To the Finish Line

I was deeply honored to be asked to speak about the impact and relevance of To Kill A Mockingbird at yesterday’s Big Read Festival in St. Louis.  A nervous presenter, I initially declined, wondering, what can I possibly say that people will want to hear?  Then, because of a former colleague, who has contagious enthusiasm, who believes in me, and who would simply not allow me to say no, I changed my mind.  Here is the text of what I delivered.  For a myriad of reasons, stepping outside of my comfort zone and giving this talk was one of the best decisions that I have made since the beginning of the school year.

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I have been teaching in public schools for 16 years (currently at Wydown Middle School in Clayton)  and, with the exception of a semester where I was home caring for my newborn son, I have taught To Kill a Mockingbird for every one of those years.  Wow.  That means that I have studied Mockingbird with more than 1,000 young people throughout the years. And it has been an amazing ride.

A lot of my students, before they open the book, think this is going to be a really cool look into how to kill a bird, a hunting manual, if you will.  They cannot believe their good fortune at being assigned a book that seems so cool.  Lest, you too, are as confused as they are, let me recap for you some of the key details of Mockingbird.

You probably remember that Mockingbird is narrated by the brainy Scout Finch, who is looking back on her childhood as a six year old tomboy in small-town Maycomb Alabama during the 1930s.

Scout Finch questions traditions.  She breaks rules, including gender role expectations, much to her Aunt Alexandra’s dismay.   She accepts little on face value.  When forced by her ever-so-proper Aunt Alexandra to, oh my gosh, wear a dress, she makes sure to wear her overalls (proudly) (and rebelliously) underneath.

Scout Finch is no shrinking violet.  She is a bold, strong young woman, a role model to many of my students.

When bullied by her boy cousin, what does she do?  She, of course, socks him, bloodying his lip.  When her father is threatened by an angry mob, what does Scout do?  She intends  to kick the mobster’s shin, reached too high, and, instead,  kicks the head of the mob right where it counts, sending him writhing in pain.   She clearly has not yet learned her father’s lessons on non-violence.  However, through this act, and, more than that, through an appeal to the mobster’s humanity, Scout, with a little bit of help from her brother,  disbands the mob.

The mob is there, the lynch mob, to kill Tom Robinson, an African-American charged with raping a white woman.  This is the 1930s, after all.  This was “justice” in the 1930s.  Between 1882 and 1968, an estimated 4,742 blacks met their deaths at the hands of lynch mobs.  During the 1930s, there was the we-must-protect-the-flower-of-Southern-womanhood charade that often brought on lynchings. Many victims did nothing.  Well, maybe they failed to step aside on a sidewalk or disagreed with a white businessman.  That’s all. The assumption was that the guilt was there—forget the courtroom.

But Atticus will not forget the courtroom.  Atticus is a quiet, unassuming lawyer in this small town, a widower, and, therefore,  a single parent to his two young children.  When assigned to defend Tom Robinson, the African-American who has been charged with raping a young, white woman, Mayella Ewell,  he does the unthinkable.

What does he do?  He actually defends him.

Not a meek defense, but a full-blown, I-am-going-to-work- my-tail-off-to-win-this-case defense. He defends him despite attacks on his own reputation, despite the How Dare You attitude that accompanies his choice to defend an African-American over a white woman.

And, speaking of modeling righteous behavior, we must not forget the parallel plotline of Mockingbird, which involves the neighborhood recluse, Boo Radley.  Boo Radley who is deeply misunderstood by many of his neighbors, who peg him as a weirdo, as a “madman.”  Ultimately, we see Boo Radley for who he is, a timid, yet brave man.  He is a man who, like Atticus, is willing to sacrifice his own safety for the protection other human beings, in this case, for the Finch children, whose lives he ultimately saves through a stunning act of courage at the end of the novel.

When I first learned that I would be giving this talk, I did do what every good fifteen year old would do—I jumped on Facebook and began contacting my “friends” – most of whom are former students.  I asked what they still remember about Mockingbird and I asked them how the novel had impacted their thinking.

Amanda responded first:  Here is an excerpt of what she said:

Atticus inspired me to be a better person but he also taught me to see everyone as a person….no matter how hard it may be.  No matter how different I am from someone, I can appreciate that they are still human and are affected by things. This  is an amazing book and I am definitely going read over again and again and again…….it will never get old.

So why is it that Mockingbird does not get old?  There are many reasons.

First off, because, unfortunately, racism never gets old.

Racism has changed, but it has never just, poof,  disappeared, and we need to remember that, we need to understand that, and we need to not shield that fact from our children, who may be inclined to believe otherwise.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, in a recent report titled “The Year in Hate,” said it counted 888 hate groups in America last year, up from 844 in 2006 and 602 in 2000.

According to studies conducted by Amnesty International, black defendants are far more likely to be sentenced to death if their victim was white.

But what about right here? Racism as blatant as that found in Maycomb, Alabama may be far from the reality of what my students see (thank goodness).  They have never seen a lynch mob.  They are in integrated schools. But  looking at the racism in the book can be a stepping stone to talk about modern racism, or what Charles Blow, in a recent NY times article called, “a shadowy bias that is difficult to measure.”  As Barack Obama gently put it in his speech about race, today’s racial “resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company.”  However, Blow reminds us, they can be — and possibly will be — expressed in the privacy of the voting booth.

