A great loss (Page 4 of 7)

When saying that act A is a worse moral violation than Act B, you may be saying any or all of three different things.

You may be saying that A does more harm than B.  You may be saying that A shows greater moral depravity than B.  You may be saying that A leads the actor to deeper moral depravity than B.

You may be saying two of them, or three.  Does their badness add?  Does it multiply?

I suppose you can chide Atticus for using an arithmetic metaphor where it cannot literally hold, or be held to.  But his error is no worse than that of the little Friar in =The Bridge of San Luis Rey=, and much less considered.

Arithmatic on how much worse it is to cheat a colored man.

“Atticus says cheatin‘ a colored man is ten times worse than cheatin’ a white man,” I muttered. “Says it’s the worst thing you can do.”

I don't recall the quote from reading way back when, but I do the sentiment within. As far as the above quote from TKAM is concerned, I don't see it as condescending, patronizing, belittling, or any other similar description. To me, it is a man parenting a child the best way he knows at the moment. It is little different than all the "little white lies" we all tell every single day: "Yes, that dress looks beautiful on you." "You look the same as you did in high school." "You can be anything you want to be." "Liars never prosper." and thousands of others or variations of such.

We say things which we know are "lies" because it seems the thing to do at the time and the absolute gospel truth may do more damage than it does good. We are all hypocrites in that respect. A lie is a lie; we don't get to fraction it up to make it more or less of a lie than any other lie. When you get down to it, lies actually keep society functioning a bit more smoothly than if went around stating the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth all the time; we'd all kill each other, lol. So, Atticus isn't completely honest with Scout in his statement, but it doesn't diminish his concern for her or his attempt to shield her from ugliness she may not be prepared to shoulder at her tender age. The quote is rather ingenious from that perspective imho and it makes for good dialogue in helping focus character.

We each have our views of what is good or bad literature and it would be a dull site/world indeed if we all agreed on everything. I enjoyed TKAM, but I certainly understand that everyone would not share my view of it or any other book in the vast known universe of books. There is no right or wrong, only different opinions. Take care. Vern

You are totally right, it is great parenting, like we all do every single day.

Although, I can’t help but wonder (should I need to tell the kids) what would be the 'value of the man’ fraction for an indigenous native North American or a crippled rail road worker of Chinese extraction under the Atticus rule of parenting?

“Atticus says cheatin‘ a colored man is 10 times worse than cheatin’ a white man, whilst cheatin‘  a red man is 8.7 times worse and cheatin‘ a yellow man 5.9 times worse”

How about a Mick? The Irish are white but like the Polish they surely don’t make the mark of a proper Alabama white man?

Now that it’s been explained it is obvious that the ‘ten times less of white mans-worth’ rule that Atticus is drumming into his children is correct. I see now that his advice is not racist or elitist because Atticus is simply educating the kids upon the way that HIS WORLD is; giving them a worldly-wise fact from the voice of experience in order to convert their childishly innocent equality instincts into harsh reality; he’s merely promoting the white-man, black-man value equation as an edict of life, like a good parent would to his 6 or 7 year old child, so they’ll know where they stand.

Atticus the lawyer advocates that it is ten times better to cheat a white man than it is a black man. As a lawyer I suppose he would expect this equation to be upheld by a court of justice relating to the adjudged seriousness of the crime and in relation to compensation and sentencing?

Whilst he is equating the value of a crime in accordance with a man’s skin and since the crime the novel is centred around is an alleged rape; using Atticus equations do you think it would it be ten times worse for a white man to rape a black woman than it would a black man to rape a white woman? I ask only because from the book I gather that the people of that time and place seem to inherently hold the inverse opinion.

Thanks Vern

I think that I 'm getting it.

So, the intended non-discriminatory edict ...

...is best communicated and reinforced into young childrens' susceptible minds by discriminating between race and determining a ratio of difference in terms of importance between those races.

You are are right, it is certainly not a lesson in arithmetic, it is clearly a lesson in something else.

Sort of like a 'fighting for peace' or 'fucking for virginity' way forward.

The communication is  reinforced by the exaggeration mentioned much as your exaggeration in "fighting for peace" which is not exactly the oxymoron it is presented to be since sometimes you do "fight for peace" when faced with a bully who will beat you to a pulp if you don't stand up and fight. Been there, done that. Still it does get the message across. I suppose my take on Atticus' language is skewed because I don't see him as a racist in TKAM; that only appears to be the case some fifty years after the fact in another book which doesn't equal the first imo and just as well be a totally different character with the same name. But then I didn't read it to analyze motives, etc; I read it for fun. Each reader will see it in through their own eyes as with all books. "Fucking for virginity" now that could be a fun lesson, lol. Take care. Vern

For the record, my opinion of Atticus—on reading To Kill a Mockingbird a second time after having lived through years of Southern violence against blacks—was not that he was racist in the story. My opinion was the opposite: that he was a goody two shoes champion for a beset black man. I found it difficult to suspend disbelief for his role in the story. I would have bet $5 against a rolling coconut doughnut that he wouldn't have survived doing what he did as Robinson's lawyer in Alabama in 1933.

