" /> To Kill a Mockingbird Prejudice and Racism Quotes - AllGreatQuotes

To Kill a Mockingbird Prejudice Quotes

Jem's description of Boo Radley

Jem gave a reasonable description of 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 blood-stained – 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.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 1. While Boo Radley isn’t seen outside his house until the end of the novel, Jem is able to provide a most fantastical description of him based on local gossip and prejudice and a child’s imagination. The invisible Boo becomes the Maycomb Boogieman, a monster straight out of a gothic horror story that children are afraid of. The idea of Boo as being a kindly, innocent and vulnerable man has not yet dawned on them at this early stage of the story.
Scout's teacher criticizes Atticus's teaching In Teach

“Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now.”
I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 2. Scout’s first grade teacher Miss Caroline shows her prejudice towards her pupil when she makes Scout feel bad about being able to read. “Now you tell your father not to teach you any more”, she says. This is small-minded and hypocritical for an educator. Scout should be proud of her ability at such a young age.

“There’s some folks who don’t eat like us,” she whispered fiercely, “but you ain’t called on to contradict ’em at the table when they don’t. That boy’s yo’ comp’ny and if he wants to eat up the table cloth you let him, you hear?”
“He ain’t company, Cal, he’s just a Cunningham – ”
“Hush your mouth! Don’t matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house’s yo’ comp’ny, and don’t you let me catch you remarkin’ on their ways like you was so high and mighty!”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 3. Calpurnia rebukes Scout, after Scout makes several rude comments that embarrass Walter Cunningham Jr. at the Finch meal table when he pours syrup all over his meal. Calpurnia wants Scout to show respect to guests at all times and not judge them for their unusual eating habits. She scolds Scout over her slur on farmer Walter Cunningham’s family, who are considered inferior by many locals.

“Stephanie Crawford even told me she woke up in the middle of the night and found him looking in the window at her. I said what did you do, Stephanie, move over in the bed and make room for him? That shut her up a while.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 5. Miss Maudie provides Scout with an example of some of the gossip that is spread about Boo Radley. Especially by Stephanie Crawford, a fountain of unfounded rumors about the Radley family. Miss Maudie thinks her words are ridiculous. Scout points out that Stephanie Crawford goes about the neighborhood “doing good,” which makes her rather hypocritical.
shut up for a hundred years with nothin' but cats to eat - Boo Radley in To Catch a Mockingbird

Dill said, “We’re askin’ him real politely to come out sometimes, and tell us what he does in there – we said we wouldn’t hurt him and we’d buy him an ice cream.”
“You all’ve gone crazy, he’ll kill us!”
Dill said, “It’s my idea. I figure if he’d come out and sit a spell with us he might feel better.”
“How do you know he don’t feel good?”
“Well how’d you feel if you’d been shut up for a hundred years with nothin’ but cats to eat? I bet he’s for a beard down to here – “

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 5. Dill and Jem cook up a plan to drop a note into Boo Radley’s window with a fishing pole to get him to come out. Dill expresses some sympathy for Boo being shut up in his house for so long, while Scout is terrified Boo will kill them. The reclusive Boo is a victim of prejudice in Maycomb, and in the minds of children like Jem he is a figure of fear.
no reason for us not to try to win, Atticus tells Scout In Trying

“Atticus, are we going to win it?”
“No, honey.”
“Then why – ”
“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win,” Atticus said.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 9. Atticus to Scout on why he has decided to defend Tom Robinson, a black man accused of rape, in court. He knows the prejudice in Maycomb will most likely lead to a guilty verdict against Tom. But he feels it is important to defend him because he is innocent and it is simply the right thing to do.

