Are you a mockingbird?

But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.” – To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee, 1960)
 
For many of us in the United States, the Pulitzer-prize winning book To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those indelible markers of youth and awakening. The book is a master class in storytelling; a text we read in grade school that introduces us to the world of Depression-era Alabama as seen through six-year-old eyes of Jean Louise Finch (Scout).
 
More profoundly however, it is the narrative of racial injustice that makes the book so canonical. The trial of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman, is a deeply moving exploration of systemic and social racism, of dignified attempts to fight racial injustice (the iconic Atticus Finch), and of the power of the unseen (Boo Radley) to make a difference.  Rightfully so, the book has been listed as one of the most essential contemporary novels, and the 1962 Academy-award winning movie (with Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch) is also a classic of the big screen.
 
But To Kill a Mockingbird is not just a reflection of the past –– it’s a mirror of our present, and perhaps a bit of a roadmap for our future too.
 
This was my thought as I watched the newest adaption of this timeless story, the Aaron Sorkin-penned Broadway masterpiece. Over the two plus hours of riveting theater and Tony-deserving performances by Celia Keenan-Bolger as Scout, LaTanya Richardson Jackson as Calpurnia, and Jeff Bridges as Atticus Finch, I wasn’t thinking of 1930’s Alabama. I was thinking of America in 2019 and how too much has remained the same as what we would like to imagine is consigned to the distant past.
 
We still live in a world where racial injustice is a pandemic, and where the promoters of fear and unrighteous indignation stoke flames of conflict. Too many innocent men and women have too little access to the life and liberty guaranteed by the Constitution, and too few people rise up to fight against the legal, economic and physical assaults on our fellow citizens.  In this sense, Maycomb isn’t a “tired old town” of our fictional past. It’s the setting for our unsettling present.
 
And yet, it also is a reminder of the path forward.
 
Atticus’ directive to Scout — "you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb around in his skin and walk around in it” — is a notion that is easy to say and hard to achieve.  It requires a sense of empathy, and also an appreciation of the basic human dignity that each person is entitled to possess. It means looking beyond the skin, and the surface story of another, and valuing the essence of their humanity, no matter how different or how deeply flawed it might be. It can be a bitter pill to swallow when trying to have empathy for the perpetrators of injustice (as it is for Scout, Jem and Dill in the story), but it can also be the best path towards understanding and reconciliation.
 
In her 2016 book Anger and Forgiveness, Professor Martha Nussbaum explores the nature of resentment and generosity and the ways to respond to the anger we feel when we encounter actual (or perceived) injustice.  She makes a meaningful case that the best strategy to reconciliation is to abandon anger and embrace the values of generosity, justice and truth. 
 
In 2019, when it feels like our society is more permeated by anger than optimism, perhaps Professor Nussbaum’s roadmap is a modern-day update to Atticus Finch’s dictate. The spirit of generosity and the search for truth and justice, much like the consideration of what its like to walk in another person’s shoes, is hard — but it is accessible to all of us if we consider the small ways we can make big changes in our encounters with one another.
 
At the end of To Kill a Mockingbird, it’s the reclusive Boo Radley who walks out of the shadows and makes a dramatic entry into the story at a pivotal moment. By doing so, Boo not only shows his face, but shows his compassion and willingness to step into the narrative of the community which he has long-observed from the safety of his refuge from the world.
 
Each day there are countless Tom Robinsons who need allies, and there are countless seen and unseen injustices that need to remedied. But remedying them doesn’t mean just being angry about them. It means standing up to them (like Atticus) or stepping out into them (like Boo).  And it means seeing others for not only who they seem to be, but who they are.
 
One of the most memorable lines of the book (and the explanation of the title) is shared by Miss Maudie: “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy . . . but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
 
But perhaps that’s not the whole truth.  Perhaps its not only a sin to kill a mockingbird, but it’s also a sin to refrain from becoming a mockingbird. Because when we start to sing out hearts out in voices that are loud, clear, and rich with purpose, like those of a mockingbird, we join a chorus that counters hate, drowns out anger, and banishes fear.
 
And that might be the greatest song of all.