The Severeness of Racism in America | Teen Ink

The Severeness of Racism in America

October 13, 2023
By TristanLyu GOLD, Beijing, Other
TristanLyu GOLD, Beijing, Other
12 articles 0 photos 0 comments

The author of the book To Kill a Mockingbird is Harper Lee came from Alabama, a southern state in America. This book described racism in the 1960s in America during the Great Depression, which told the readers the severeness of the racism in the 20th century in America. People didn’t focus on what happened in 1960s, they only see the skin colors of the people. This book was very popular, which was published in the 1960s, and was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. It was written in the form of book first, and later, filmed into movies that have released in many different countries. In most cases, people don’t focus on the fact that the events that actually happened. Instead, they see the color of people’s skin.
 
Scout Finch lived with her brother Jem and their father Atticus in the town of Maycomb, Alabama. A widower, Atticus raised his children by himself, with the help of kindly neighbors and a black housekeeper named Calpurnia. Scout and Jem almost instinctively understood the complexities and machinations of their neighborhood and town. The only neighbor who was puzzled was the mysterious Arthur Radley, nicknamed Boo, who never came outside, out of his house. When Dill, another neighbor's nephew, started spending summers in Maycomb, the three children began to lure Boo outside. Last summer, Tom was convicted even though Atticus proved that Tom could not had possibly committed the crime of which he was accused. In the process of presenting Tom's case, Atticus insulted and offended Bob Ewell, a nasty, lazy drunkard whose daughter was Tom's accuser. Tom, in fact, was being framed by Ewell. In spite of Tom's conviction, Ewell promised revenge on Atticus and the judge for besmirching his already tarnished name. All three children were bewildered by the jury's decision to convict. Atticus tried to explain why the jury's decision was in many ways a foregone conclusion.
 
People should focus more on the facts of the things that have happened, not the races, and everyone that lives in this world should be equal, and be equally treated. Being a colored man doesn’t mean that he was a criminal or someone that had made some unforgivable mistakes. The book opened my eyes to how severe it was in the mid-20th century about racism. The book included one example, which was the trial of Tom Robinson. The plot of this book was Maycomb, a town imagined by the author, where Scout, Jem, and some other people lived, which was a town in Alabama, a state in the southern part of America. It was an extremely serious problem of racism in the southern part of America since farmers usually lived in the southern states of America, and they need people to help them to grow the cottons and other crops, and black men were very suited to be the slaves that work on the farms. However, the problem is lighter now, and many people of color also had the same job and worked together with white people.


The author's comments:

This is the book review for the book To Kill a Mockingbird


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