VOICES FROM THE MARGINS: COMMUNAL PREJUDICE AND RACIAL DISPARITY IN LEE’S TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

Abstract

This study examines communal prejudice and racial disparity in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) through the combined theoretical perspectives of Critical Race Theory and Cultural Theory. Set against the racial and social hierarchies of the American South, the novel exposes the ways in which prejudice extends beyond individual attitudes and becomes embedded within communal practices, cultural beliefs, and institutional structures. The study employs a qualitative, interpretive, and textual-analytical methodology, using close reading of selected characters, incidents, dialogues, and social interactions to investigate the relationship between race, power, representation, and marginalization. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, the analysis demonstrates how racial hierarchy operates through institutional mechanisms, particularly the legal system, where Tom Robinson's trial reveals the limitations of legal neutrality and the unequal distribution of credibility. Cultural Theory further illuminates how racial prejudice is normalized through family, education, language, religion, social traditions, and communal expectations, allowing discriminatory assumptions to become part of Maycomb's everyday cultural consciousness. The study argues that racial injustice in the novel is produced through the interaction of cultural ideology and institutional power rather than through isolated acts of individual intolerance. It further examines the marginalized positions of Tom Robinson and Calpurnia to demonstrate how Black voices may be present yet remain structurally constrained, culturally devalued, and institutionally unheard. The study also interrogates the limitations of individual moral resistance, particularly through Atticus Finch, whose ethical opposition to racism fails to dismantle the larger structures sustaining racial inequality. By integrating Critical Race Theory and Cultural Theory, this research offers a multidimensional reading of To Kill a Mockingbird that connects cultural normalization with institutional discrimination. It concludes that Lee's novel remains significant because it reveals how communal prejudice can become institutional injustice and how racial inequality is sustained through the seemingly ordinary practices, assumptions, and structures of social life.