Hatred and Racism in the 1930s

The power of racism can affect one's behaviours and actions with one another. In To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a man named Tom Robinson is convicted of raping a 19-year-old girl that is part of the Ewells family. As a black man in the 1930s, it was hard not to be guilty of a crime against white people like the Ewells. Siding with Tom Robinson as a white man is also looked down upon. This can be proven by the reaction of a lady named Mrs. Dubose when she hears one of the main characters named Atticus was defending a man when she said: “your father’s no better than the N-words…” (To Kill A Mockingbird, 102) The quote shows Mrs. Dubose’s hatred and discrimination to black people. The quote also shows how defending a black man is hated by the people. Mrs. Dubose’s act gives …show more content…
The jury and people in the courtroom assume if one black person is wrong, that all black people are the same and they are also bad. This causes black people being wrongly accused of actions they have not done. Once the trial was over, and Atticus lost the case, and Tom was deemed to be guilty, Atticus felt that the decision of the case was very one-sided meaning that the jury was prejudiced and knew that Tom was guilty from the beginning of the case. Atticus expresses this by saying to his son, Jem “ if you had been on that jury, son, and eleven other boys like you, Tom would be a free man…” (220) This shows that if the jury had different people, like Jem and people with unbiased opinions, the final verdict would have been Tom Robinson not being guilty. The people that were on the jury were farm people that knew the Ewells, making the decision seem very biased when comparing Atticus’s evidence to the Ewell's decision. In Tom Robinson and Atticus’s perspective, it is almost impossible to win the case due to the impact of racism and discrimination in the lives of the white townspeople. Racism can impact decisions to the