And I see nothing, nada, that is racist in the statement you pointed out:
“Atticus says cheatin‘ a colored man is ten times worse than cheatin’ a white man,” I muttered. “Says it’s the worst thing you can do.”

Go Set a Watchman was the first hint I got that Atticus was a racist. And it made an even bigger hero (as a father and role model for his children) of him than I found him to be To Kill a Mockingbird both times I read it.

When I read Go Set a Watchman, I came to understand that what kept him alive, able to survive Alabama in his role as Robinson's lawyer was that he was still a member of the White Citizens' Council.

Memphis

I'm currently in a class on Shakespeare, and I had the most interesting discussion with my professor a couple days ago. We're reading Richard III. I asked my prof if Richard III was written as propaganda for the Lancaster side, since I believe the monarch at the time would have been directly descended from Henry VII, who claims the throne at the end of the play. I said that Richard is written as a heinous villain, while Henry VII is written as a heroic figure. It seemed to me that the tale (though I love it) had a rather obvious "this is the good side, this is the bad side" mentality, which smelled of propaganda.

My prof pointed out that the entire first part of the play displays an evil man pretending to be pious. We get to see Richard III's violent thoughts. He comports himself as something otherwise. So to see Henry VII comporting himself as a golden figure would inspire one reading deeply (or watching the play deeply) to ask him or herself if we can actually trust Henry VII's outward demeanor. Which was perhaps Shakespeare's point. I think in great literature much is beneath the surface which doesn't seem obvious at first. Richard III through my eyes appeared rather like (well written) propaganda. But I missed the point beneath the surface. I think that great literature grows like that, on rereads. Or perhaps it is only me who must read and read again to see it.

As I've said, I don't know that Mockingbird is great literature. But I do know Richard III looked like one sort of story to me a few days ago, and it feels ever so much more meaningful, now.

I didn't notice the racism in the line Dill cites when I was a child. (And I agree it is ENORMOUSLY racist.) I have very little memory of reading the book then -- just a ghost awareness of it. I recall a lot of Scout's doings from my early read, and I think I must have been focused there when I read the book.  I simply liked the Scout scenes (as a little girl, she was my contemporary), the spookiness of the Boo part of the story, the way he'd leave them presents, the idea that what had seemed scary wasn't at all what Scout had built up in her mind, the coming of age tale, the conversations with Atticus, the going to school. I'm not sure that in my first read I ever made it to the Tom Robinson scenes, so my first read is not actually a first read, probably. I do recall the "mockingbird" line at the end of the book, so maybe I skipped ahead, or maybe the other scenes didn't stick.

I only read it a second time in 2013. I did notice the strange line cited by Dill, but it was so brief it didn't impact me. (I am ashamed to say.) It slipped in as a strange remark. I was so caught up in the story I quickly forgot about it. I wasn't deeply reading. I read the book as a means to pass the time -- with a curiosity about this classic novel I was sure I'd read before, which my mother loved, which I could barely remember.

I didn't know where the story was headed. I was very disturbed by the Mayella part of the novel. That part affected me deeply. I spent a lot of time grinning about the Scout scenes. I didn't notice much in Atticus to be questioned. I liked (loved) that though it was enormously dangerous and certainly potentially damaging to his career, he stood up for what he believed was right. That's what I noticed about Atticus; that's what made him, for me, heroic. I liked to believe he was heroic. It made me feel happy to think such a man could exist. I was glad to believe in Atticus.

I wasn't going to read Watchman when I heard about it. I had an idea that Ms. Lee had been treated badly by someone, that her early draft of Mockingbird had been stolen from her after her sister's death, that they'd published the thing against her wishes because she was incapacitated by age. To me the whole thing stank of abuse. Then I read that she was expressing sorrow at this reaction among readers of Mockingbird, and that the state had investigated charges of abuse, and that she'd been found lucid, and I was ashamed of myself for having so quickly dismissed her work. I still couldn't be sure if it was her own idea to publish Watchman or someone else's, but I decided (personally, within my own conscious) that it would be a greater crime to refuse to read her words than to risk reading them on the off-chance that she'd intended them to remain unpublished.

I came away from Watchman strongly impacted. I felt that the timing was intentional on Lee's part: publication came shortly after Ferguson. I felt (instinctively) that Lee was attempting to defy the "hero" following Atticus had carried for fifty years by publishing Watchman, and that she was challenging people to stop blindly rallying behind him and see him for what he was.

I don't consider Watchman great literature. (I do know enough about literature to say that!) It's a draft, and clumsy in places, but it is the book she initially intended to publish. I don't think it's a good book on its own, but it complicates Mockingbird and certainly validates Dill's claim that Atticus is a racist.

Thomas Jefferson was a racist too. I absolutely loved him once upon a time, as I loved Atticus. A good egg, I thought. I was disturbed, as some are disturbed by the "fall of Atticus," when I realized that this legend of a figure who fought for our freedom during the Revolution, owned slaves. I actually wrestled over it for quite a while a few years ago. Silly perhaps. I take my history seriously, and I began an exploration of the man to try to reconcile my prior idea of him with the knowledge that when he fought for freedom, he really only meant freedom for men, who were white. And had money enough to own property. No one told me that in school.

