Cory Kuchta

                        To Kill A Mockingbird and the Development of Institutional Racism

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            The novel To Kill A Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee, tells the story of a white lawyer (Atticus Finch) defending an African American (Tom Robinson) accused of rape through the eyes of an uncorrupted child (Scout Finch) during the Jim Crow era in the South. Released at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the novel captures race relations in a time of one of the biggest social and civil moments in American history. The novel does an excellent job of educating the masses on what life could have truly been like at this time in the South and how a young soul grew into an understanding of the evils of human nature. This novel allowed readers to gain insight to the institutional racism African Americans faced. The impact of this book is immeasurable, still in many school curriculum all over the United States. However, since the plot reflects a rural town in the South, the racist tendencies had to originate from somewhere. How and why has institutionalized racism developed in the South that forced the characters of To Kill A Mockingbird to experience their unjust story?

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            Primarily, what institutionalized racism is should be established before diving into the research that connects it to To Kill A Mockingbird. Institutional racism, defined by Zinzi D. Bailey et. al. in their journal Structural Racism and Health Inequities in the USA: Evidence and Interventions, can be considered as “‘discriminatory policies and practices carried out…[within and between individual] state or non-state institutions’ on the basis of racialised group membership” (1455).  Therefore, any racism contained in court systems, health care, employment, and so on can be defined as institutional racism.

 

            Undoubtedly, the court system is one plagued by racism in the real world and conveyed in the novel. There are stereotypes and institutional racism exploited in court, not only by the plaintiff, but by the judge and defendants. Tamar R. Birckhead, a Boston College scholar, proposed in his journal "The Racialization of Juvenile Justice and the Role of the Defense Attorney", that “the process of racialization allows such epithets to serve as code for racially based judgements of the young person rather than reflect an objective analysis” (387). The epithets discussed here are “good” kids and “bad” kids, based on white cultural norms. “For instance, when a juvenile court probation officer describes an adolescent male as from a ‘broken home’… the odds are that the child is Black” (Birckhead 387). One defendant named “Campbell” is a lighter skinned black juvenile who utilized proper court formalities and the proposal that he was a “good” kid while “Raekwon”, a darker skinned defendant, mumbled and shrugged in court while not flipping the stereotypes used against him to his benefit (Birckhead 390). “The judge could believe that Campbell’s seemingly friendly and cooperative demeanor should be encouraged because he appears to be less stereotypically Black, whereas Raekwon’s seemingly negative attitude should be chastised because he appears more stereotypically Black” (Birckhead 390). The racial characterization of both defendants corresponds to their treatment in court, as well as potential outcomes of the case. Additionally, the body language, rhetoric and decisions of the judge when dealing with the two differently racialized defendants displays that racism is structurally a part of the court and may influence court decisions and treatment of African Americans in a court of law (Brickman 390).

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            The evidence displayed highlights the structured racism that Blacks face and how it is employed in a juvenile court of law, similar to the experiences contained in To Kill A Mockingbird. Prescott Loveland, a juvenile defender, ensures his clients “become aware that the juvenile court process has some dangerously unfair features” (283), further confirming the court system as a player of institutionalized racism in America.

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            In a similar manner, the structured racism in America leading up to the time of Harper Lee’s novel is a product of connected institutions. In the academic journal The Lancet, Zinzi D Bailey et. al. defines structural racism as “the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination, through mutually reinforcing inequitable systems (in housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, criminal justice, and so on) that in turn reinforce discriminatory beliefs, values, and distribution of resources” (1454). The fact that racism is present in all the above avenues gives credit to the role different institutions have in perpetuating the racism they support and how it is an overbearingly oppressive. In this instance, racism is defined by the institution that allows people to live in their country: the government. Consequentially, the institutions that are connected with the government (virtually all) incorporate racism and are therefore responsible for perpetuating it. The effects of racism experienced in the novel and in the real world in this time period originate from the history and culture of long-established, interconnected institutionalized racism.

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           Congruently, institutions kept racial discrimination alive after the Emancipation Proclamation with slavery-like phenomena through the prison industrial complex. A Harvard graduate student, by the name of Nyle Fort, included the characterization of this phenomena in his work, Prisons, Pot, and Profit: The Plight of Post-Emancipation contained in the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy. “After President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and Congress ratified the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, prisons sprang up all over the South as a form of White backlash to Black reconstruction” (Fort 49). Prisoners would then be leased to plantation or factory owners to maintain the old way of slavery (Fort 49). This is the meaning behind the term prison industrial complex, commonly shortened to PIC, where prisoners are exploited for their labor. Being that “African Americans are disproportionately represented in every facet of the criminal justice system”, the new prison industrial complex of this time is evidently congruent to slavery (Fort 50). Existing plantation owners leased convicts and housed them in old slave quarters, drawing the parallel between slavery and the prison industrial complex closer (Fort 49).

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          Many of the freed African Americans were put into new prisons, whether they were guilty or not (and subjected to structural court-based racism as discussed earlier in this paper). Therefore, the oppression faced by Blacks after Emancipation and continuing up to the time illustrated by Harper Lee’s novel was exacerbated by supplying a document of hope (Emancipation Proclamation) but still subjecting them to institutionalized racism. The introduction of the prison industrial complex to keep African Americans and minorities oppressed is one of the ways institutionalized racism led to the events captured in the novel.

