Mockingbird: Racial Discrimination

During the great depression, many people were biased or racist; and almost all the people in Maycomb, Alabama, were just like everyone else in the South. Maycomb is your usual southern town, with not very friendly people all around. Scout, a very curious young girl, Jem, her older brother, and her wise father and lawyer, Atticus, all live there. Scout has yet to grow up and learn all about the real world; and she guides us through her encounters with discrimination shown throughout Maycomb. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout narrates us through her experiences and shows us how racial, gender, and socioeconomic discrimination take place in Maycomb, Alabama. Racial discrimination has a big part in this novel. It is shown throughout many characters …show more content…
For example, Scout isn’t like most girls, she chooses to dress more like a boy than a girl. But when Calpurnia takes her and Jem to First Purchase Church she dresses her up because that’s how girls would dress up for Church. “She made me wear a petticoat and she wrapped a pink sash tightly around my waist. She went over my patent leather shoes with a cold biscuit until she saw her face in them” (Lee 156). Calpurnia dressed up Scout so much because that’s how girls were expected to dress, if Calpurnia didn’t dress her the way other girls dressed people would say Cal didn’t look after them. From the beginning, Scout didn’t like being a girl and she thought she could avoid being a girl if she didn’t act like one. “I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with” (Lee 54). Because of Jem, she was convinced that all girl qualities are bad, and that boy qualities are good. Scout was also very offended when she got called a girl because they were so looked down upon, according to her. “But I kept aloof from their more foolhardy schemes for a while, and on pain of being called a girl, I spent most of the remaining twilights that summer sitting with Miss Maudie Atkinson on her front porch” (Lee 55). Scout thinks being called a girl is a “pain.” Gender …show more content…
Aunt Alexandra thinks she is better than people like the Ewells and the Cunninghams because they are thought of as “trash” since they are poor. On Scout’s first days of school, the new teacher tries to gave Walter Cunningham money for lunch, but Scout has to explain to her that no one ever gives anything to the Cunninghams because they can’t pay it back. “He had probably never seen three quarters together at the same time in his life” (Lee 26). Scout also says that everyone knows not to give anything to the Cunninghams. That goes to prove that they are thought of as less to Scout’s family and their neighbors because they have more money. The Ewell’s were another family that were thought of as low class; but this family, unlike the Cunninghams, were mean and very racist, they were also very poor. They did not live in great conditions, and because of that they were called mean names. “Maycomb’s Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin” (Lee 227). Since the Ewell’s live behind the town dumpster, they are known around Maycomb as “white trash.” Aunt Alexandra definitely thinks of herself and her family as higher than the Cunninghams. So when Scout announces that her and Walter Cunningham are friends, Aunt Alexandra disapproves. “‘The thing is, you can scrub Walter Cunningham till he shines, you can put him in shoes and a new suit, but he’ll never be like