Racial and Social Prejudice

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Racial and Social Prejudice
Imagine walking into a hallway and being ridiculed and prejudged based off of race, social class, or gender. Most believe that prejudice is a form of judging, but prejudice is a preconceived idea of passed down generation’s opinions. Maycomb County is a little town in Alabama, where everyone knows everybody and gossip travels fast. Common prejudices used in Maycomb were racial, gender, and social. The victims of these prejudices were members of the Maycomb community: Boo Radley who was judged for choosing to abide in his home, Tom Robinson for being colored, and the Ewells because they live in poverty. Racial, social, and gender prejudice is wrong because it holds a back from creating relationships and divides groups of individuals causing other groups to gain control.
Blacks in Maycomb County were constantly being judged and criticized for things that have happened in the past, and were often over-looked due to the social hierarchy. Maycomb County has not seen change in its lifetime, which is consequently the reason that blacks were viewed to be an inferior population and were at the bottom of the social hierarchy. The social hierarchy in Maycomb is based on how well known and respected one was in the community. “There are four kinds of folks in the world. There’s the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, kinds like the Cunninghams out in the woods, kinds like the Ewells in the dump, then there are negroes”(226). No matter what level of respect or social status you have in the community, all whites were put before blacks; this explains the Tom Robinson trial. Tom Robinson was a colored man who was wrongfully accused and convicted for raping a white woman. Granted that some blacks may fall in...

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...lity in a community. Individuals in Maycomb County were often prejudged because they didn’t fit into a particular stereotype in that community. Maycomb County had not undergone change, which resulted in these prejudices and still continued to cause problems in their community. Children learn many stereotypes and believe that they are fact, and we behave as such. The citizens of Maycomb accepted prejudices that they once learned as children and acted upon it, which had detrimental effects to their community. Racial, social, and gender prejudice is a continuing battle that is in our society; Maycomb county had the potential to become a prejudice and stereotype free society, but let their upbringing hinder them from changing their community for the better.

Works Cited

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. E-text. Medium of publication

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