Racism and unfair trials in Southern towns

Racism and Unfair Trials in a Southern Town

The story is about human intolerance at different levels, seen through the prism of chaotic maladies that affect modern society, in a time when they are supposed to have been overcome. The author gives a clear picture of racial, legal, public opinion and human conflicts, the struggle between objective judgment and sentimental reactions.

On one hand there is the racism issue that is present in the entire story. The eternal rivalry between white and black people that struggle to co-live together in the same society, attempting to achieve equality on both sides but never fully succeeding on it.

The classic battle of white and black that is typical of American culture, much more present than, perhaps, many other countries of our time.

The story happens in the south. This is not a coincidence: the author was trying to deliver a message to the receptive reader, by placing this particular story in a world where racial intolerance evolved into a culture. The south states had a long history of black and white confrontations, going back to the slave era when each color of skin had a very specific role in society. By (violently) ending this clear separation, the conflict grew stronger, as they were being forced to live together, even against their own will.

As much as the 20th century was supposed to overcome this kind of frictions and establish an order among the inhabitants of the country, human vision and rooted perceptions were hard to be completely terminated and left a great influence on future generations. We can see racial conflicts being stirred even today, in spite of all the efforts to eradicate the extremist visions that separate people into groups divided by color, religion, social status or position.

The other side of the story is about another kind of intolerance: the conflict between citizens and laws. Grisham narrates a crime that was committed and the criminals had great chance of escaping the punishment. This is something that often happens in our society and that weakens the people's trust in the justice and system of their country. More and more cases are seen where criminals are set free and unpunished, even when they are known to be guilty. The consequence of this weak link in the chain is that people lose their faith in the legal system and start to take measures on their own. In the story the father of the girl took his own measures to have the rapists punished. This happened because he did not trust that the system would be efficient enough to punish them. Even more because his status in society was not equal to the rest of the people; he belonged to the disfavored minority. In theory, this difference should not exist, but the human mind is harder to control than the laws intend to.

This was a case of a black victim, against white criminals, white judge and white jury. All this in a place where black characters were despised and the white ones united against them. In this story we do not see a case of rape, of child abuse or of murder attempt. In this case we see the confrontation of black against white that creates a prism to divert attention from the real issue.

We do not see a case of civilians taking law into their hands and jury trying to establish if this kind of attitude is justified or not. It is the case of a black person taking the law against a white one. This is a story of race conflict, drawn through violent circumstances that will emphasize the proportions of that eternal war.

The courtroom dramas, that display the ability of lawyers to argument, to bring details into light, convince jury of a point-of-view, justify facts and present evidence are a favorite topic in American film industry. The film version would have been void of density without the trial suspense.

The conflict of morality, the eternal battle of right and wrong that will not always agree with what is forbidden or allowed (is it illegal to kill a criminal, but is it right to do it if they deserve it?). And especially the moral conflict of the people that have the power to judge this kind of actions and need to stay objective even through very powerful beliefs and traditions.

Among all this conflict there is yet another intolerance issue: the sympathizing groups. The lawyer defending the black character gets threatened by the Ku Klux Klan. The community is divided between those that agree with one side or the other, and both sides hate each other to the point of reaching violent terms. Fanaticism makes them take measures against the other side, defying the laws and the order of the town. Corruption is inevitable and the groups both count with followers that will try to manipulate the laws in their own favor. This is a caricature of how real society works, bending the rules in favor of personal interests.

This story shows racism as a distortion of values in the minds that fall into that weakness. The two rapists are not presented as mere potential rapists that would attack anybody at hand. They attacked the little girl, specifically, because she was black. Racism creates in the mind of people the image that the other person is inferior, not worthy of respect. In the mind of the racist characters (criminals, jury, viewers of the county) the crime seemed less serious if the victim was black than it would have seemed if she had been white. This unconscious perception of things reflects how powerful the suggestion is for somebody dominated by this kind of beliefs.