Essay On Social Issues In To Kill A Mockingbird

Sadly, the seeds planted by infringing upon the basic human right of equality have grown today into pressing social issues only enhanced and continued by going unacknowledged by those who have the needed power to change it. In To Kill a Mockingbird, a group of missionary ladies are having a meeting at the Finch home in efforts to help a tribe in Africa called the Mrunas; one lady describes to Scout her blessings in comparison to the deplorable Mrunas: “you are a fortunate girl. You live in a Christian home with Christian folks in a Christian town. Out there [...] there’s nothing but sin and squalor [...] Not a white person will go near them but that saintly J Grimes Everett” (Lee 309). How ironic. These missionary ladies, devout followers

Similarly, such cognizant ignorance of the minority’s hardships is demonstrated in a study done by Carl Bankston III and Stephen J. Caldas of University of Southwestern Louisiana. Executed on the the preconception that minority focused schools in terms of population are naturally at a disadvantage academically, it was predicted that the privileged group would avoid putting their children in such schools out of fear of the “supposed liability of minority concentration” which will in turn do nothing to stop inequality (Bankston and Caldas 535). Harrowing results came of this study. It found that minority schools are indeed at a disadvantage across the entire spectrum of factors in the study, but perhaps even more disturbing, the blows that their school systems take could easily be softened by one group: the white students and their parents. In reality the study indicates that many of the unfair discrepancies minority focused schools face are present because parents of the privileged group put their kids into different schools. The phenomenon coined ‘white flight’ in turn creates the problem they are avoiding within their efforts of