Racial Prejudice
Maya Angelou once addressed the harms of racism when she said, “Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.” In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee creates a character named Jean Louise Finch to address the racism in her childhood. She faces many rough obstacles with her father, Atticus, brother Jem, and a very shy neighbor named Boo Radley. Harper Lee uses Scout’s experiences with both innocent and bigoted people in order to suggest that racial prejudice is a force that society must always fight against.
Harper Lee uses young Scout’s innocent narration to show that, young people struggle the most with prejudice and trying to accept it. When Scout and her brother Jem, were in the courthouse during the Tom Robinson trial, they thought for sure that her father was going to win the case. Jem didn’t realize that an innocent black man could get blamed for something he didn’t do just because he was black. Out of all character’s in the book Jem really struggled the most with racism, “How could they
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An example, was when Grace Merriweather was talking about the Mruna tribe in Africa. Mrs. Merriweather is very concerned about the Mruna tribe, even though she thinks that there is nothing worse than a sulky darky. Instead of worrying about the Mruna tribe in Africa, why doesn’t she care about all of the black folk in Maycomb county; including, her housekeeper? She is a preacher’s wife, so why doesn’t she start acting the part? Mrs. Grace Merriweather is also a very big hypocrite, such as when she was telling her housekeeper Sophy after they lost the trial, “You are simply not being a Christian today. Jesus Christ never went around grumbling and complaining” (Lee 197). In life, there will always be hateful people like Mrs. Merriweather who are very racist, but we should just ignore them because they are