How does Harper Lee Show that racial prejudice is ingrained in Maycomb society?
The black and white people of Maycomb are divided by their accents. Each group speaks the English language differently due to one main reason-education. Majority of the white people received a decent, if not high-quality, education and are therefore more articulate and have a better command of the English language. There are no schools for black children to go to and so they are unable to learn and become smart. This is exactly what the white people wanted. They did not want the black people, who are supposed to be much lower class, to rise up and be better. Only very few black adults can read and write correctly. The way black people talk is called nigger-talk which is very degrading. Black people show some respect to the whites by calling the way they speak white-folks talk.Scout implies that white-folks talk is above and smarter than nigger-talk. She says to Calpurnia: why do you talk nigger-talk to the to your folks when you its not right? White-folks talk, to some extent, does symbolise intelligence as only white people attended school at that time. This makes you wonder where Scout learnt this from because Atticus would not have told her this. She must have learnt it from school or neighbours which shows how racist Maycomb society is.
There is a lot of tension and hatred between black and white people. Calpurnia explains to Jem and Scout: Suppose you and Scout talked coloured-folks talk at home itd be out of place, wouldnt it? Now what if I talked white-folks talk at church, and with my neighbours? Theyd think I was puttin on airs to beat Mosses. Calpurnia finds it much easier to talk her way around black people. If she tried to talk like a white person around black people they would think she was trying to be smarter and better than she actually was. They would think she was being snobby as she was one of the only four educated people in the church. The black society believes that they are lower class than the white society. This is seen when Calpurnia
There is a lot of tension and hatred between black and white people. Calpurnia explains to Jem and Scout: Suppose you and Scout talked coloured-folks talk at home itd be out of place, wouldnt it? Now what if I talked white-folks talk at church, and with my neighbours? Theyd think I was puttin on airs to beat Mosses. Calpurnia finds it much easier to talk her way around black people. If she tried to talk like a white person around black people they would think she was trying to be smarter and better than she actually was. They would think she was being snobby as she was one of the only four educated people in the church. The black society believes that they are lower class than the white society. This is seen when Calpurnia