Examples Of Discrimination In The Watsons Go To Birmingham

Words: 513
Pages: 3

Theme of TWGTB Have you ever been discriminated against because you were handicapped, poor, or even because you are of a different race? In the book The Watsons Go To Birmingham there are many examples of this. People who are handicapped, poor, and black are treated poorly and called out for this stuff all throughout the entire book. For instance, Kenny is always called out for his lazy eye at school. For example, when the kids at school see him, they cross their eyes to imitate him. They don’t tease him to much about it because Byron, the school god, doesn’t tease him about his lazy eye much. Also, kids at school, like Larry Dun, call him Cockeyed Kenny. If you look at page 57, before Larry gives him the Maytag Wash, he refers to him as Cockeyed Kenny. It really shows how much the kids at school respect someone with a lazy eye, something that they were born with and can’t change. …show more content…
In this time period there was a lot of racial tension, segregation and discrimination going on. Kenny, on page 122, says that he once saw a picture of white people being nasty towards a black student peacefully trying to get to class. Also, one of the biggest events that happened in the book-- the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. This was a big bombing in a Birmingham church, which many black people attended. In the book, Joetta had gone to that same church, but had left before the bombing took place because she saw Kenny wave at her. The bombing was caused by some white people who were very racist and wanted black people to just stop protesting. Because of this event, 4 little black girls died, others were blinded, and sent straight to the