Atticus Finch's racism is no shock – many real-life white allies were hypocrites

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/17/atticus-finch-civil-rights-white-allies-racism

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The Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird is a civil-rights hero – a larger-than-life, heroic figure who fearlessly defended a black man falsely accused of raping a white girl. But the Atticus in Go Set a Watchman, the new book that Harper Lee actually wrote as an early Mockingbird draft, is a deep segregationist who attends White Citizens Council meetings, and this is driving some white people mad: how can a character who embarks on a fool’s errand like defending a black man in the Jim Crow south also have racist attributes?

The discrepancy is only a source of cognitive dissonance for those who retain the naive notion that white people who engage in progressive actions can escape white, racial socialization and the system of white supremacy. As Al Sharpton noted to the Observer: “Finch reflects the reality of finding out that a lot of those we thought were on our side harbored some personal different feelings”. American history supports his view.

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote Notes on the State of Virginia, which included praise of individual liberty, firmly believed (or at least wrote) that “the negro” was inferior and even animalistic (though that did not stop him from raping Sally Hemmings, a teenager enslaved on his own plantation).

Abraham Lincoln, perhaps credited with being the greatest white hero of them all, admitted, “if I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.” Yet to this day he is still described as “the great emancipator”.

President Lyndon B Johnson, the architect of “The Great Society” who signed the Civil Rights Act and sent in the troops to protect the integrationists, was also well-known for interrupting Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party member Fannie Lou Hamer’s historic speech at the 1964 Democratic National Convention and for his use of the n-word, even going so far (as rumor would have it) to call Martin Luther King, Jr. and other voters that name.

Why won’t white allies go all the way for full liberation of black and brown people? I asked Jess McIntosh of Emily’s List. “Because it is seen as a zero-sum game, so losing your advantage feels like oppression,” she said. Thus, McIntosh advocates for black women’s leadership, at all costs, because all other groups that have some semblance of privilege seem unwilling to surrender it. In many ways, white allies, like Atticus, have engaged in powerful, though imperfect, actions in support of black lives. But it’s complicated.

“Our culture makes no real demand of white allies,” attorney and political commentator Lizz Brown told me. “White allies can hide behind the myth of the fictional character of Atticus Finch that there is some white guy out there that is doing something perfectly on the issue of race and racism, which is simply not true.”

One big problem with white allies is that many of them seem reluctant to give up control of a movement meant to grant equality and autonomy to those for whom they are ostensibly working. As political analyst and pundit Zerlina Maxwell told me, “I think it’s because you don’t want to give up that last advantage. You’re willing to be a white ally, but you feel you must be in charge of even, say, the racial justice organization.”

But calling the shots is problematic without fully supporting the overall mission, particularly when white support for the cause can disappear at the slightest doubt about black narratives, especially around policing and the deconstruction of “the new Jim Crow,” as legal educator and author Michelle Alexander describes the prison-industrial complex. Then many white allies act as though they needed absolute proof before believing black peoples’ narratives. Think Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown or Renisha McBride.

Atticus Finch may seem like a contradiction. And as a fictional character, he may very well be one. But America is rife with hypocrisy over civil liberties and slavery, and white Americans must be willing to wrestle with the demons of white supremacy beyond and in the midst of nominal calls for equality.