{"id":30004,"date":"2022-03-15T13:10:14","date_gmt":"2022-03-15T18:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=30004"},"modified":"2022-03-15T13:10:14","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T18:10:14","slug":"au-revoir-to-kill-a-mockingbird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2022\/03\/au-revoir-to-kill-a-mockingbird\/","title":{"rendered":"Au Revoir To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AMy oldest daughter teaches bilingual English in a City of Milwaukee high school, and I greatly enjoy our conversations regarding the literary works she assigns.\u00a0 However, I was surprised when she told me recently that she and her fellow teachers no longer felt comfortable assigning Harper Lee\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Published in 1960, Lee\u2019s novel has for over sixty years garnered great admiration and respect as an American literary work.\u00a0 Many have considered the novel\u2019s Atticus Finch to be an inspiring lawyer hero and taken the novel’s law-related narrative to be one of courageous resistance to racial injustice.\u00a0 As recently as ten years ago, virtually every American high schooler was expected to have read To Kill a Mockingbird Bird.<\/em><\/p>\n

Why has the novel fallen so precipitously?\u00a0 I can think of at least three developments that have hurt its standing:<\/p>\n

(1) The character Atticus Finch lost a good part of his appeal when Harper Lee\u2019s Go Set a Watchman<\/em> was published in 2015.\u00a0 This sequel portrays Finch as something much less than a crusader for civil rights.\u00a0 My goodness, he even attends meetings of white supremacist citizens\u2019 groups!<\/p>\n

(2) The novel uses the n-word not only frequently and also unreflectively, but in recent years the word has deservedly become taboo.<\/p>\n

(3) A few African American characters in the novel work as servants for white people but others such as Tom Robinson and his family appear almost totally as victims.\u00a0 This portrayal is jarring given a realization that the denial of agency is a major part of oppression.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the Black Lives Matter Movement and our growing awareness of the nation\u2019s longstanding systemic racism, I understand the criticisms.\u00a0 Breaking up is hard to do, but I have stopped loving To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>, and I hereby announce that it has been dropped from the syllabus of my law and literature seminar.<\/p>\n

That having been said, I hope at least one of the messages of To Kill a <\/em>Mockingbird can be preserved.\u00a0 To wit, the novel nicely points out that members of certain groups do not benefit from our laws and\/or from our purported commitment to a rule of law.\u00a0 These people are not treated justly in our legal system, and they do not have the financial resources and general wherewithal to make the system work for them.\u00a0 The times have changed, but To Kill a Mockingbird <\/em>continues to warn us that the ideological touting of the rule of law can be a false front shielding the ongoing realities of inequality and oppression.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My oldest daughter teaches bilingual English in a City of Milwaukee high school, and I greatly enjoy our conversations regarding the literary works she assigns.\u00a0 However, I was surprised when she told me recently that she and her fellow teachers no longer felt comfortable assigning Harper Lee\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird. Published in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,37,122,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-law","category-popular-culture-and-law","category-public","category-race-and-the-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30004"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30006,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30004\/revisions\/30006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}