A book can contain racist ideas, but a book itself cannot be racist.
Things like this make me hate humanity.
I refuse to go along with this week’s warm, feel-good celebrations of Harper Lee’s novel (published fifty years ago today), To Kill a Mockingbird. Simply put, I think that novel is racist, and so is its undying popularity.
Protip: If your 50-year-old uncle is racist, it’s a problem because he should have learned better. A 50-year-old book is a 50-year-old book and can’t learn new things.
Actually, that right there is the first reason I think this novel is, in effect, racist — it allows, indeed encourages, today’s well-meaning white people to think that “America is a very different place” than it was when Lee wrote her novel, and thus to think that widespread and deeply entrenched racism died a long time ago.
America is different now than it was when Lee wrote her novel, but I don’t think that anyone honestly believes that widespread and deeply entrenched racism died a long time ago. I think it’s very much the opposite. I think we’re aware that it still exists and we’re aware that it shouldn’t, but it’s obviously a lot harder to get rid of than just saying “it’s gone”.
