Society’s Failure to Prosper: Racial Prejudice and Inequality
There lies the issue of racial prejudice in every location of the world be it London, Harlem or Venice. Individuals everywhere are constantly victimized solely based on their ethnic identity. Misjudgements like this are the reason that society is stuck in its issues; the fact that racism exists limits society’s ability to advance and prosper. Multiple literary texts have been written to address this common struggle, most of which convey the message that individuals with ignorant preconceived beliefs on certain races are perpetrators of racial prejudice whether they intend it or not and will serve as obstacles to the victims of this social transgression. This statement is evident through Tom Robinson’s unfair trial in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, through the oppression faced by the black citizens of Jabavu in Mbuyensi Oswald Mtshali’s “An Abandoned Bundle” and through the white boy’s alienation of the black persona in Countee Cullen’s “Incident”. Tom Robinson is used in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird to illustrate the manner in which blacks in Alabama were treated unfairly and denied justice in legal cases as a result of the jury’s racial bias. In a typical trial scenario, it is imperative that the jury be unbiased before and during the trial in order to promote fair sanction, but when almost an entire community has developed a white-dominant mindset, it is certain that a black man will be frowned upon even before the trial. On the night prior to the trial, Atticus and Tom were visited by the “Old Sarum bunch” (Lee 194) outside the jail and it was demanded that Atticus “[g]et aside from the [jail] door” (202) so the group could apprehend Tom. Although Lee doesn’t state it directly, it is meant to be inferred that the gang - consisting of Walter Cunningham and his men - was a lynch mob and that they visited the jail with the intention of murdering Tom. Already, Tom Robinson was at a...