Why we shouldn’t turn page on discomfort

fight, you African-American-lovin’ b----d?” Let’s be serious. I am reminded of recent email exchanges with readers angry over NFL players kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial oppression. These readers argued that protest should not make anyone — here’s that word again — uncomfortable. One man said protest should “unify” and “educate.”

Maybe that makes sense in a colorcoordinated Pepsi commercial with Kendall Jenner, but it has nothing to do with reality.

Did the civil-rights marchers seek to “unify” with Bull Connor’s dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham? Did the colonists seek to “educate” when they committed the anti-government vandalism called the Boston Tea Party?

No, they were raising their voices, poking a stick in the eye of their oppressors. They were making them ... uncomfortable. We should be grateful they did. And we should ask those uncomfortable people in Biloxi and elsewhere: Where did you get the idea you should be sheltered from history? What made you think you had an expectation of being shielded from truth? Who told you you had a right never to be made ill at ease?

Yes, I recognize the possibility — in fact, the probability — that some of those discomfited by Lee’s book are African-American. It makes no difference.

In literature, as in protest, the audience’s discomfort is often a sign the message is being received. It can offer an invaluable opportunity to consider, reconsider, debate, teach, learn, reflect, and grow. Or it can be an excuse to run and hide. In a nation where ignorance masquerades as authenticity, and the ability to think deeply and critically on difficult subjects has been mollycoddled into near oblivion, it is too often the latter. So I have no sympathy for those delicate folks in Biloxi.

“Mockingbird” is a seminal text of the American experience. Yes, it “makes some people uncomfortable.”

That’s the whole point.