Black Kids Must Read To Kill A Mockingbird, But Now You’re Uncomfortable?
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Why are books about people that don’t look like you threatening?
Listen to the audio version here.
This is dedicated to the (hopefully) small sub-set of parents screaming at school board meetings that the current version of U.S. history is “uncomfortable,” diversity is Satan’s work, and white kids shouldn’t be made to “feel bad.”
I folded my legs under that desk-chair hybrid thingy like a teenage flamingo, mechanical pencil poised to take notes, as a sing-songy voice said, “Welcome parents to ninth grade English! I am so excited that our first unit is an exploration of To Kill A Mockingbird. We’ll be studying it for the next eight weeks. It’s one of my favorite books.”
Losartan addled blood pooled in my feet. To Kill A Mockingbird? Are you serious? Eight entire weeks? Why?
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is widely considered a classic of American literature. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961. It is one of the most read books about race in America and is assigned reading in many Junior and Senior High Schools.
The story of racial inequality, injustice and class is told through the eyes of a white child about the trial in 1933 Alabama of a Black man accused of raping a white woman. This hard-working Black man tries to do a good deed for a white woman that he feels sorry for and, spoiler alert, he ends up dead for it.
Just some light reading about racial inequality, rape, intolerance and Black people dying for no reason. N’est pas? Why would any ninth grader want to read this? How about the Twilight trilogy? Sweet Valley High? Anything else?
The novel is not universally praised. Author Roxane Gay criticized it in a New York Times book review. Gay is ambivalent to the story because, “I don’t need to read about a young white girl understanding the perniciousness of racism to actually understand the perniciousness of racism. I have ample first hand experience.” And she notes that “the n-word is used liberally throughout.”
Malcolm Gladwell has opined in The New Yorker that the novel is a symbol of the limits of Southern liberalism, and others have opinions about his opinions.
My thoughts recently returned to this book during my daily doom-scroll of dozens of school board meetings where white parents wring their hands about including books in their children’s curriculum that include discussions of racism, or stories about Blacks or Asians or Indigenous people or anyone different from them. They argue that frank discussions about racism or inequality make their children feel uncomfortable and bad about themselves.
My 9th grade self shouts at my iPhone, “Whaaaaaaaat? Really?” Did anyone care about my mental health during the slavery unit in school? Did any teacher ask me how I felt, as the only Black kid in class, about hearing the n-word read aloud repeatedly in To Kill A Mockingbird? Or how uncomfortable I felt when we watched the movie and I was forced to hear it over and over yet again?
As a 9th grade girl, I just wanted to fit in and have a cute boy ask me to the dance in the cafeteria. Could I process complex feelings about race and belonging in Mrs. Beasley’s class while fending off classmates that wanted to touch my hair?
Similarly, I doubt that my Mexican or Chinese, or Southeast Asian classmates had a different experience when books and movies studied in class portrayed their respective groups. I’m also sure that many of them slouched in their chairs and wanted to be invisible, like I did through the many bigoted portrayals in “great” literature or classic movies of people that looked like them. How can one go play dodgeball with friends after an hour long discussion of slave auctions?
Education should not be about race shaming, or making people feel bad about characteristics they cannot change. This is about exposure to new ideas and presenting all the facets of history and literature through a variety of lenses, not just one. Education is not meant to be comfortable. Education is meant to challenge one’s perspective and world view. Comfort is often antithetical to education itself. Is learning trigonometry, physics or a new language comfortable?
If Black kids can sit through To Kill A Mockingbird in English class, then white kids can sit through the truth.
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