YEs, racism is bad. What I'm wondering about, though, is that the movie makes all white Southerners (except the Peck character and his immediate circle) look like racists.
Why do you want to say "(except the Peck character and his immediate circle)" as if they don't count? Racism WAS rampant, most whites were either racist or silent, and it took people standing up to say it was wrong.
The movie had no good guys except the hero? Well duh! The hero needs the bad guys to be called the hero.
What do you want? a movie set in the old south where all the white men were fair, and the black man would have been assumed to have a fair trial? That wouldn't be a credible and believable story.
But Finch is the point. This speaks to an era more than an area. The fact that Finch sees what is to be done, sees and fights the clear injustice, and stands up for what is clearly right, is what it is all about.
TKAM's main theme is that evil thrives when good men do nothing.