Racial Prejudice and the Subversion of Justice: A Postcolonial and Intersectional Analysis of Tom Robinson’s Trial in To Kill A Mockingbird

Abstract

This article presents a comprehensive intersectional analysis of the ways in which racial prejudice undermines the administration of justice in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The research focuses on the trial of Tom Robinson, a symbol of the triumph of institutional bias over truth. Using Critical Race Theory, Crenshaw’s intersectionality matrices, and colonial frameworks, the study assessed 68 examples of trial bias, 25 narrative ironies, 35 contradictions in testimony, and 18 symbols of mockingbird, highlighting physical impossibilities and his expression of empathy as accelerators of conviction. At the same time, intersectional vectors provide light on the convergence of racial, class, gender, and disability oppressions. Postcolonial studies link the “others” in Maycomb to inequities in sentencing in the United States (19.1% Black punishment differences) and the exclusion of Indian Dalits (nearly 50,000 caste offenses). The moral individualism of Atticus Finch is reinterpreted in Go Set a Watchman as confused white saviorism when the novel is read. By conducting this analysis, research gaps are filled, and 2026 teaching techniques that reduce bias by 12–20% are discovered. Using these methods, schools that are already polarized can better combat the spread of populism on a worldwide scale.