“If Uncle Atticus lets you run around with stray dogs, that’s his own business, like Grandma says, so it ain’t your fault. I guess it ain’t your fault if Uncle Atticus is a n*****-lover besides, but I’m here to tell you it certainly does mortify the rest of the family – ”
“Francis, what the hell do you mean?”
“Just what I said. Grandma says it’s bad enough he lets you all run wild, but now he’s turned out a n*****-lover we’ll never be able to walk the streets of Maycomb agin. He’s ruinin’ the family, that’s what he’s doin’.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 9. The obnoxious young Francis Hancock tells Scout how his grandmother, Aunt Alexandra, doesn’t like the way Atticus is rearing his children and letting Scout run wild. He also reveals Alexandra’s undisguised racism.

But I never figured out how Atticus knew I was listening, and it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to hear every word he said.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 9. Atticus and Uncle Jack have been talking about the abuse the children will face in school because of Atticus defending Tom Robinson. Atticus expresses the hope that the children will come to him for answers to questions. He does not want them infected with the same hatred and prejudice that many Maycomb people have when it comes to issues concerning black people. Another example of Atticus’s good parenting.

“Son, I have no doubt that you’ve been annoyed by your contemporaries about me lawing for n*****s, as you say, but to do something like this to a sick old lady is inexcusable. I strongly advise you to go down and have a talk with Mrs. Dubose,” said Atticus. “Come straight home afterward.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11. Atticus rebukes Jem for destroying Mrs. Dubose’s flowers because he is angry at her making racist comments about Atticus defending a black man. In Atticus’s code of morality, just because Mrs. Dubose lashes out doesn’t mean Jem can lash back.

“Scout,” said Atticus, “when summer comes you’ll have to keep your head about far worse things…it’s not fair for you and Jem, I know that, but sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down – well, all I can say is, when you and Jem are grown, maybe you’ll look back on this with some compassion and some feeling that I didn’t let you down. This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience – Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11. When Scout worries about the reactions of people in Maycomb to her father’s taking on the defense of Tom Robinson, he reassures her. He knows that many white folks who think badly of the black residents disapprove of his decision. But he wants her to know that doing the right thing is more important in this case.

“Atticus, you must be wrong…”
“How’s that?”
“Well, most folks seem to think they’re right and you’re wrong…”
“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions,” said Atticus, “but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11. Scout to Atticus, questioning her father’s choices based on what the majority of the people in the town think about him defending rape accused Tom Robinson. This also also shows the flaws with justice here, with most people having negative feelings towards black people.

“Scout,” said Atticus, “n*****-lover is just one of those terms that don’t mean anything – like snot-nose. It’s hard to explain – ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody’s favoring N*****s over and above themselves. It’s slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody.
“You aren’t really a n*****-lover, then, are you?
“I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody…I’m hard put, sometimes – baby, it’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11. Atticus explains to Scout the racial slur “*****-lover” that has been hurled at him. It says more about the person using it than the person it is directed towards, he tells her. He shows high moral principles by making clear that he loves everybody, regardless of the color of their skin. He’s also a good father who teaches his children by example.

Lula stopped, but she said, “You ain’t got no business bringin’ white chillun here – they got their church, we got our’n. It is our church, ain’t it, Miss Cal?”
…When I looked down the pathway again, Lula was gone. In her place was a solid mass of colored people.
One of them stepped from the crowd. It was Zeebo, the garbage collector. “Mister Jem,” he said, “we’re mighty glad to have you all here. Don’t pay no ‘tention to Lula, she’s contentious because Reverend Sykes threatened to church her. She’s a troublemaker from way back, got fancy ideas an’ haughty ways – we’re mighty glad to have you all.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 12. Lula, a member of Calpurnia’s church, is being racist and hypocritical because she doesn’t want Scout and Jem to attend the all-black church on account of their differences. This is the first time the children experience racism first-hand. Maycomb, like many other Southern cities in the 1930s, has a deep racial, social and historical divide that dates back to the days of slavery. But not everyone feels like Lula, and Scout and Jem are welcomed into the church by Zeebo, the garbage collector.