Is Lee directly tackling this concept in her novels -- the idea that we see what we want to see, when beneath the surface there is racism (in her father) or deep kindness (in Boo), or an enormous story we cannot see (in Mayella)? I don't know? I've said I have no idea if the book is great literature, and I am perhaps too close to it to assess it clinically. But she knew when wrote Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird that he was a racist. She knew it, though we didn't. And some part of me says she intended that to be implicit -- that it is part of the point. That we are meant to see it. That America has failed to see it.

Perhaps Lee was a raging racist and has pulled the wool over everyone's eyes in America, and the book is acting as propaganda and infecting the children. Or perhaps the book is set in a racist town, and the theme rises above that. Perhaps it is being taught in schools as the legend of Thomas Jefferson was taught. I'll have to reread To Kill a Mockingbird one of these days, to see what I think still further.

But Dill, you raise some piping good questions, and I appreciate the sturdy slap to the face coupled with direct quotations from the novel. Well said, truly.

I'd rather see truth than my hopeful idea of reality. x

I have absolutely no doubt that Atticus is a racist. He expresses that fact over and again.

I very much think the issue concerning our conflicting opinions may be caused by the definition of the word 'Racist'.

Who knew? If you Google the following words; Racist definition ...then several definitive variations are found and some published definitions vary immensely.

Definition 1: a person who believes that a particular race is superior to another.

Definition 2 : holding a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others.

Definition 3:   a person who directs prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior:

So Atticus is definitely a racist according to definition one; he may be or maybe not be racist according to definition two, but is definitely not a racist according to definition three.

I've always assumed (based my judgment upon) definition 1: And Atticus certainly believes there are differentials in terms of superiority between the races. He feels these differences because they appear to be self-evident within his society. To me he acts like a Veterinarian who cares very deeply for the animals that he treats but at the same time doesn't consider the dog he is treating to be on the same intellectual level as he, the Vet.

Atticus doesn't consider the colored-folk to be his equal; hell, he doesn't even consider white women to be equal to the intellect of white men.

Atticus is clearly an elitist and clearly a racist if judged by definition 1:   

However, although he is quietly confident of his racial superiority, Atticus never directs prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism against those of a different race. In fact the is opposed to those actions, and as such is clearly not a racist according to definition 3:

So there you have it;

Atticus is definitely a racist.

Atticus is definitely not a racist.

You can alter your POV to make either of these 'facts' true.

Cheers!

....that people are ridiculous because they don't see what is clearly there and ought to be interpreted more deeply....

The story, the writing, the characters all appear quite shallow and the book attracts sentimental skim-readers who'll all as glibly swoon over the next big media thing; whilst the subject of Mockingbird is actually very deep and very nasty; the connotations are deep. But Mockingbird is like Disney does the holocaust with the cast of the little house on the prairie and some black people. It is airbrushed, almost like the book is scared to get down and dirty with the real crux of it. Scout is the vibrant young inquiring mind but Atticus is the stooge, the sound-byte sounding board, the cardboard cut-out and the role may as well have been written as a six-foot cartoon daddy rabbit.

I know the unwritten law that you should never, ever criticize the Koran, the Bible or To Kill a Mockingbird because all are sacred and beyond criticism. But I'm a freak, I must be because none of those books sit easy with me and I cannot simply make them fit like others seem to.

Absolutely ridiculous question. What if the doctor is his/her self of “black African ancestry”? Or is that not a scenario you’d consider?

No one is a racist for conditioning a possible diagnosis of sickle-cell anemia on a person of another race.

A racist is an individual who holds a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior.

You could possibly have a racist doctor or a racist patient, but racism is an individual’s belief, not an occupational mandate. 

Only if the product is designed to make the “people with black African ancestry”s head explode or their hair turn ginger.

Absolutely ridiculous question.

A racist is an individual who holds a belief……..

No, because the doctor you talk of has a Cajun mother and French-Canadian father. But hold on, she hates fat Italian men with Groucho Marx moustaches, so yes, she’d be racist with rising pogonophobia.

Absolutely ridiculous question.

WTF?

A racist is an individual who holds a belief……..

I feel like I’m an idiot to answer this post, but hey-ho….

The definitions of ‘racist’ that I cited are not my definitions. I went to the ‘google.co.uk’ search bar and entered the search string “racist definition.”  From the first five search results I selected three different definitions of the word ‘racist’ and pasted them here to prove the point that;
Atticus is definitely a racist.

Atticus is definitely not a racist.

Apparently the interpretation of the condition that is said to be defined by the word ‘racist’ not only differs between people, it differs between on-line dictionaries. This obviously leads to differing concepts upon the actual meaning of the word racist (as you so spectacularly demonstrate).

I don’t know why I fear I’m going to regret asking this question, but would you care to share your personally held definition of the word racist? I assume it will be definitive and can resolve your questions above?