To Kill A Mockingbird Racial Injustice Analysis

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In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Atticus Finch explains his reasons for defending Tom Robinson, a black man who is unjustly accused of raping a white girl, even though he knows he will lose the case; “simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try and win” (Lee82). This passage illustrates the evils of racial prejudice, social prejudice and gender prejudice, all of which lead to some form of injustice that needs to be corrected in the novel.
The most prevalent prejudice, racial prejudice is when an opinion (usually a bad one) is formed on a person for no reason other than their race. This is present when Tom is convicted even though all of the evidence says he is innocent, solely …show more content…
Stephanie Crawford who describes Boo to the children as a sort of ghost, telling the children she caught him watching her through a window. Miss Maudie also reinforces the point that Arthur was not crazy but was made crazy or anti-social by his strict father who locked him away in their home. Another time when social prejudice occurs in the novel is Aunt Alexandra classifying who is a good or bad person based only on their family name and station. Scout asks Aunt Alexandra why she can not invite Walter Cunningham over to their house, “But I want to play with Walter, Aunty, why can’t I?” she took off her glasses and stared at me. “Ill tell you why,” she said. “Because-he-is-trash, that’s why you can’t play with him” (301). Even though aunt Alexandra has never met Walter Cunningham, she describes him as trash just because he is a Cunningham who are a lower class family. She wont allow Scout to play with him for no reason other then the fact that the Cunningham’s are lower on a lower social level than the Finch’s. Another occurrence of social prejudice is how the Ewells are described in the novel, they are described as trash and many rumors, some accurate, are passed on about them. They are considered to be on the lowest part of the white social ladder among the people of Maycomb. Scout asks Atticus about the Ewells, “Atticus said the Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations. None of them had done an honest day’s work in his recollection” (40). Although the things Atticus is telling Scout may be true, he is still pushing his thoughts on to her, thus making her create an opinion before she has really had any interaction of first hand experience with the members of the Ewell family. Gossip is extremely common in Maycomb county, which is why it leads to false or exaggerated opinions being described as accurate, creating
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