A Time To Kill By John Grishmams

“A Time to kill” is movie based on the novel of the same name by John Grishmams. It is set in a rural small town Canton, Mississippi in the 1980s. During this time in Mississippi delta area racism was deep seated. The storyline begins when a 10 year old girl is violently rape and viciously brutalized by two white “rednecks” men; they dump her in a nearby river after failed attempts to hang her. She survives and the men are arrested, however her father main character (Carl) is worried that the men may be acquitted due to a similar case further south in which four white teenagers were acquitted of a rape of a black girl. He struggles with the possibility that the rapists will walk free in this case, so he is determined to get justice and puts

A local white liberal lawyer (Jake) agrees to defend him, while he intends to a plea of guilty. The rape and subsequent revenge killing gain national media attention, and stirred death threats, and the organization of the KKK and black protestors at the courthouse. While Jake struggles to get justice for Carl, he persuades the courthouse that the actions of the rape if this 10 year old black girl would not have been called to question before the court of law if the victim had been white. “Had it been so, it is implied that the father’s motive in murdering the rapists would have been seen by the public as justified, and there would not have been any prosecution.” The argument the lawyer makes is that if the jury can spare the life of a white man for vengeful murder then why they must be able to do the same for a black man (iMdB,

One it depicts the problems that African American male defendants have in getting a fair trial. Given the negative police actions, it is reasonable for many African Americans to accept that police racism exists, and that this racism would lead into false biases of framing African Americans defendants in a court setting. It also shows the difference in treatment of whites who are the exploiters, consistently showing up as the “good guys”. Their superiority is taken as justified while non -whites are the “bad guys”. In Kopplemans, Understanding Human Differences section one he describes how the majority group creates names and labels for the minority groups. When a dominant group has the power to label the subordinate group labels are used to define and control the subordinate group. The media portrays these groups in negative ways (Koppleman, 2005). In “A Time to Kill”, African Americans are labeled as enemies of the community, the story is predicated on the fact that society is so racist that this father has to avenge his daughter himself. If the little girl had been white, there would have been prosecution to the fullest extent of law; however since the girl was black, he couldn’t depend on our system justice to prevail in a positive outcome. Unfortunately, this stereotype is deeply ingrained in our popular culture and