American Racism and Social Change

Here is a very good analysis by Malcolm Gladwell of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

Gladwell sees the Jim Crow liberalism of the Deep South, as presented by Harper Lee in her book as inadequate. He see no chance of bringing down racism without a structural change. Harper Lee's localism and liberalism is not good enough for Malcolm Gladwell:

If Finch were a civil-rights hero, he would be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict. But he isn’t. He’s not Thurgood Marshall looking for racial salvation through the law. He’s Jim Folsom, looking for racial salvation through hearts and minds.

“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks,” Finch tells his daughter. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” He is never anything but gracious to his neighbor Mrs. Dubose, even though she considers him a “nigger-lover.” He forgives the townsfolk of Maycomb for the same reason. They are suffering from a “sickness,” he tells Scout—the inability to see a black man as a real person. All men, he believes, are just alike.

Further down this essay, Gladwell makes this comment:

One of George Orwell’s finest essays takes Charles Dickens to task for his lack of “constructive suggestions.” Dickens was a powerful critic of Victorian England, a proud and lonely voice in the campaign for social reform. But, as Orwell points out, there was little substance to Dickens’s complaints. “He attacks the law, parliamentary government, the educational system and so forth, without ever clearly suggesting what he would put in their places,” Orwell writes. “There is no clear sign that he wants the existing order to be overthrown, or that he believes it would make very much difference if it were overthrown. For in reality his target is not so much society as ‘human nature.’ ” Dickens sought “a change of spirit rather than a change in structure.”

I side with Dickens and not Orwell. Too many wide-eyed idealist have ended up as mass murderers because they want to "structurally reform" a society. I would rather see change through evolution and not revolution. I think it takes education and time to make true fundamental change.

I don't know how you resolve this issue. As Gladwell points out, the push for "structural change" destroyed Jim Crow liberalism and brought in a generation of violent racism. Much of Jim Crow racism is now officially removed from the deep South, but the voting patterns among whites says to me that it is still present, just toned down. From my perspective it is dying out.

So, did the push of "structural change" break the barriers? Or was there a slow move to lower the tight grip of Jim Crow racism already in the air? I don't know.
Racism in the US is a historical conundrum with no clear answers. What I do know is that Malcolm Gladwell's essay is well worth reading on many levels: a fresh presentation of the story, an insight into the historical setting of the novel, and a view of racism and the structural change set in motion by the Civil Rights movement.