I feel that Harper Lee did a fantastic job on her book “To Kill A Mockingbird”. It was published on July 11, 1960. Despite being a fictional novel, this book shares many similarities with the author’s life experience. It explores themes such as innocence, moral complexities, racial prejudices, and social inequalities towards Black people from the perspective of a six years old girl. Harper Lee’s ability to capture the essence of a child narrating this story is flawless. It made me travel through the thought process of a child.
This book is believed to have made a great contribution to the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s in the United States. It is a masterpiece that was taught in schools across the US, and hopefully, it continues to be taught. I am unsure about its global presence in schools, and I don’t recall coming across this book when I was a kid in Spain. This makes me question how reliable schools are in educating fundamental aspects of social living. Possible, for this matter, not reliable. How can this important topic be taught to kids? I’ve met parents who would rather delegate these topics to the school’s teachers and avoid talking about them to their kids. I am worried that’s the general thought amongst parents. But, on a second thought, can parents be trusted to teach this topic to mitigate racial injustices?
When you ask someone: Are you racist? Most likely, you will get a “No” as an answer. No ones want to be associated with negative terms. However, words and actions might indicate otherwise. Do you feel safer in a neighborhood where there are only White people? Or where are there only people from your same race? Do you believe that certain ethnicities should only have certain jobs? Do you use derogatory terms, thinking that it is “normal” to use them to refer to certain ethnic groups? We must learn how to question ourselves if we truly want to contribute to a better society. It should be a daily practice for any action, behaviour, or way of thinking that we deem to be “normal”.
Harper Lee’s book To Kill A Mockingbird was an important wake-up call to the status quo of Black people to millions of white folks. Black Lives Matter.