the South of the US, during the 1930’s was not a good time to be an African american. During this time a lot of white people discriminated against African Americans because they had darker skin than them. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson was an African American man who has been framed for the rape of Mayella Ewell. Atticus, the lawyer of Tom Robinson, tries to confront Mayella by saying, “‘It’s an easy question Miss Mayella, so I’ll try again. Do you remember him beating you about the face?” Atticus’s voice had lost its comfortableness; he was speaking in his arid, detached professional voice. “Do you remember him beating you about the face?” “No, I don’t recollect if he hit me in the face. I mean yes I do, he hit me.”’ (Harper lee 247-248) In this excerpt Atticus Finch asks mayella if she has ever been hit by Tom Robinson, at first, Mayella tells Atticus she does not remember. Then, right after, she tells him that he actually did her. When Mayella says that he did not hit her, she instantly regrets it and tries to play it off by saying she has a hazy memory from the incident. This shows that mayella was lying about him hitting her, proving that they are only doing this to get Tom Robinson in Jail. Mayella also at first did not want to say anything to Atticus, instead, she just kept quiet until Atticus had to repeat himself multiple times. By her doing this, it shows that she does not want to tell the answer, because she does not want to lie. Tom Robinson is a Damsel in distress because he is being framed for a crime that he did not even do. The only reason he is going to lose this case is because he is an African American, and at the time people thought of them as criminals, who deserve