It is 50 years this week since the publication of Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. Set in 1930s Alabama, it tells the story of a white family, Jem and Scout Finch and their lawyer father Atticus. In a deeply racist society, Atticus defends a young black man called Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping a white girl. Despite the lack of evidence and the cross-examination the all-white jury finds Tom Robinson guilty; to the despair of the onlooking Jem and Scout. The book, which sold tens of millions across the world, highlighted the inequality and injustice that existed in the supposed free world of America.
Yet, the American dream was essentially a white man’s ideal. The founding fathers believed that eventually Negroes would be repatriated back to their own homelands in Africa. As history demonstrates a bitter civil war between the North and South broke out in the 1860s, primarily over the issue of slavery. It was President Lyndon B. Johnson who pushed through the equality laws that finally ended the inequalities between white and black Americans.
Fast forward fifty years, there is now a black President in Barack Obama and for many white Americans the scary fact that in 2050 they will a minority in their original settlement. So much has changed since Mockingbird’s initial publication but to what extent do black Americans still see themselves within Thomas Jefferson’s notion of a separate nation within a nation, that is: after being treated for so long as second class citizens there is a difference between being black and being American.
We have seen the rise of Barack Obama; and before him Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell. Not to mention many in popular culture such as Sammy Davis Jr., Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan. However; the fact is there is still a huge divide socially. Fewer black Americans identify the all-American optimism unlike the many white and Latinos who do. Seventy percent of black children are born into families without fathers, a trend Bill Cosby identified to continue. And white people, even back in 2008 the lacrosse team at Duke University (very much a white institution) was accused of raping a black girl and one of the alleged had apparently said, ‘You’re daddy picked the cotton from my shirt’. It appears that despite the time and change since the civil rights movement, there will always be an underlying thought that this was accepted as the norm for generations.
It was interesting listening to an interview from a reverend in Monroeville, Alabama, the town where Harper Lee lives and based her book on. He, a white man that lived through and supported the civil rights movement, believes it will be another generation before any underlying cultural and racial divide finally dissipates. I think it’s a testament that today Tom Robinson would have been cleared, though for many Americans they will always have to relive that guilt and injustice, like Atticus did.
Yet, the American dream was essentially a white man’s ideal. The founding fathers believed that eventually Negroes would be repatriated back to their own homelands in Africa. As history demonstrates a bitter civil war between the North and South broke out in the 1860s, primarily over the issue of slavery. It was President Lyndon B. Johnson who pushed through the equality laws that finally ended the inequalities between white and black Americans.
Fast forward fifty years, there is now a black President in Barack Obama and for many white Americans the scary fact that in 2050 they will a minority in their original settlement. So much has changed since Mockingbird’s initial publication but to what extent do black Americans still see themselves within Thomas Jefferson’s notion of a separate nation within a nation, that is: after being treated for so long as second class citizens there is a difference between being black and being American.
We have seen the rise of Barack Obama; and before him Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell. Not to mention many in popular culture such as Sammy Davis Jr., Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan. However; the fact is there is still a huge divide socially. Fewer black Americans identify the all-American optimism unlike the many white and Latinos who do. Seventy percent of black children are born into families without fathers, a trend Bill Cosby identified to continue. And white people, even back in 2008 the lacrosse team at Duke University (very much a white institution) was accused of raping a black girl and one of the alleged had apparently said, ‘You’re daddy picked the cotton from my shirt’. It appears that despite the time and change since the civil rights movement, there will always be an underlying thought that this was accepted as the norm for generations.
It was interesting listening to an interview from a reverend in Monroeville, Alabama, the town where Harper Lee lives and based her book on. He, a white man that lived through and supported the civil rights movement, believes it will be another generation before any underlying cultural and racial divide finally dissipates. I think it’s a testament that today Tom Robinson would have been cleared, though for many Americans they will always have to relive that guilt and injustice, like Atticus did.
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