A high school student wants the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" removed from freshman English classes in the Spokane School District because of its portrayal of blacks.

"I read this book in Ferris (High School) as a freshman. It made me feel powerless in the classroom," the student wrote on an official complaint form filed recently.

The school district has not yet made a decision on the book and would not release the student's name. This is the fourth attempt to remove a book in the district this school year.

"To Kill a Mockingbird," published in 1960, prompted "sniggling, laughing, humiliating comments" as it was being read, the student wrote.

The student's comments indicate a problem with the way the is being taught, said two black college professors of American literature.

"Maybe the problem is with the teacher," said Cedric Gael Bryant, associate professor of English and African American literature at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

"It's that laughter that needs to be critiqued. The students need to understand why the laughter is uncomfortable. Some is derisiveness, some is embarrassment."

"Context is everything," agreed Joycelyn Moody, associate professor of English at the University of Washington.

For example, Moody begins all discussions of books containing the word "nigger: with a thorough examination of the word and how it has been used historically and socially, she said.

Moody recently had private talks with each of the black students in her class before discussing "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

"It was absolutely essential that I had a conversation with each of these African American students individually to let the know the kinds of things they might encounter" (such as laughter and insensitivity from other students), she said.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee is set in the 1930s in a small town in southern Alabama. The narrator, a young girl, observes the town's reaction to the trial of a black man for the rape of a white woman and her attorney father's defense of him.

Toward the end of the book the narrator explains the town's reaction to the black man's death:

"To Maycomb, Tom's death was typical. Typical of a nigger to cut a and run. Typical of a nigger's mentality to have no plan, no thought for the future, just run blind first chance he saw."

Racism is only one of the many themes in the book, said Ferris English teach Gary Finer. "Approximately 15 percent of the book is devoted to race, and 85 percent of the book is devoted to the education of the mind, prejudice against the poor and the handicapped and the uneducated."

Finer said the book's portrayal of attitudes toward blacks in the 1930s in southern Alabama can make students uncomfortable.

"But history can make a student uncomfortable. The Ku Klux Klan, slavery, Frederick Douglas, 'Gone with the Wind,'. . . . any piece of history can become offensive to anyone. That;s a given.

"The alternative is to ignore it."

Finer said teachers should not allow derogatory comments and laughing during discussion of "To Kill a Mockingbird."

"That's a teacher problem, not a book problem," he said.

Bryant, of Colby College, said "To Kill a Mockingbird" teaches more to whites about racial politics than it does to blacks.

"The book reaffirms what already is a given for African Americans: that it's very easy to be victimized without the slightest provocation and the chances go up exponentially if you are a black male."

The book presents only two options for black males, Bryant said.

"To be the good nigger, someone who is passive and knows his place and stays there . . . or the bad nigger.

"Any 16-year-old black person knows there are more options than that and rejects those two polarized social constructions for black men."

Bryant said "To Kill a Mockingbird" should be taught "because of its historical importance and as a metaphor for its own racial moment as well."

"But unless it is taught by a teacher who takes responsibility for putting it into its social context, then I think the book continues to be justifiably reviles by different kinds of readers."

If there is room for only one novel dealing with race in America in a high school literature curriculum, Bryant questioned whether it should be "To Kill a Mockingbird."

He suggested another Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, as an alternative.

Finer said he wouldn't teach the Morrison book because of language that offends him and because the more modern novel has not yet earned its place in American literature.

"I come from the school that says literature has to stand the test of time," he said.

This article appeared on page 1 in the December 3, 1994 issue of the Spokane, WA Spokesman-Review.