What is the race of Scout's family? Black or white?

Scout's family is white, as are most of the families in
Macomb that Lee focuses on. The point of the story is to draw attention to racism in the
South and Harper Lee does this by telling the story from the perspective of an adult
white woman remembering her childhood in Maycomb.

The story
follows Scout as she recounts the time that her father, Atticus, took on the case of Tom
Robinson, a black man. Tom was wrongly accused of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell.
Although the Ewell family was not a respected one, and Tom Robinson was a respected back
man, the town is still enraged that a black man has raped a white woman and they call
for his conviction. Atticus takes the case and defends him with everything he has, but
Tom is still convicted. This shows that that despite being Tom innocent, the town was
unwilling to admit that the white man in this case (Mayella's abusive father) could have
been to blame and that the black man was correct. This would have had far-reaching
connotations and consequences in the South at that time, and we get the impression from
the book that most people in two believed Tom had to be guilty anyway simply because he
was black.

Although Scout and her family are white, her
father Atticus "tries to love all people" and earnestly attempts to teach this to both
of his children throughout the book. The underlying message of the novel is that racism
is a choice.