*This opinion contains spoilers of the novel and trigger warnings pertaining to sexual violence*
Like many other students, I read “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee in high school. The novel follows a young girl named Jean Louise “Scout” Finch growing up in Maycomb, Mississippi in the 1930s and features little vignettes of her childhood, but focuses on Scout’s father, lawyer Atticus Finch, who picks up a case defending a black man accused of raping a white girl.
When I first read “To Kill a Mockingbird,” I fell in love with the novel. The way Lee wrote the characters made me love and sympathize with them. “Mockingbird” is held in high regard by many people for its lovable characters, southern charm, and satisfying ending to the story. Since its release in the 1960s, the novel has been used in many high school English classes to facilitate discussions about racial injustice, including my majority white ninth-grade English class.
While revolutionary at the time of its publication, the novel is no longer appropriate to be used in classrooms because, among other reasons, it focuses on a white perspective and some characters have a white savior complex. Many people hold Atticus Finch in high regard because he is the lovable, all-wise white man who defends the poor black man – Tom – against a prejudiced all-white jury. However, as some scholars have pointed out, if readers naturally assume that the novel is at all accurate to the 1930s, Atticus should have known that he had to raise the question of a black person not being on the jury, based on the results of the Scottsboro Boys case,a real-world incident in which nine black teenagers were falsely accused of raping a white woman near Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931. But Atticus did not raise the question—the jury found Tom guilty, so Atticus is not the hero we think he is. The image of a great and wise white man defending a poor black man is not the image we should be teaching students in modern public schools.
Additionally, non-white perspectives are noticeably absent from the novel. Just think about it: the story is told by a young white girl and almost all of the major supporting characters are white. The only black characters are Calpurnia and Tom. Calpurnia is Finch’s maid and Tom is only mentioned in the context of the trial. Teachers should not use a white-saturated text to teach students about racism.
It is time for English teachers, school curriculums, and educators to leave “Mockingbird” on the shelf. It is time to stop using this outdated, white centered text to facilitate discussions of race in classrooms. There are so many fantastic novels by people of color that highlight diverse perspectives. Novels such as “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas or “All American Boys” by Jason Reynolds and Brandon Kiely deal with similar themes of racial injustice. Both stories are told by black characters which allow black students to see themselves in the stories and white students to learn about racial injustice from the perspective of those being harmed.
I said that I love this novel, and it’s true. I really do. However, someone can love a book and still criticize it. I think that “To Kill a Mockingbird” has incredibly high literary value but, in the context of teaching about racism in schools, there are far better books to use. If interested in reading Miranda’s full essay, please email wvane@emu.edu.