Malcolm Gladwell and the limits of New York liberalism

In “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Finch (played by Gregory Peck in the 1962 film version) sought to expose Jim Crow to the world, not change it overnight.

by Glynn Wilson

Just when I thought the South and race had been reduced to comedy and thus removed from literary thought out of New York for the final time, one of my favorite science writers recently decided to step out of his expertise in sociology to take a stab at history. The result, as usual, reveals more about the opinions of New Yorkers about the South than it does about the problem of race relations and what to do about it.

Regular readers will remember that I have praised Malcolm Gladwell before, most recently for his book Outliers: The Story of Success. But his most recent piece in The New Yorker on Big Jim Folsom and Atticus Finch and the limits of Southern liberalism cries out for criticism.

A number of my Facebook “friends” have shared this story around, so I know many people have read it. If you have not already, I recommend it. Hit the link and read it. Then come back and see why I think it has shortcomings.

At first scan, the story makes sense. The point being that when Big Jim Folsom was trying to influence the hearts and minds of the people of Alabama in the 1950s, he did so by example, knowing it would take a lifetime. He did not advocate immediate change through protests and law. If he had, he would never have been elected in the first place, and so he would never have been able to bring about any change at all.

Anybody who knows anything about politics knows you can’t do anything unless you get elected.

It is not clear whether Gladwell is even aware of it, although it’s hard to imagine he’s not. But when he uses George Orwell’s criticism of Charles Dickens to take on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, he becomes Orwell in his own story.

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