Robin Quivers - The Help Isn't Helping

[Hey Man]

Have you seen the movie The Help? Did you love it? Did you walk out of the theater with a warm and fuzzy feeling, thinking, "Thank goodness that terrible wrong was righted by one good white woman willing to stand up and be counted?"

I can't tell you how many times white women have told me they saw The Help and just loved it. In some ways, I think they're trying to tell me that thanks to the film, they now get it. You know, that whole civil rights thing.

I read a review of the book that lauded it as evidence that people from troubled times came together despite their differences and that ordinary women can be heroic. In a nutshell, that is my problem with The Help. People are acting as if the events in the movie really happened.

Kathryn Stockton is a novelist. She writes fiction. There was no defiant Skeeter. There were no courageous maids and no bad white women got their comeuppance. The movie offers only broad stereotypes. We know just who to root for and who to hate. We all get to identify with the heroines and everything works out in the end when everyone realizes that Jim Crow segregation is wrong.

If everyone watching the film identifies with Skeeter, where did all the bad people come from? The truth is, most of the people watching the movie or reading the book would be in the majority. They would have been clawing their way into society, enjoying their special privileges and mistreating the help.

Try reading about the real people who risked everything to make a change, were denied opportunity and lost loved ones because of segregation. How about actually distinguishing black historical fiction from fact.

[Deleted]

Interestingly, I had a long conversation with a woman who held the Skeeter position (editor of the newsletter) in the Jackson Junior League in 1960 and she also had problems with the book. Her claim was that she was upset that it portrayed Skeeter as being a complete outcast and in danger for working with the maids to change things. She claims that within the League she was a part of a group that worked with civil rights groups and that it wasn't a secret, nor did anyone treat them as pariahs for doing so. She ended the conversation by saying that she knows that they should have done more but that at the time they did what they felt that they could do at the time. I know that time and perspective has a way of coloring your actions in a more flattering shade, but that last line resonated with me because I also think that's what most of us do when we are faced with injustice..."as much as we feel we can", which often amounts to not nearly enough when history is written.

The conversation played around in my head for weeks after as I read black authors, educators and entertainers condemn The Help. And I kept coming back to the same conclusion. That while the story of civil rights is the story of Black America standing up for their rights to be treated whole and equal in our society, theirs is not the only story that comes from the civil rights movement. It simply can't be. They effected change, and what needed to change is the attitude and prejudices of White America. Which means, like it or not, that makes White America's experiences, their prejudices and "ah-ha moments", their failures and successes just as vital to the story of how civil rights happened. It is a story of justice, and as King said:

"The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone. "

Black America stood up and demanded their rights. White America had to open their eyes and hearts to realize the error of their ways. That takes courage and strength all its own and we need to be able to acknowledge that on both sides if we are going to accurately tell this story. We have to stop fearing that telling one side of the story diminishes the other. It doesn't, it simply paints a fuller picture.

To me that is the purpose of The Help. It is not to say that the white lady swoops in and saves the day. It's to say that the white lady woke up to what was happening WHILE AT THE SAME TIME the black women fought for their justice and joined with them to help as much as she felt she could.

[Hey Man]

My wife is now reading the book and loving it.