Wow, he has a completely different view of "To Kill a Mockingbird" from what I have. I don't see how he describes the "good" characters as paragons while the "bad" characters are pure evil. For one thing, there are plenty of "good" people, like Walter Cunningham, who are bigots that would've lynched Robinson and definitely attacked, if not outright killed, Atticus. Ewell isn't "evil" for being a bigot, he's "evil" for being an abusive drunk. Heck, even Atticus is bigoted, as evidenced by his dismissing women from holding places on juries as ridiculous.

I feel that the story isn't some Civil Rights inspired cautionary tale so much as an apology for the Whites in the South. The Black characters are nowhere near as defined as any of the White characters are, and mostly they exist to show how White people feel about them. Harper Lee was showing how White people were effected by racism; how it turned otherwise decent people into mob members willing to kill a man for daring to feel sorry for a White girl.

It is not a book that says, "Don't be a bigot, because the person you're being bigoted toward might turn out to be a saint.", but that bigots are Humans, too. Humans that sometimes do things they would not normally do out of fear and frustration, and that doing evil things doesn't mean they don't have any good in them, and if there is some good in them perhaps there is hope. If someone is a bigot calling them "evil" isn't going to change how they see things. You've got to trust there's decency in them somewhere and call out to that, like when Scout talks to Cunningham about his son the night of the mob.

It's also a book about how people are marginalized by society, not just the Blacks in the shanty town, but anyone not quite "right" like Boo Radley, Dill, the Ewell children and even Scout herself who is penalized by her teacher for being too advanced. It's a book that's about learning to accept and understand others for your own benefit. It shows how bigotry hurts not just the victim of racism but the bigots themselves.