Student Content
Mockingbird” illustrates this point nicely.
Mr Gilmore, a lawyer in the Tom Robinson
trial, is enraged when Tom says he felt sorry
for Mayella Ewell. This shows how the white
people felt they were more important than
the Africans and for an African to feel sorry
for them was considered an insult.
In the Name
of Justice
By Michael Brennan (Y12 - EP)
Y
Also, since many Europeans were educated,
they were more likely to be selected on a
jury. In many cases, trials between a white
man and an African were decided by an
all-white jury, which heavily favoured the
white man.
ou’re a black man, you are standing in court, awaiting the jury’s
verdict. All of the evidence is in
your favour: GUILTY!
You’re a white man, you are standing in
court, awaiting the jury’s verdict. All the
evidence is in your favour: Innocent...
There have been several severe examples
of this extreme prejudice towards African
Americans. For example, Jena High School
located in a small town in Jena, Louisiana
(a state infmaous for racis m) experienced
some of this injustice first hand.
Student Voice
Is this justice? Is this the way we want crime
to be handled in our country? How could
people be so caught up with racial differences that they fail to see the truth that is
staring them right in the face.
Throughout the course of history, there
has been a vast difference in the
way that Europeans (or people with
pale skin) have been treated by the
justice system. The novel “To Kill
a Mockingbird”, written by Harper
Lee addressed the issue of injustice towards African Americans
through the way Tom Robinson is
found guilty, even though all of the evidence was in Tom’s favour. However, there
are always two sides to every story and
I will be looking at the white people’s view
of the justice system of the time (early 19th
Century) compared to the African Americans’
perspective of the system.
For African Americans, the justice system
was anything but just. They could go into
court totally innocent with all of the evidence
in their favour and end up with a life
sentence in jail, or even a death sentence,
as was the case with Tom Robinson. For an
African American, going to court could be a
death sentence in itself.
African Americans were treated as inferior
beings to white men and as horrible as this
sounds, it was the cruel reality of the 19th
Century. The main reason for this inferior
treatment was because the Africans were
shipped out from Africa and sold as slaves
in America. They worked on plantations,
farming and cotton picking. Some worked
as house servants. The conditions these
slaves undured were unthinkable. They were
stacked so tightly in ships that they were unable to move for weeks on end on their way
to America. They were whipped and beaten
at the hands of their unreasonable owners
and were fed so little that many starved to
death.
The Americans had no respect for the Africans. They were merely viewed as a means
to make money. This is one of the reasons
why they were treated so badly.
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Tom Robinson worked as a cotton
picker and he was viewed as a
lesser being in the Maycomb white
community, even though he was a
very nice man. He never had a bad
word to say about anyone and his manners
were impeccable. Scout even said, “in their
own way, Tom Robinson’s manners were as
good as Atticus’,” which is very high praise.
The only reason for the injustice was his
skin colour. He wasn’t a drunkard like Bob
Ewell and he behaved much more civilly
than Bob, but his skin colour put him
below Bob in society.
From the white man’s perspective, the
justice system presented no trouble.
They could be assured that they were proven
innocent if they were up against an African
American, no matter what the case or what
they had done. Even for a man like Bob
Ewell, who is as horrible aas a person could
be and is clearly guilty of perjury. However,
he can get off the hook because of his skin
colour.
A main reason that Europeans felt that they
were better than the Africans was because
many Europeans were educated and most
Africans were not. Many Africans could
neither read nor write so they were viewed
as inferior. They were made to work for
the educated Europeans who had money
and land. This is one of the main reasons
why Africans were treated so poorly by the
justice system. Also educated Europeans
considered themselves to be more credible
and trustworthy and therefore more likely to
be innocent.
An event from Harper Lee’s “To Kill a
A group of African American boys at the
high school asked a teacher if they could
sit under a tree at lunch time with the other
white boys. The teacher told them they could
sit wherever they wanted to. Next morning,
three nooses hung from the branches. The
students who hung the nooses received
a brief suspension from the school, but
no further consequences arose from the
incident. Or so they thought.
This incident was only one of many and the
racial tension between the whites and the
blacks was beginning to boil over. Many
fights started to break out between the two
races with the Africans constantly receiving
harsher sentences.
All of these little confrontations added to the
tensions between the opposing races, finally
resulting in an incident referred to as, “The
Jena Six”. In December 2006, six African
American youths, all from Jena High
School, attacked a white school mate Justin
Barker. The punishment? Felony charges of
attempted murder, up to @90,000 worth of
fines and potentially 20 year jail sentences.
The severity of these charges provoked
widespread controversy as people started
to realise how poorly the African Americans
were being treated. If it had been six white
boys beating up an African boy, would
these charges have been the same? Would
charges even have been laid? This is just
another example of how unfair the justice
system is to African Americans.
As you can see from the evidence above,
over the years, the justice system has
favoured the white people and that
needs to change. However, it is not about
reversing the system so white people are
discriminiated against. It is about creating
a society where all people are considered
equal despite their race or culture. If we can
treat everyone as an equal, injustice can be
stopped.
St Bernard’s College 2013