The Help – what is this really about?(my perspective)

Papillion -
butterfly of change
acrylic on wood
2008

This spring I read the new book by Kathryn Stockett titled the Help. About black maids and the white women they worked for.  The time of this story is sixties and in the south. 

A very emotionally charged time in history in the United States with civil rights action happening everywhere.

While I did not grow up in the south, my father’s family is from Louisiana.  My great grandmother worked as a domestic worker.  Reading the book felt painful to me.

Revisiting the treatment of black people in the south: the brutality, disrespect and horribleness – too much for me.

It made me want to cry. It still does. 

Back to the Help.  The story begins around the premise of putting a separate toilet outside, for the maid to use in the house she works.

I was prepared to not like the story.  I was prepared for the hatred the white women had for their black maids and the mean way they would treat them, even though they needed them to help with their children and their homes.

Then the main heroine character appeared (the journalist).  I recognized her as some of the women I went to college with. Open minded, idealistic, aware of the plight of other races of people, she returned home from college aware that the small town she came from was full of inequity. And saw how her friends were treating the people that came into their homes (to make it better for them by cleaning, and caring for them) badly.  And thus a bargain was struck between the maid and the journalist. To tell the story of what being a domestic worker was like in the sixties in the south.

I guess my question is this: Why is this a pertinent story to tell? Again? Haven’t their been enough stories about race, racism, inequality, and class.  Will America ever move on from this? There are so many brilliant, black American women that have raised themselves up from abject poverty, fought against racism – where are their stories?  Where is Condoleeza Rice’s story, Rosa Parks story, where is Oprah’s story, where is the Johnson family story (Ebony magazine, Essence, Jet)? What about all of the successful writers, poets, painters, teachers, doctors, lawyers and business moguls?

My concern is that the Help perpetuates the stereotype of black women for a whole new class of women coming of age. 

I am curious to see how this movie is going to pan out. I am curious to see what response this movie will get from the masses.  What would be great would be if this could be used as a jumping point for conversations, open conversations about the inequity and inhumane treatment of people of color.

I don’t understand inhumane treatment of people, any people.  The holocaust, the wiping out of Native American people, slavery.  I actually don’t ever want to try to understand how one person could treat/injure or inflict an emotional or physical pain on another human being in the act of thinking they are better than them based on visual cues or religion or  (skin color, etc.).

In the end, this movie gives us another starting point for looking at ourselves. Seeing where our weakness is and healing it.  The Hollywood machine/entertainment industry machinations see this as a story worth telling.  Why? Besides making money what do they hope to get from this retelling of this aspect of American history? A period of time that was demoralizing, denigrating and heartbreaking.  Emmett Till comes to mind.  The people hosed by water for standing up for their rights to sit where they wanted, the people who had dogs turned on them, the bombings of the black churches.  The backdrop, the backstory to the Help overpowers it for me.  I see all of the other things that were going on at that time in history and I get dizzy and feel sick.

I am curious about other people's responses.

I have a dream that my four little children

 will one day live in a nation

where they will not be judged by

the color of their skin,

 but by the content of their character.

Martin Luther King, Jr.