Did “The Help” help? – Part 1

My deck lured me out on it today. It’s August so the shadows are longer and the days are slightly cooler. I love the sun and I love working in the sun, but during the hotter days my laptop does not concur, so I tend to do most of my typing indoors, but today is a beautiful exception. Sitting under a clear blue sky with my laptop, I have a glass full of ice and diet cola and my cat is curled up under my deck chair. Perfect conditions for contemplation.

Early this summer my friend Sharon was on a mission to get all her friends to read “The Help.” She was very excited and passionate, so I joined her. I found the book truly compelling and finished it in a few days, the whole time texting back and forth with Sharon my reactions and “a-ha” moments.

Sharon and I met over three years ago through teaching and while we liked each other immediately our relationship was cemented when she stepped in to cover my classes while I recuperated from a severe injury. Sharon is a young, black woman in the early stages of her teaching career and I’m a not-so-young white woman getting close to retirement, so on the surface we may not have many reasons to connect, but we truly do.

Right away, I recognized that I identified with the white characters in “The Help.” I knew first hand what it was like being a little girl like Mae in the ’60’s. To be headstrong, awkward and smart when society wanted (and still wants) little girls to be cute, subservient and demure. I also loved Skeeter. Tall, gangly, opinionated, un-lady-like and subversive with outta-control curls. Hello!! One of my messages to Sharon said I had always wondered what kind of white person I would have been at that time in the south. I like to believe I would have been like Skeeter, a voice for justice and human rights. Sharon’s response was awesome. She thought I would have absolutely stood up for truth, but deep down I am left wondering.

“The Help” is a story about women. It’s about legal, societal and self-imposed restrictions women have navigated and it is set in the 1960’s in Mississippi. I despised Hilly as she stands for every mean, controlling girl who had ever found strength by making other’s lives miserable. I cried with joy when Aibileen’s congregation holds a secret meeting to celebrate her as an author and my tears turned to deep grief when Aibileen thinks about Skeeter having no one for support. I kept hoping Skeeter and Minny would find a way to live without the men in their lives and the book finishes with only a few things resolved, but leaves a sense of hope.

“The Help” is a book written by a white woman and is based loosely on her life growing up in the south. It seemed to say both “Thank you” and “I’m sorry” at the same time.

Was “The Help” perfect? No. As an author I can tell you that  no published book on the market is perfect. Did it stir up a lot of conversation and contemplation? Yes and yes.

I was intrigued when Atinuke Bankole, one of our local leaders, sent me “An Open Statement to the fans of ‘The Help’” from the Association of Black Women Historians. Their voice is extremely important in all of this. They remind us that that Aibileens and Minnys of the south have a lot more to say, so I am sharing it here.

I have some further thoughts regarding the ABWH’s statement and I’m going to share them on another post. First I need to see the film version to round out my ponderings. There is an email at the end so you can send your thoughts to the ABWH, if you wish. I also would be very interested in your opinions on this statement. So, I hope you will leave a comment below.

An Open Statement to the Fans of The Help:

On behalf of the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), this statement provides historical context to address widespread stereotyping presented in both the film and novel version of The Help.   The book has sold over three million copies, and heavy promotion of the movie will ensure its success at the box office. Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism.

During the 1960s, the era covered in The Help, legal segregation and economic inequalities limited black women’s employment opportunities. Up to 90 per cent of working black women in the South labored as domestic servants in white homes. The Help’s representation of these women is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy—a mythical stereotype of black women who were compelled, either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families. Portrayed as asexual, loyal, and contented caretakers of whites, the caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them. The popularity of this most recent iteration is troubling because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it.

Both versions of The Help also misrepresent African American speech and culture. Set in the South, the appropriate regional accent gives way to a child-like, over-exaggerated “black” dialect. In the film, for example, the primary character, Aibileen, reassures a young white child that, “You is smat, you is kind, you is important.” In the book, black women refer to the Lord as the “Law,” an irreverent depiction of black vernacular. For centuries, black women and men have drawn strength from their community institutions. The black family, in particular provided support and the validation of personhood necessary to stand against adversity. We do not recognize the black community described in The Help where most of the black male characters are depicted as drunkards, abusive, or absent. Such distorted images are misleading and do not represent the historical realities of black masculinity and manhood.

Furthermore, African American domestic workers often suffered sexual harassment as well as physical and verbal abuse in the homes of white employers. For example, a recently discovered letter written by Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks indicates that she, like many black domestic workers, lived under the threat and sometimes reality of sexual assault. The film, on the other hand, makes light of black women’s fears and vulnerabilities turning them into moments of comic relief.

Similarly, the film is woefully silent on the rich and vibrant history of black Civil Rights activists in Mississippi. Granted, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the first Mississippi based field secretary of the NAACP, gets some attention. However, Evers’ assassination sends Jackson’s black community frantically scurrying into the streets in utter chaos and disorganized confusion—a far cry from the courage demonstrated by the black men and women who continued his fight. Portraying the most dangerous racists in 1960s Mississippi as a group of attractive, well dressed, society women, while ignoring the reign of terror perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council, limits racial injustice to individual acts of meanness.

We respect the stellar performances of the African American actresses in this film. Indeed, this statement is in no way a criticism of their talent. It is, however, an attempt to provide context for this popular rendition of black life in the Jim Crow South. In the end, The Help is not a story about the millions of hardworking and dignified black women who labored in white homes to support their families and communities. Rather, it is the coming-of-age story of a white protagonist, who uses myths about the lives of black women to make sense of her own. The Association of Black Women Historians finds it unacceptable for either this book or this film to strip black women’s lives of historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment.

Ida E. Jones is National Director of ABWH and Assistant Curator at Howard University. Daina Ramey Berry, Tiffany M. Gill, and Kali Nicole Gross are Lifetime Members of ABWH and Associate Professors at the University of Texas at Austin. Janice Sumler-Edmond is a Lifetime Member of ABWH and is a Professor at Huston-Tillotson University.

Suggested Reading:

Fiction:

Like one of the Family: Conversations from A Domestic’s Life, Alice Childress

The Book of the Night Women by Marlon James

Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neeley

The Street by Ann Petry

A Million Nightingales by Susan Straight

Non-Fiction:

Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household by Thavolia Glymph

To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors by Tera Hunter

Labor of Love Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present by Jacqueline Jones
Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics and the Great Migration by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis

Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Any questions, comments, or interview requests can be sent to: ABWHTheHelp@gmail.com

If you are interested I incorporated “The Help” into one of my Cooking With Sin posts. One of the things that I try to bring to light are the use of our words around skin colour and I shared my ideas here:

“Proud Mary” Fried Green Tomatoes

http://cookingwithsin.com/2011/07/20/proud-mary-fried-green-tomatoes/