Examples Of Racial Prejudice In To Kill A Mockingbird

Throughout history and throughout life racial prejudice has unfortunately been a thing for centuries. It is an unfortunate thing and can be shown and represented in different ways in many different forms, in the story To Kill a Mockingbird is one of them. Racial Prejudice was something that was not good, people would make decisions on people by looking at their face and their skin tone rather than the actual people. The story To Kill a Mockingbird depicts a family that lives in a small, mainly all white town where we see the two children Jem and Scout and their father Atticus and within the story of these two children we see the racial prejudice that surrounds them. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird the author Harper Lee uses the theme racial prejudice by showing a clear definition of the characters using slurs towards black people, how the people of Maycomb felt towards Tom Robinson and how the people in the town talk and see black people.

Scout, the main lead in the story has said slurs on many occasions and made assumptions about black people. For example on page 85 Scout says, “‘Do you defend n*****r, Atticus? I asked him that evening.’ ‘Of course I do. Don’t say n*****r, Scout. That’s common.’ ‘it’s what everybody at school says.” In this excerpt from the story we can clearly see Scout using slurs towards black people when she is talking about them. Of course she is doing it unknowing that it is a slur, but in the story the environment that she is around uses it and she assumes it is alright and it is