How Does Harper Lee Use Racial Perception In To Kill A Mockingbird

In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, She introduces racial perceptions but also problems and issues and how they affect the treatment of others; these views are still prevalent today. The black community experiences racism and racial profiling through their treatment by their peers. Harper Lee expresses racism through Miss Gates by stating, "It's time someone taught 'em a lesson, they were getting' way above themselves..."(Lee,331). This evidence states that the white community generally perceives the African-Americans as below them and tend to persecute them if they begin to believe they are equal. Furthermore, today the black community still receives unrelenting racial profiling on a large scale. In the article "Racism against Young African American men needs to be addressed" author Barack Obama expresses his experiences of the world, by stating, "There are very few African-American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the

These perceptions change how people treat the black community and cause a general association with crime toward the blacks. In addition, during the 1930's, the white community rejects the black community because the perceptions that the society contains which incriminate the blacks. Jem explains to Scout why the coloreds don’t belong in their society by saying, "White folks won't have 'em 'cause they're colored an' colored folks won't have 'em cause they're half white,"(Lee,215). This evidence states that the whites reject the blacks because they are black and vice versa. The whites treat them like criminals because they feel like they can when the blacks have done nothing to deserve that sort of treatment. Lastly, among the people of the world, racism and its perception are not limited to the few who act on it but rather toward the society in which those few