TKAM + News = Racism

"There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads-they couldn't be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins. They're ugly, but those are the facts of life."

The event I chose involved the complaints about the suspension rates of different racial groups in the Durham Public School system. According to the Duke Chronicle, only about 13.9% of white students are suspended in Durham Public schools, while 52.2% of all black students are suspended, about four times as many as suspended students who were white.

One interpretation of this data was that more white students were able to get let out of being suspended or were let off than black students. A lot of them probably had good reasons for their behavior, as well as white students. Some of them may have had no reasonable defense, and the same amount probably existed among white students. And yet, more white students were able to get out of it than black students.

What should have happened was that every student about to be suspended should be listened to, and if they had a reasonable reason for their behavior, they should be let off. But if they truly had no defense, they should be suspended, regardless of race.

This is in some ways, relatable to an event from TKAM, where Atticus is explaining to Jem why they lost the case. He said that in their world, white men always won over black men in arguments. It is similar to this news story, because in both cases, the word of a white person is more likely to be considered by the authorities than the word of a black person. And both cases are discriminatory towards non-white races in general.