Atticus is racist and I just died

Ok, so you know how Atticus is such a cool guy? Of course you do (unless you're Monroe Freedman, but that doesn't matter). Atticus Finch is seen as a role model by many in regards to is moral decisions, "character" and equality things for his children, and women and minorities every where. Well he isn't, he's sorta really racist. I understand that this blog is about patriarchy and stuff and what I'm saying is mainly about racism but it also ties in with patriarchy, so yeah.

"Then let's put this on a practical basis right now. Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?" On first inspection this looks like something a more grammatically adept Bob Ewell would say, doesn't it? Well it's not, it's Atticus, Atticus Finch, the one person in that book who I knew I could trust to have a certain set of opinions that (at least to me) are correct.




 I was wrong and now I can never trust anyone again. This happens in Go Set a Watchman when then 26 year old Jean Louise is confronting Atticus about him going to this weird Town Council thing where a guy from the KKK was going in and organizing it and it's really racist and Atticus is being stupid about it. 

This Completely contradicts everything I (and pretty much everyone else, ever) thought that I knew about Atticus.

"You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women—black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire." This is a quote from Atticus in his closing statements of the T.R. case, even though none of this directly contradicts what Atticus says in GSAWM it helps to build an image of who Atticus was shown as, as a person. Someone who see's no difference in the moral being of a black man or a white man, a woman or man, he didn't judge people from their race or gender, he judged them on who they were as a person, or at least I thought he did.

Something in particular that really contradicts (sorta) what Atticus is saying here is this one quote in GSAWM "Do you want your children going to a school that's been dragged down to accommodate negro children." This is just taking what the previous quote made people think about how Atticus feels about stereotypes and forces it to leave existence. 

What this conversation got me thinking about, is how does this transfer onto his opinions about gender? Throughout TKAM Atticus let's scout dress how she wants and be who she wants regardless of her gender and it isn't until people like Aunt A. come along that anything else is expected of Scout. How he treats scout is something really similar to what happens (at least in what I've experienced) with parents and their kids today. His opinions on race seemed very similar to those of ours today, but in actuality they weren't at all, so is he really sexist and he let scout do all of her "boy-ish" things as a kid to get it out of her system? Does he actually not really care? Do his opinions on gender not effect how he see's his children? I don't know it really is destroying my entire world. I really can't accept anything to be true anymore because of Atticus and GSAWM.