To Ban a Mockingbird

Writing at The Federalist, Megan Oprea offers some thoughts on why a Mississippi school district should not have taken To Kill a Mockingbird off of its reading list.

The principal says that the book has made some students uncomfortable -- almost certainly referring to a racial slur used in frequently in Harper Lee's novel of 1930's small-town Alabama. Oprea points out that's sometimes a good thing. When reading of an injustice or a wrong, we ought to feel uncomfortable enough to see that it or things like it don't go on, as it lies within our ability to do so.

She notes that Elie Wiesel spent most of his adult life insisting that people remember the Holocaust, or else the same factors that spawned it might gain hold again and bring about a similar atrocity. Lee never experienced racism as did the African-Americans of her novel, of course. But some real people did and it was far worse than any discomfort I might feel reading about it. If helping to lessen the kind of prejudice that pushed down an entire group of people because of the color of their skin requires me to feel a little squicky about a word here and there, well, it seems like it's the least I might do.