Atticus Finch -An Accommodator to Racists?

Boy I really rag on Michael Perry of Mirrors of Justice some on here :)

However he has a nice link to a paper ATTICUS FINCH AS RACIAL ACCOMMODATOR:
ANSWERING MALCOLM GLADWELL’S CRITIQUE

See his link Atticus Finch revisited

Something for the Christians lawyers that read my blog for 50th anniversary of To Kill A Mockingbird.

Update- Let me take a little criticism here-

The author is right that law is only half the equation in changing hearts and minds but I think he goes a tad too far here:


There is no question that those who stress the inadequacy of Finch’s
efforts in the absence of structural reform are right. Equality is impossible
as long as apartheid codifies racial differences under the cloak of law.
Racial progress undoubtedly required Thurgood Marshall looking for racial
salvation through the law.50 But law is only one piece of the equation. The
1950s and 1960s demonstrated that implementing structural reform only
advanced the ball halfway down the field. Something more was needed, and
that something more was combating racist attitudes at the individual level.
Equality in law is not the same as equality in fact, and the latter will never
be realized where widespread racism persists in the secret chambers of the
heart.
But here’s the rub: Law cannot change the condition of a person’s heart.
If anything, law can often have the opposite effect by hardening hostile
attitudes toward law’s beneficiaries.51 Gladwell himself notes the pushback
from the South when the federal government began forcing racial change
starting with Brown v. Board of Education.52 This notion that law cannot
work internal change in a person’s heart has deep roots in Christianity.
Much of the Book of Romans represents Paul’s attempt to explain the
inability of law to produce lasting moral good.53 Similarly, the Supreme
Court did not usher in an age of more enlightened racial attitudes.

This metamorphosis was a positive response to the character of the men and
women who led the civil rights movement.

Now I get what this author is saying and he is right this is not just a either or thing. However after the 1964 Civil Rights ACT and then RICHARD NIXON pretty much doing the heavy lifting in implementing it as well as school desgregation there was not sudden change of heart because whites went MLK is some great dude.

It played a part as well as I think that many Southerners knew in their hearts this system was corrupt. However the LAW teaches a lesson and when the laws were changed attitudes changed on the whole pretty fast. So while I think it is correct that LAW by itself cannot make men moral it does help.

Good article though