The Consequences Of Social Categorization

In the book To Kill A Mockingbird the author, Harper Lee includes many underlying messages about the effects of social forces and how they change perceptions of others. The world people live in is always categorizing people. Humans are constantly being asked to check boxes that apply or choose between this and that. People’s lives are always being determined by their social class, gender, and race. What is the need for all the categorization? All the divisions created by social forces make people feel they are all alone in an “Us vs.

Them” world. The way humans perceive themselves is usually influenced by the way others see them. Social forces give people identity by categorizing them into different groups of race, gender, and social class. Social forces shape a person’s identity when other people tell them who they are and how to act. The race is a very important social force used when talking about identity. Someone’s race is an easy way to immediately identify them.

A person can tell someone’s race just by looking at them. Scout asks Calpurnia why she talks formally with the Finch’s and uses slang when talking with other African Americans. “But you talked like ‘em colored folk did in church. Why do you talk nigger-talk to your folks when you know it’s not right” Race, in this case, is an example of the way people act depending on what situation they are in or the type of people they are with.

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Calpurnia talked using slang and poor grammar when she was with the other African Americans at church but with the Finch family, she talks in a more educated formal way. Calpurnia talks like this around the other blacks because she doesn’t want them to think she is better than them and it would look out of place if Calpurnia didn’t talk like the rest of the people in the church. Another good example of how race affects identity is in the George Stinney case of 1944.

Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, states that “They wouldn’t have even cared if George was innocent or guilty”. Bryan Stevenson meant that George was black and the accusers, jury, and judge just wanted him dead solely based on the fact that he had a different skin color. The words spoken at the trial did not matter because the jury had already made up their minds that George was guilty and was going to be put to death whether or not he actually committed the crime he was accused of. Finally, racism is one of the most important social issues of the modern world. It has affected millions of people worldwide and is one of the deepest social problems in history. Many peoples lives were defined by their race and their personalities were immediately determined at first glance. Hopefully, society has reached a point in time where people are judged by more than their skin color. Just as Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”