Harper Lee's GO SET a WATCHMAN-Prompts Imperative Social Discussion

GO SET a WATCHMAN is the most anticipated prequel/sequel for Lee's TO KILL a MOCKINGBIRD.  TO KILL… was declared the best novel of the 20thC (by the Library Journal '99.) Lee has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Pres. Medal of Freedom, the Nat'l Medal of Arts and numerous literary & humanitarian honors.  GO read GO SET a WATCHMAN because it is an accurate account of our country's systemic racism. This prescient issue is pervasive and must be divulged, discussed & dismantled.  Lee's new novel is set 2 decades later. Scout, now referred to as Jean Louise, returns home to AL from NYC where she has been living.  Atticus Finch, the literary beacon of justice and honor is older but surprisingly not wiser. We along with Jean Louise are appalled to discover Atticus' segregationist & racist views.  Scout had always regarded her beloved father as a pillar of justice. Her rude awakening to the shared views of her father, family & white society leaves Jean Louise dislodged "Everything I have ever taken for right & wrong these people have taught me-these same these very people.  So it's me, it's not them. Something has happened to me."  Jean Louise absent for the past years has distanced her to the offensive, prevailing sentiments she held and confused by her affections for Calpurnia who helped raised her"…nobody in Maycomb goes to see Negroes any more, not after what they've been doing to us. Besides being shiftless, now they look at you sometimes with open insolence, and as far as depending on them goes, why that's out," explains her aunt.  Her uncle informs her that Reconstruction only resulted in banning slavery. "The people became no less than what they were to begin with-in some cases they became horrifyingly more…up popped the ugliest, most shameful aspect of it all-the breed of white man who lived in open economic competition with freed Negroes."  Harper Lee' GO SET…may not be as popular or lauded as her other novel but it is just as important as a reflection of past & our present.  The novel is a watchman "to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make {us} understand the difference."