Atticus Finch Is a Racist

The reviews are in for Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird “sequel,” Go Set a Watchman, and it looks like Atticus Finch, the original novel’s moral center, is a racist in the newly released book. The New York Times’ Michiko Kakutani writes in her review, “Atticus is a racist who once attended a Klan meeting, who says things like ‘The Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people.’ Or asks his daughter: ‘Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?’” In the Wall Street Journal, Sam Sacks notes that Atticus is a segregationist who asks things like, “Do you want your children going to a school that’s been dragged down to accommodate Negro children?”