Example Of Prejudice In To Kill A Mockingbird

An unknown author once said, “The greatest obstacle to progress is prejudice.” Prejudice is an opinion or hatred toward a certain group of people with no real reason. That hatred can be because of race, gender, religion, sexuality, etc. Prejudice has existed since the beginning of time. Major examples of prejudice are illustrated in Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, The Holocaust, and William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.

In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Arnold makes the decision to leave the reservation school and go to a white school. This is a huge decision because Arnold had to leave all of his friends at his school on the reservation to

One big example was the prejudice shown against Tom Robinson. At the time that the story took place, prejudice against African Americans was extremely common, especially in the southern US states. So when Tom Robinson, an African American, was accused of raping a white woman, everyone knew that he would be found guilty, whether he commited the crime or not. Throughout Tom’s trial, it became quite clear that Tom Robinson did not really commit the crime he was accused of. Jem and Scout both knew this, but they were too young to understand the ideas of prejudice. In the book, Jem says about Judge Taylor “‘He’s not supposed to lean, Reverend, but don’t fret, we’ve won it.’” (Lee, 211) This shows that Jem didn’t have any prejudice toward Tom Robinson because of his race. He was certain that the jury would declare him innocent because as far as he knew, trials were always fair, no matter who it was that was being accused. He didn’t understand that other people were too prejudiced to declare a black man innocent. But Reverend Sykes understood the ideas of prejudice. He told Jem “‘Now don’t be so confident, Mr. Jem, I ain’t ever seen any jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man…’” (Lee, 211) When he says this, the reader understands that the jury is not going to decide in favor of Tom Robinson. Jem and Scout both know that it’s completely unfair to send an innocent man to prison only because of the color of his skin, but unfortunately they knew that there was nothing they could do to stop the prejudice that took place in