Last week, in a New York Times column titled “Racism Without Racists,” Nicholas Kristof said that a recent survey suggested that Barack Obama’s support would be about six percentage points higher if he were white.  The survey contends that most of these votes belong not to “dyed in the wool racists” , but, rather to well-meaning whites who “discriminate unconsciously.” A huge array of research suggests that 50 percent or more of whites have unconscious biases that sometimes lead to racial discrimination.

So, yes, we still need to have conversations about race, about discrimination, about bias.  I have African-American students nearly every year who write papers about subtle racism—about teachers who call on them less frequently or who seem to have lower expectations for them, or about other African-American students who complain that they are “too smart” or “too white.”

So, 48 years after it was published,  the racial issues in Mockingbird continues to resonate.  The book, foolishly banned in some places mostly because of its use of the “n word”, helps us enter into important conversations about the nature of racism and its evolution throughout history.

The book invites us to discuss the nature of racism, but also that of tolerance in general.  It asks us to consider big, philosophical questions– What is our responsibility for other human beings?  What does it mean to treat others with dignity, with kindness?  Am I, in fact, my brother’s keeper?

It invites us to consider the stereotypes that WE form of people and to consider the conclusions that we too often reach without knowing all, or even any, of the facts.  My students have vibrant discussions about the destructive power of idle gossip (such as that which is spread about Boo Radley) , and about the nature of stereotypes.  They recall times when they were pre-judged because they are teenagers, because they are from Clayton, because of the clothes that they wear, or because of the group that they sit with in the cafeteria, because they are Asian or Irish, Jewish or African-American.

And through the reenactment of the courtroom scenes, I ask students to step inside the shoes of characters in this book and to think about their perspective, as, after all, this is a book all about perspective.   I ask my students to think about and write from the point of view of  Mayella Ewell.  Mayella Ewell, who is so terrified of her racist father that she cannot admit to him that, in fact, no rape occurred, that she, a white woman, was attracted to a black man and, in fact, wanted to kiss him.  I ask students to write from the perspective of Boo Radley, so isolated, so misunderstood.  I ask them to “become” jury members and to try to understand why they have allowed prejudice to be their masters.

Why ELSE does Mockingbird never get old?   As Amanda told us, it is difficult to NOT be inspired by Atticus Finch.   Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Do not go where the path may lead.  Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”   Atticus walks on his own path.  It is a scary place.  A dangerous place.  At times, an usafe place.  Yet, for him, the choice is clear.  After all, how can he teach his children to be upright, righteous human beings, if he does not model that himself? As the parent of two young children and as a teacher of middle school students, this question resonates deeply for me.  I consider my job to be far more than to teach teenagers the power of reading and wrting.  Part of my job is to help them consider what it means to step outside of our comfort zone and to be a citizen of the world.

Atticus Finch, challenges the status quo and fights a battle that seems overwhelming, that seems insurmountable, a battle that, oftentimes, leaves him standing all alone, fighting all alone.

The book provokes discussion of leadership, of moral courage, of civil disobedience, of righteousness.  I ask students to define courage and to consider what makes Atticus different from the others.  We consider what it means to “unleash your inner Atticus.”  We discuss people we know who have engaged in acts of moral courage.  We consider what the world would be like if there were no Atticus’s, if noone fought to end oppression, if noone fought for the underdog, and what the world would be like if everyone stood up, fought non-violently and passionately against injustice.

What To Kill a Mockingbird teaches us is that when a single individual cares enough to protest injustice, to fight against oppression, that the world does, in fact, undergo a change.   For when Atticus battles to save Tom Robinson, even though he loses the case, even though people do not start marching in the streets in protest, readers recognize that there have been small, yet significant changes in that town.  If nothing else, the children, who have witnessed the injustice, will never be the same.

As one of my students from last year said, in an online discussion forum about the book,  “Making a difference is changing one person’s mind because they can change two minds in the future, and that person can change two, and so on.  Atticus Finch MAKES a difference.”  It is all of these differences that lead to systemic change in our society.

What To Kill a Mockingbird teaches us is that apathy is never the answer, that we must not get so comfortable in our own lives that we are blind to the injustice that surrounds us.  As we stand here in 2008, in a world that is still plagued with oppression and brokenness, I cannot think of a better lesson.

In a world that, some say, is devoid of heroes, for our young people, Atticus Finch, though fictional, is a hero.  He teaches us to be bold, to be strong, to fight against that which we know, deep in our hearts is wrong—you pick the issue—it does not really matter.  My students discuss issues that are important to them:  the elimination of MAP testing, of poverty, and of animal abuse.

Atticus teaches us, teaches ME to be the kind of parent who models fortitude for his children, who does not sit around and bemoan the fate of the world, but rather who stands up, who protests, who heals, who changes.

I heard from Sara, who read the book with me an eighth grader and is now in her 20s.  She wrote,

When Scout speaks, she speaks directly to her reader and invites us into her world.  Like her own journey to understand the world through walking in another’s shoes, Harper Lee steps us into Scout’s, takes us on her own journey of self-discovery and reminds us what it is to be human.

The last I heard, Sara was working as an organic farmer, living out her own ideals.  Who really knows the power of To Kill a Mockingbird?