“It’s right hard to say,” she said. “Suppose you and Scout talked colored-folks’ talk at home it’d be out of place, wouldn’t it? Now what if I talked white-folks’ talk at church, and with my neighbors? They’d think I was puttin’ on airs to beat Moses.”
“But Cal, you know better,” I said.
“It’s not necessary to tell all you know. It’s not ladylike – in the second place, folks don’t like to have someone around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ’em. You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 12. The Finch’s black cook Calpurnia is trying to tell the children that you have to speak the language that people understand and you can’t go round acting like you are better than anyone else. An educated woman, she speaks proper English in the Finch home, but when she is with the black people in her community and at her church she speaks the way they do. Here, she is telling Scout what it means to be ladylike.

Atticus’s voice was even: “Alexandra, Calpurnia’s not leaving this house until she wants to. You may think otherwise, but I couldn’t have got along without her all these years. She’s a faithful member of this family and you’ll simply have to accept things the way they are.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 14. Atticus defends Calpurnia against Aunt Alexandra, who doesn’t approve of a black woman raising Scout and wants him to get rid of her. He tells his sister that he will never tell Calpurnia to leave the house because she is essentially a member of the family.

I pushed my way through dark smelly bodies and burst into the circle of light.
“H-ey, Atticus!”
I thought he would have a fine surprise, but his face killed my joy. A flash of plain fear was going out of his eyes, but returned when Dill and Jem wriggled into the light. There was a smell of pigpen about, and when I glanced around I discovered that these men were strangers. They were not the people I saw last night. Hot embarrassment shot through me: I had leaped triumphantly into a ring of people I had had never seen before.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 15. Atticus is not happy that Scout, Jem and Dill have come to see him at the jail house. This is evident from the flash of fear in his eyes on seeing them. A lynch mob has sent the sheriff off on a wild goose chase and wants to administer street justice to jailed Tom Robinson. The only thing standing between them and Tom is a courageous Atticus who refuses to move.

Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 15. Scout uses this tactic to distract and calm the angry mob confronting Atticus, determined to take “justice” into their own hands by breaking Tom Robinson out of jail and lynching him. She calls out to mob leader Walter Cunningham, a former client of Atticus, and talks about Mr. Cunningham’s legal entailments problem and his nice son who is a classmate of hers. Cunningham then ends the confrontation. Scout shows a special kind of courage here.

“Well, Atticus, I was just sayin’ to Mr. Cunningham that entailments are bad an’ all that, but you said not to worry, it take a long time sometimes…that you all’d ride it out together…” I was slowly drying up, wondering what idiocy I had committed. Entailments seemed all right enough for livingroom talk.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 15. By talking in a very personal way to Walter Cunningham during a tense confrontation, Scout manages to humanize the mob intent on killing Tom Robinson, of which Cunningham is leader. She shows great courage here.

I looked around and up at Mr. Cunningham, whose face was equally impassive. Then he did a peculiar thing. He squatted down and took me by both shoulders.
“I’ll tell him you said hey, little lady,” he said.
Then he straightened up and waved a big paw. “Let’s clear out,” he called. “Let’s get going, boys.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 15. Walter Cunningham calls off the mob that is intent on lynching Tom Robinson, when Scout cleverly and courageously engages in small talk about Cunningham’s son being a good boy – “Maybe he told you about me, I beat him up one time but he was real nice about it. Tell him hey for me, won’t you?” Scout saves Tom Robinson’s life by this.

“Well how do you know we ain’t Negroes?”
“Uncle Jack Finch says we really don’t know. He says as far as he can trace back the Finches we ain’t, but for all he knows we mighta come straight out of Ethiopia durin’ the Old Testament.”
“Well if we came out durin’ the Old Testament it’s too long ago to matter.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Jem, “but around here once you have a drop of Negro blood, that makes you all black.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 16. Scout wonders about her family history and whether they have negro blood in them. Jem in his answers shows growing maturity and understanding of the issue of racism.
Close