To Kill a Mockingbird deals with racism, yet one has to ask the question: does it not engage in its own form of racism?

Take a look at the white characters in the book. If one sets aside Boo Radley and Atticus Finch, we are left with children and a host of characters with venial and not so venial sins. People can't act as their conscience dictates, or they are bigots, or they are just downright bad.

Now look at the black characters. They are shown to be uniformly respectful, good-natured and innocent. The oppression that they faced may have played a role in making Southern black society more polite, but I suspect that Lee is also unwittingly falling into the "noble savage" motif. The blacks in the book are victims, but they are also stereotyped and consciously set aside as being different.

While Lee may have also written the characters this way to make a point, the end result is that the book's statement against racism is weakened for it. It would have been a far more powerful book if Atticus had defended a guilty black man at some point as well, and had to explain to Scout that people of any color can be good or bad.