Comparing The Scholarship Jacket And Emmett Till

Sometimes, people are treated fairly, with the views of others not distorting the truth, and no innocent person gets hurt. Sadly, that is not a reality we get to live in every day, as shown by The Scholarship Jacket and the story of Emmett Till, a black man who was accused of whistling at a white woman. It’s no shocker that people are mistreated, forced to go through things they shouldn’t have to, and these stories show it for people to see. The Scholarship Jacket involves a girl asked to pay for an award she earned due to her race, while Emmett Till was arrested, and met a very cruel fate as a result. These stories show people treated unfairly, with people backing it up due to discrimination.

In both stories, someone is put through unfair

circumstances to some degree. In The Scholarship Jacket, the main character, Martha, had earned the scholarship jacket that shows that she was able to maintain the highest grades for eight years. However, her hard work over these years appears unappreciated as the principal asks her to pay to get her award. Martha knew she shouldn’t have to pay for the jacket, so she told the principal she wouldn’t, and that he could give away the scholarship jacket to someone else. Emmett Till’s situation is significantly more serious. He was accused of whistling towards a white woman named Carolyn Bryant. She later admitted that she had lied about what Emmett supposedly did, but her husband, Roy Bryant, believed her, and Emmett ended up dead as a result, killed by Roy and his brother in law, J.W. Milam. They beat up a man so bad he wound up dead, with his corpse nearly unrecognizable, because of a lie a white woman told. Clearly, these stories show how people will be treated due to unfair reasons.
In those scenarios, the injustice is allowed to happen, seemingly without repercussions.

The principal in Martha’s story is clearly nervous about the encounter he has with Martha, with the text explicitly stating about the principal that, “He looked uncomfortable and happy. I decided I wasn’t going to make it easier for him so I looked him straight in the eye. He looked away and fidgeted with the papers on his desk.” It’s clear from that alone that he is uncomfortable with the situation he’s in, asking Martha to do something she shouldn’t do. However, it still happens, supported by a teacher who argues that Martha shouldn’t get the jacket and that it should go to someone else whose parents have connections to the school board. Clearly, this is a small bit of injustice, but what happened to Emmett Till is quantifiably worse. As he was a black man accused by a white woman of doing something wrong, the idea that he would be treated horribly due to the color of his skin is sadly something I’m beginning to expect. As such, when he was accused of whistling at a white woman, he ended up dead with his body left in a river. The people who did this were given a full acquittal, not punished for what they did to Emmett Till. They essentially murdered a guy and suffered no repercussions for it, as the court ruled in their favor. It’s obvious that in both cases, somebody is supporting the unfair choices made, or allowing them to

happen.
These unjust things seem to have a connection to racism.

In The Scholarship Jacket, it’s not too noticeable, but part of the reason that she is asked to pay for the jacket is due to the fact that she is Mexican. We overhear two teachers arguing over who rightfully deserves the jacket, and to quote the bits of speech we hear from the presumably racist person, “...Martha is Mexican...resign...won’t do it.” It is hard to hear someone’s ethnic background mentioned in a conversation over who gets an award, and say it wasn’t mentioned out of racial bias. As for Emmett Till, I’ve already mentioned the circumstances in which he was murdered by two white guys, but haven’t talked about how they weren’t convicted in detail. The case went to court, as expected, but in the end, it was the jurors who decided the verdict. Those killers had all white male jurors deciding their case, and I think it’s clear that if we’re going to have a jury decide a case, don’t choose only races that are the same as the accused, or the defendant. Since all whites were deciding the case, they were obviously sympathetic to the defenders, and gave an acquittal. These stories involve racism affecting good people’s lives for the worst when it

shouldn’t.
Both of these tales tell of people being judged unfairly. Martha was requested to pay for an award due to her heritage, and if it weren’t for a change of heart towards the end, the jacket would have gone to someone else. Emmett was killed by whites, then those who killed him were judged by whites, and got away with it as a result. Racism caused these stories to happen to some degree, and people were affected as a result. People let their bias towards others affect people, paving way for these stories to occur. There is no reason that people should factor race into how they judge others, and these stories show that.