There is segregation between the four groups of people in the book. First of all there is the high class white who are above everyone and who are considered as the wealthy. The next class is the working white classes who have jobs like farming and struggle to provide like the Cunninghams. The group would be the very poor Ewells who live on a rubbish dump they accept any financial help from anyone unlike the Cunninghams who will not. The lowest class in the Maycomb society is the blacks there are of course smaller groups within the black community but they were all mainly on the outskirts of the towns, this is because of the extreme prejudice of the white folk.
The separation of people by custom or law is known as segregation it could be based on many factors like religion, wealth, culture or race. Nearly all systems of segregation discourage marriage between people of different racial, religious, or social groups. In the United States, for example, many states once outlawed marriage between blacks and whites which is a real life example of segregation. Not until 1967, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled such laws unconstitutional, which was one group discriminating another it was noticed that the more powerful group that was in control was the one that does the discrimination. The United States was not the only country of course segregation was found all over the world among various countries throughout the past. We know that all the white folk live separately from the black folk this is an example of segregation in To Kill a Mocking Bird, because the two communities between the two groups over the time that they are separated the more dominant group the white folk begin to think that segregation is right and people that are break the code are believed to be looked down upon. This is why Atticus is looked down on because in 15 when the lynch mob goes to attack Tom Robinson, Atticus goes there before the mob to protect him. Another example of segregation would be the fact that in the court scene the black people are made to sit separately from the white people and that they can not sit together.
Some of the Jimmy Crow laws were so stupid and ignorant for example in Oklahoma black people had to use different phone booths to white people, other laws were things like black people weren’t aloud to go to a white persons public place and if a black man was sitting on a bus and there wasn’t any seats left he would have to get up to allow white parson to sit down. We also so these Jimmy Crow laws actually in the book in the courtroom scene, when the Jem, Scout and Dill go to the court room there aren’t any seats left and three black people get up to let them sit down. As that the town is so small every body knows every bodies else’s business this could be either a advantage or disadvantage depending on how you look at it. If you need help from someone you wouldn’t need to tell them all your problems but on the other hand people are able to look down on you and prematurely judge you and your actions without thinking about what they are even doing. The repetition of the word ‘nigger’, throughout the book it is often used in a negative respect to the black people but it is also used positively when some characters say it in replacement of the word colored.
Another point revealed about the American Society would be that all the white middle class would gossip at tea parties as shown in chapter 24. Where the high classed white people Harper Lee stereotypes them and tries to show that they are good and caring Christens even though they look down on every one else and yet don not help them in any way and that everyone else is a lower standard below them, but the book mentions a strong reaction from Aunt Alexandra this could be a superficial reaction but really she doesn’t care and puts on a false front another interpretation of this could be that she learned from Atticus and she is sincere that something so bad had happened to an innocent man.
“‘Tom's dead.’ Aunt Alexandra put her hands to her mouth. ‘They shot him,’ said Atticus. ‘He was running. It was during their exercise period. They said he just broke into a blind raving charge at the fence and started climbing over. Right in front of them-’” This quote shows that Tom Robinson as the act of a desperate man he attempted to escape prison. This makes the reader sympathize with Tom because he never did anything wrong in the first place and was innocently and wrongly killed.
One of Atticus good points is that he is able to be empathic to other people and he tries to teach this ability to Scout throughout the book there are many references to the theme empathy.
“‘First of all,’ he said, ‘if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view-’
‘Sir?’
‘-until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’”
This point shows that Atticus teaches Scout things that she would not learn in school and gives her advantages later on in the book so she is able to grasp complex problems like why Boo Radly chooses to isolate himself from the rest of Maycomb.
We also see that many groups of people are stereotyped throughout the book in the 1900s black people were assumed to be unintelligent because they didn’t know how to write or read but they were simply just not given chances to and therefore they given worthless jobs like to cut wood and work the fields. In the book Mayella says
“I said come here, nigger, and bust up this chiffarobe for me, I got a nickel for you.”
This is when Mayella calls Tom Robinson to her house and this is also when everything goes wrong for Tom. As that Scout is a girl Aunt Alexandra tries to stereotype Scout into what a normal girl would be doing by forcing her to wear a dress at the tea party in chapter 24.
In conclusion, racism segregation and prejudice are all wrong and the book To Kill a Mocking Bird tries to show us that nothing positive can come from them. If you do see something new that you are worried and scared of try to explore it before you build a wall around it to isolate it, and then you will be able to truly judge it for what it is. These problems have been in counted many times and will be in the future time and time again, allowing other people to make there own decisions will help stop the spread of world wide discrimination.