How Did Harper Lee Use Racial Discrimination In To Kill A Mockingbird

According to a recent study, 35% of African Americans and 26% of Hispanics reported having experienced some sort of racial discrimination. Throughout history, many groups have been subject to discrimination due to beliefs, ethnicity, and unfair prejudices. In multiple novels including Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, discrimination practices and prejudices of the past are examined and scrutinized. Racial discrimination practices throughout history have changed due to the time period, the social nature of people, and because of state-sponsored practices.

The first novel that examines racial discrimination is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. In the novel, racial discrimination is easy to see and examine due to the setting and time period. Since the novel takes place in the early 1930’s, one can read the novel and find numerous instances

“[W]hen she was a few yards beyond the Ewell house, she looked around and saw Mr. Ewell walking behind her” (Lee 334). Previously, in the same page, Mr. Link Deas had verbally reprimanded the Ewells for “chunking” at Helen, and this example shows that some people in Maycomb still had negative feelings towards African Americans even after the trial.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, it is shown that prejudices and discrimination existed before the trial, and persisted after the trial. The discrimination displayed in To Kill a Mockingbird tended to be caused by internally held beliefs, which is especially seen in Bob Ewell, who frequently takes out his rage on African Americans, and Mrs. Dubose, who held prejudices towards African Americans and outwardly expressed these by using racial slurs. The racial discrimination displayed in To Kill a Mockingbird tended to be internally held beliefs that could also be acceptably shown in