The Help

I finally read it and went to see the movie.  I LOVED IT.  I’ve heard nothing but wonderful things about it, and it did not disappoint.  There are a lot of things that happened in it that really made me think.  Things that I wonder if half the people who ‘loved’ the book actually thought about.  Did they think it was just a nice story or did they really stop to think that these things happened in either their generation or their parent’s generation?  I obviously know these things went on but I forget how recent they were; how brutal.  I’ve always been the type to be sensitive to other people, try not to judge something I know nothing about.  This book only reinforces my beliefs.  People are quick to judge a black family who’s on welfare or a black kid on the corner in over the rhine.  While I do believe at some point you have to work your ass off and make something of yourself, who am I or anyone else to say ‘even though your great uncle may have had dogs turned loose on him for walking on the wrong lawn and being the wrong color.  Even though your grandma was made to feel that she was so gross that she couldn’t use the same toilet as me. Even though your grandfather wasn’t ‘good’ enough to sit and eat in the same restaurant as me, you have the same opportunities now so get over it.’  We forget how long those things went on, and The Help was in a setting where slavery was long gone.  This is 100’s of years of oppression.  Obviously in this area things are much better than Jackson Mississippi 50 years ago, but let’s not forget how recent these things were.  This isn’t just a story, these are things that happened in real life.

I also just finished reading a book called The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy.  It was about a school on an island off the coast of South Carolina inhabited by the Gullah people.  They were slaves who migrated to the island after their emancipation.  The book is written by a white man who went to teach at a school on the island in the 60’s.  The kids at the school were all black, there were two classrooms one for 1-4 and the other for 5-8.  None of the kids could read, none of them knew what country they were in, their president, how to count, etc.  This was the state of things for a black school in the United States of America just 50 years ago.  My mother is 55.  While my mom was alive another race of people was being harshly treated in the south.  Does that really register with you?  Do we really understand that?  People want to shrug their shoulders and say ‘I didn’t do it’  ‘what do you want me to do about it?’ and to an extent I get that.  I’m not suggesting we hand out 40 acres.  I also understand that’s how this country was built.  We stole land from Indians, we enslaved blacks, hell the Irish were hated at one point in time.  

I have many black friends and I have many white friends, and everything in between.  We’re all people who accept each other’s past, culture and beliefs.  They have no animosity toward the color of my skin and I have none toward theirs.  I think at this point in time it’s about coming together.  If I look down on someone for their circumstance no matter what the color that makes me an ugly person.  If you are a person of color and you have all of these preconceptions about what white people are then you’re just as bad as the white women in The Help.  The white women in the help were conditioned to believe that blacks were dirty, or carried disease or were beneath them.  They were ignorant and passed this belief to their children.  Blacks were conditioned not to trust whites and that all were bad and looked down upon their race.  This was passed down to their children.  No matter what my family believed or what was suggested to me by kids in my classroom in Kentucky, I chose what I believed from my own experiences.  If you hold on to what others tell you, you should believe about a whole race of people, black or white, you are selling yourself short.  You’re participating in the ignorance that was Jackson Mississippi in the 50’s.  Might not be to that magnitude but in essence that’s what you’re doing.

I see so much of this still in this area, I hear so many people tell me how great the book and the movie are, people I know would hold their purse a little tighter if a black man walked by.  People I know who refer to blacks and whites as “us and them” or “we and they.”  Change started with a whisper in The Help now it’s time to put away the “we and they”, and forget your preconceptions, think about the circumstances one may have come from.  If we all sit in a circle and point fingers we’re not getting anywhere.  WHITE OR BLACK!  You be the person who makes a change, and see the reaction you get, it might surprise you.