To Kill A Mockingbird Prejudice Essay

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.” -Maya Angelou. Preconceived opinions and unreasonable thoughts are what determine one’s actions and path in life. Everything one does and is surrounded by develops some kind of prejudices in one’s mind and therefore resolves how people act in certain situations. Prejudices are the causes for discrimination and as people have developed unfavorable stereotypes from past experiences, this greatly affects decision making and creating a more ideal society for people of all kinds to thrive in. Prejudice, or judging and making decisions based on personal experiences force people to draw rash and hostile conclusions about people who fall into

a certain category. Prejudice, even if due to personal experiences, is a sign of immense ignorance and insecurity. This is shown not only in the novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, especially in the courtroom and with Boo Radley, but also in modern society, with opinions of Muslims.
In the courtroom scenes in the novel, great amounts of discrimination and racism is shown due to unreasonable previous judgements.

People were and still are so quick to associate things they have seen before, such as a black man committing a crime, with all other African Americans. It is a ridiculous thing to do, but such a mindset was hardly uncommon in the 30’s. Since racism was so prevalent and people “witnessed” black people committing crimes so frequently, it was never doubted that a black man would be much more likely to be a criminal than a white man. Relying on prejudices is the simplest form of ignorance. White villagers from Maycomb need to look at the facts more and detach themselves from their judgmental, emotional sides, which draw conclusions before any evidence is shown. This is exactly how the court system worked, merely past experiences guiding their thoughts and judgements. A quote that shows this is when Atticus states, “They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it- seems only children weep.”. This shows that prejudices steal a man’s innocence and deprive him of the ability to think straight. Only a pure and honest child, who has no bad experiences with blacks, are able to see the cruelty of it all. In the

end, prejudices are just ignorance and simple-mindedness passed down from generation to generation. When one is caught in such an endless circle of insensitivity, it is hard to get out and many counter examples proving oneself wrong are needed, in order to change one’s mind for good. Atticus thought he could prove the prejudiced citizens of Maycomb wrong by winning the case that obviously stated that Tom was innocent, but among a society that was so fixated on pushing blacks away, even that proved to be impossible. Atticus, among his children, was the only one who tried to challenge this uncivilized way of thinking, but one man alone, even with solid facts and evidence, was not enough to tackle an issue that was so prevalent in Maycomb. Another quote that proved the difficulty of not only Tom’s but also Atticus’s position is, “Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.”. This shows that despite all the valuable points Atticus presented or could present, nothing would ever matter to the jury, because they were already so extremely biased. In such an environment, it is so challenging to think independently and differently, and even harder to stand up to a whole society that is blind to its mistakes.
Another example of making bad decisions based on prejudice is Boo Radley. The whole town was terrified of Boo and the Radley family, and would often go out of their way, just to avoid him. Simply because he did not attend social events and was rarely seen, he became the talk of the town and was often described as a murderer and a psychopath. Everyone was scared of him because people had started rumors, and people were foolish enough to listen without having ever met or actually knowing anything about him. When Jem describes Boo "Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained—if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time." This shows how quick people were to make judgements on people, based on whether people fit into the general stereotype of people in Maycomb or not. Jem pictures him as a terrible monster, and this is what creates prejudices for other people- stupid rumors that develop into something much bigger. Experiences of other people being ignorant and talking about Boo in a bad way, make the whole town expect him to be something he is not. Once people had the personal experiences of hearing terrible things about Boo, they would need to be proven wrong multiple times, in order to be able to change their mindset. This is shown clearly in Scout. She had been very wary of him, due to false preconceptions created by her neighborhood, but after realizing that he had been the one sending her small gifts, saw him save her life and “has been able to walk in his shoes”, did she notice that she had been wrong about him. Scout, in the end, seems to be mature above her years and has a more open mindset than almost all of Maycomb’s citizens. Not only Scout but other villagers proved that the mind does not easily let go of past experiences and the prejudices they have created, even after a counterexample. After these two examples, one can see how easily people in Maycomb can turn on others based on false prejudices and how they foolishly they can act based on them.
There are also many examples of personal experiences contributing negatively to create prejudices in the modern world, such as how people view Muslims. People should be viewed as individuals not put into categories based on what people of their race, gender or religion do. Since there have been many terrorist attacks and extremist groups that involved Muslims, people begin to draw conclusions about all people of that religion and infer that all Muslims are dangerous. This is extremely unfair, as there are violent fanatics in all religions, not just in the Islam religion. Most Muslims, merely follow and respect ideas of peace, mercy and forgiveness, but the occasional terrorist takes it to the absolute extreme and ruins the reputation of Muslims everywhere. People being so judgemental and want to group certain types of people together, often see terrorism or violence in the face of an innocent Muslim. Hearing about attacks such as 9/11 or the recent killings in Paris make people question the innocence of the Islam religion as a whole. This prejudice is inaccurate, because it is definitely not the whole religion that plots such terrible things.