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           Conversely, this is not to say freed slaves did not thrive after Emancipation. In Negotiating Ownership in a Contested Landscape: A Consideration of Post Emancipation Black Community Development during Jim Crow in Anderson County, Texas by Sarah Loftus, an African American community “thrived during the first half of the twentieth century through people’s combined efforts to acquire land, develop infrastructure and create informal exchange economies that empowered people to survive in the environment of Jim Crow” (49). In this case, the existence of mutually beneficial efforts of African American community members allowed for prosperity. Efforts of the community seeking empowerment reported by Joan Malczewski, a professor of historical education at the University of California Irvine, included when educators of African American schools fought for more rights and educational access for their students after time and curriculum cuts (323). This evidence may support that African Americans may not have been as oppressed after slavery as earlier claims proposed, especially when working together for the benefit of the greater good of their communities. Their activism may also be the basis for civil rights movements and mutual empowerment in attempt tackle institutional racism in the time period corresponding with To Kill A Mockingbird.

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           Countering earlier claims, institutionalized racism was not interdependent with other institutions but primarily with the government and politics. A quote from Booker T Washington in The Evolution of Jim Crow Laws in Twentieth Century Virginia by Charles E. Wynes reads, “I have never yet found a case where the masses of the people of any given city were interested in the matter or segregation of white and colored people; that is there has been no spontaneous demand for segregation ordinances. In certain cities, politicians have taken the leadership in introducing such segregation ordinances into city councils, and after making an appeal to racial prejudices have succeed in securing a backing for ordinances” (417). In this case, the institution of society or local business had little to do with the institutionalized racism that the government created. Governmental and political racism provided the avenue for segregation to occur without mass outcry for it. Therefore, the original claim that interconnected institutions are what perpetuate structural racism may be incorrect in the fact that the evidence proposed the sole proprietor of this racism to be the government. The responsibility of the development of institutionalized racism in To Kill A Mockingbird and the era leading up to it falls on the government and politicians.

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           Despite the success of the community of Anderson County, Texas, research indicates that this is an isolated case. Sarah Loftus’ only evidence of prosperous post-emancipation communities is that of Anderson County, Texas. Additionally, Loftus recognizes that there were instances of rural African Americans that attempted to create a prosperous community and “failed miserably to deliver” (28). Loftus’ recognition of failed, start-up, communities, underscores that the success of one case foes not cast a blanket on all post-emancipation attempts at reconstruction. The presence of failures confirms this, supporting the continued oppression and hardships most African Americans came to endure after obtaining freedom and continuing through the Civil Rights Movement due to institutionalized racism. This continued oppression was felt in the book when Tom Robinson faced a lynch mob before his trial began.

 

           Additionally, research refutes the proposal that the government is the only institution responsible for structural racism and supports interconnectedness of racially charged institutions. For instance, “fearful whites” did nothing to oppose lawmakers from passing segregation, making them an institution supporting structural racism (Wynes 417). Additionally, Carl H Nightingale provides evidence of other racism-supporting institutions in his contribution to the Journal of Social history through his work The Transnational Contexts of Early Twentieth-Century American Urban Segregation.” Nightingale illustrated that the common people of Baltimore (lawyers, business owners, secretaries, and so on) sought segregation to protect their properties and livelihoods from close proximities with African Americans (683).  Even though the “fearful whites” did nothing to stop or encourage segregation, that in itself is an action. No decision is a decision, similar to not voting in a presidential election if neither candidate is deserving of one’s vote. Also, the “fearful whites” and the Baltimore activists are considered institutions because they are a part of society that contributes to the actions of other institutions, making them interconnected. Interconnectedness of institutions in America has led to the development of structural racism, like the relationship between the “fearful whites” and the example of Baltimore residents with the government. This interconnectedness is what led to Tom Robinson experiencing racism in the court and out of it.

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           The implications of institutionalized racism are felt beyond the contents of the Harper Lee’s novel. For instance, William James Hull Hoffer illustrates the example of the court case Plessy v. Ferguson in his contribution to the Journal of Supreme Court History, Plessy V. Ferguson: The Effects of Lawyering on a Challenge to Jim Crow. Hoffer goes on to explain the ramifications Plessy v. Ferguson had on creating segregation in America. A tangible piece of legislation is evidence of racism at the structural level. Racism in the court room is apparent here, and in To Kill A Mockingbird. Additionally, the Los Angeles Riots of 1992 embody the presence of structural racism. As outlined by Soo-Kwang Oh and Justin Hudson in Framing and Reframing the 1992 LA Riots: A Study of Minority Issues Faring by the Los Angeles Times and Its Readers, the riots that caused mass civil unrest were based on acquitted white police officers who got away with beating and using excessive force on and unarmed man named Rodney King (128). Oh and Hudson also go on to describe the racial characterizations and treatments of the communities involved in the riots, which were often subject to mistreatment by institutions of power (the media and Los Angeles Police Department) (127-128). The century gap between these two instances display the deep rooted institutionalized racism and exemplifies the struggle to eliminate it.

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           The struggle of eliminating racism is a long, and arduous battle. It is engrained in the culture and history of the United States. However, progress has undoubtedly been made. Based upon the tribulations of the characters of To Kill A Mockingbird and the earlier proposed research, racism in America exists in interconnected institutions and the development and sustenance of these institutions is what lead to the conditions in Harper Lee’s classic novel. The solution to racism may not be to defeat racist people themselves, but to eliminate racism in the institutions that perpetuate it.