Jacob attended church each Sunday morning, he finished the jobs he started, and he took care of those around him. Yet people still looked down on him due to only one outside factor—his skin color. Jacob was a black man and no matter how hard he worked, he could never earn respect from the white people around him. Racial prejudice continues to plague mankind and in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird racism holds huge significance. Racism infected the minds of the citizens of Maycomb County and showed itself in how the black people treated white people, how the white people acted towards black people, and even led to the conviction of an innocent man.
While many people see racism as one sided, often black people can treat white people in the same prejudiced way. Not only the white people in Maycomb held responsibility for racism. For example, when Calpurnia takes Jem and Scout to her church one Sunday morning, one of the black women lashes out in disdain, “You ain’t got no business bringin’ white chillun here—they got their church, we got our’n” (119). Even in the black church racial discrimination found root. It did not matter who the children belonged to or how they acted, they were white and they did not fit in there. Thus, even black people in Maycomb looked at white people with
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The white people of Maycomb County certainly viewed the black people as inferior. Atticus provides a disturbing example of this while informing Jem, “As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life” (220). The stark truth Atticus presented showed how some of the white men treated the blacks of Maycomb. Because of their race, white men justified treating black people in a dishonest way as legitimate. Therefore, the white people in Maycomb County acted poorly towards the black people because of their race ultimately displaying their racist