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To Kill A Mockingbird 12 Jim Crow, Part 2 83 Views


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Description:

Were black people portrayed as stereotypes in To Kill A Mockingbird? Was Harper Lee trying to draw attention to the problems with stereotypes, or did she believe them? Hit play to find out. 

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

Thank you We sneak in To kill a mockingbird jim

00:07

crow part two eyelash one of the main questions that

00:12

people have about to kill a mockingbird as as much

00:15

as it's clearly anti racism that's thing now today everyone's

00:19

anti racism but it's clearly anti racism But does it

00:23

still portray these stereotypes of black people And yes it

00:26

does Critics of the novel will tell you that this

00:31

is the story of how a white man came in

00:33

and saved the black man which by the way he

00:35

didn't actually save him But it's this story of you

00:39

know black people need white people to protect everyone all

00:42

these my people need an atticus in their life He's

00:45

essentially a stereotype of white person on and he comes

00:48

in swoops in and says you know i'm going to

00:50

take a stand against this And so while black people

00:54

in the novel are portrayed as you know loving kind

00:58

good people they're also portrayed a simpleton sze they are

01:04

you know not as educated so no and so instead

01:07

we get characters like calpurnia who is you know the

01:12

stern black kind of essentially nanny slash housekeeper for a

01:16

scout jem and what she turns into is the stereotype

01:20

of the wise old black woman harper lee could have

01:23

chosen to make her more complex character and critics of

01:28

the book will say you know because she didn't it's

01:30

showing that you know she didn't understand all the complexities

01:33

and she treated black stereotypes But it's possible what harper

01:36

lee was doing was kind of calling other people out

01:38

for doing that and kind of showing this is what

01:40

people thought of black people It was there's a wise

01:43

old black woman and there's you know the crippled victim

01:46

and and none of these characters really have a lot

01:49

of agency in the book but they didn't really have

01:52

a lot of agency soon kind of go either way

01:55

on on whether it's harper lee looking at it to

01:57

simply or if she's actually trying to to a specific

02:00

point we have to remember our bellies not writing this

02:02

in the thirty she's writing in the sixties so she's

02:05

coming at it from a different time period and then

02:08

we're reading it in a different time period So we

02:09

have a story set in the thirties britain in the

02:12

sixties so it's really all about perspective and how you

02:15

think about it No Where black people portrayed as stereotypes

02:21

in the novel was harper lee trying to draw attention

02:24

to the problems with stereotypes Or did she believe them

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