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Segregation In Jean Louis 'Go Set A Watchman'

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“I especially liked the part where the Negroes, bless their hearts, couldn 't help being inferior to the white race because their skulls are thicker and their brain-pans shallower...” Jean Louis, from Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman states. This reveals the reason why people of color are inferior to whites. Lee’s Go Set A Watchman and Jim Wallis’s America’s Original Sin both reveal the repercussions of racism, which shows the way America was heavily influenced by segregation. This is shown through the viewpoints whites had towards blacks, individual actions, and the way it divides an entire nation. Segregation in the 1950’s was still a substantial concern as Go Set A Watchman and America’s Original Sin point out by showing the way people viewed …show more content…

An example of this is shown when these actions affect others surrounding them, that is why the action of each character in the books is of great relevance. For instance, Jean Louis found a racist pamphlet on her father 's desk that had an image of an “anthropophagous Negro” and in the title it said, “The Black Plague.” As she tossed it to the garbage, she could not get the idea straight that her father, who once had helped those colored people in need of justice, had turned his back and gone against them. The actions she took upon this discovery was her decision to confront him. Atticus was in a court meeting with several other men which according to Jean Louis they are “Maycomb’s trash.” He starts saying that the NAACP, those who try to gain rights for African Americans, attempt tricks which are unconstitutional like “demanding Negroes on the juries” and “force the judge into error.” He claims that Negroes are not capable or don’t have the “sufficient education” to be part of the justice system. The actions taken by Maycomb’s trash include, forcing them out of the jury, unlawfully accuse them of crimes they did not commit and have an unlawful trial. This wrongful behavior is also demonstrated by the work created by government officials and police officers, as narrated in Jim Wallis’s text, is discriminatory as he claims, “We expect too little of law enforcement officials when we fail to hold them accountable for the misjudgments …show more content…

Lee’s description of Maycomb being a small, unadvanced town in the South describes several other municipalities along this area. America’s Original Sin expresses the way religion took a big part in racism, how God never intended for there to be a drawn line among races in between his children. As Wallis specifies by saying “The United States has the most racial diversity of any country in the world… (which) is essential to our greatness, but it has also given us a history of tension and conflict. It has always been the resolving and...the reconciling of those tensions that makes us ‘a more perfect union.’ However, that cannot happen when we ignore, deny, or suppress our racial history...; it can occur only when we ...embrace it, and be ready to be transformed by it.” (Wallis, 28). As he brings out the way racism took a part in the United State’s history, he asserts the way this nation has also been divided by it. Being able to deal with the conflicts, different ideas and cultures that the United states has dealt with has made it a very divided country. This is the reason Harper Lee states “As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he’ll look for his lessons.” (Lee, 138) That is why the United States has become again what it was several years ago. There are different perspectives to the history of racism in the United States but in the end, it will always lead

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