“THE HELP”: EXPOSING A LOT MORE THAN RACIAL APARTHEID IN THE ‘60s

The movie “The Help” is joining the book (of the same name) in near unanimous cultural acclaim for highlighting a fictional 1960s era Civil Rights story about the “relationship” between economically privileged white women, the African American women they employed as domestic help, and the white supremacist cultural dominance that allowed their abuse at the hands of their white employers.

In reading and hearing about the major swoon that white America has taken over this piece of fiction, I naturally wondered whether this feel-good, sugar-coated version of '60's Racial Apartheid would finally create space for a serious conversation regarding ways to repair the damaging impact that the history of Racial Apartheid continues to have on the African American community. I wondered whether white America would finally be able to acknowledge that so many of the benefits they enjoy today were built on the backs of this Apartheid.

"Oh no" a white friend, who has seen the movie and was deeply affected by it, said; "that won't happen; that isn’t what this movie is for or is about."

And there it is. . .

How you view "The Help", of course, depends on your world view lens. And this book -- and now movie -- has exposed how comfortable we are with "history light": touching on the edges of our national tragedy of racial apartheid and needing even that tentative toe dip wrapped in a generous helping of comic relief and a story told through the lens and world view of a "good" white protagonist.

This book and resulting movie -- which puts as its "lead character" individual acts of racial oppression and only as "supporting characters" the white supremacist cultural and structural dominance that supported those individual acts --have already spawned debates that, as much as they straddle racial fault lines, are really about how the narrative of America's history of Racial Apartheid will be (re-) written.

It -- along with other movies of this genre that have made their way into the consciousness of white America -- gives a very skewed view of the role of whites in the Civil Rights Movement, giving the impression of whites’ creating opportunities for and leading and hand-holding scared Black people to opportunities to find their voices, as well as giving the impression of white people being so incensed by racial apartheid that they worked actively and on the front lines, taking the lead in "liberating" Afrikan Descendants from "extremists" white groups like the Klan, the White Citizens’ Councils and even (the book’s main antagonist) Miss Hilly.

And while that framing is a "feel good", affirmative framing for white America, it is also a lie.

There have been many books written about the 1960's Civil Rights Era in recent years, by both African American and white authors, that are more historically accurate. Yet they have not been as enthusiastically and broadly received as this book. Why have they not spawned the massive cultural push and discussion given this book (and now movie)?

Is it because the racial apartheid messaging of this book and movie gives perfect opportunity to inculcate a new (and historically false) narrative about the era into national consciousness for generations who were not there to experience it?

Is it that, by condoning this kind of false messaging as “real”, we successfully backtrack regarding having an honest national conversation regarding the normalized role that Racial Apartheid enjoyed since the country's inception, and of the psychological toll and economic losses incurred by Afrikan Descendants, and the myriad of ways in which the white supremacist system – which was enshrined in law for the majority of this country’s history – still impacts that population today?

Is it that books and movies like this help distort and erase national memory regarding America's legal and structural roles supporting unearned and unfair psychological, economic, educational, career, vocational and other opportunity- and asset-benefits incurred -- and still being enjoyed today -- by whites?

Is it that books and movies like this now frame Racial Apartheid in a way that gives whites a new narrative of their (supposed) primary role in the Era: not as Oppressors who benefited (regardless of whether they were active or passive participants) but as Freedom Fighters with the central role of working for the liberation of Black people?

Because what white person, really, would want to identify with a Hilly when they can think of themselves as a Skeeter? And this is where the embrace of this distorted view of Racial Apartheid, this “history light” tale works as a dangerous cultural tool:

In the book, it was mentioned that Skeeter's father owned a cotton farm.

But see, this is what the book's "history light" approach and new narrative of that era does not mention: cotton was the economic king of the South that built economic assets for the owners of those farms and plantations AS WELL AS economic opportunities and assets for that region; including for those whites who were not active enslavers. And that helped build an entire culture -- such as the one that was the support for all the individual acts of racial apartheid in the book -- that fueled the racial privilege of whites and the racial oppression for African Americans (Afrikan Descendants).

And although the book does not say, I wonder whether that farm that Skeeter's father owned was inherited and whether Skeeter's education -- and the education of her brother, who was in law school -- was financed through the wealth and the access and opportunity that came from ownership of that cotton farm. I wonder whether Skeeter's family line included plantation owners who enslaved Minnie's and Aibileene's ancestors there. We already know that the same culture that fueled the rise of Skeeter’s family and families like hers was the often-insurmountable barrier that denied comparable opportunity and access to those African American families they employed as their domestics.

So if all that comes from the on-going cross country discussions about "The Help" is buy-in to a new “feel good” narrative about the false role of whites in the movement of that era and a glee about Minnie desecrating HER OWN KITCHEN – where her children ate! – to make a Dung Pie for her white employer without any talk of the connections between what happened then, what is going on now, and what society needs to do to repair that generational damage, then I have a HUGE problem with this love affair with “The Help.”

Because this exposes where we are as a country on the history of Racial Apartheid: our lack of willingness to look at hard historical facts and perspectives and our comfort level with feel good lies that hold us all in bondage.


And while I am quite sure that the author did not intend it in this way, how the book ends is the truest statement she made of the historical relationship between African Americans and whites: while the Black "Help" are left waiting for the fallout that threatens their livelihood -- and even their lives -- because of the risks THEY took to write the book that gave Skeeter the opportunity to climb yet another rung on the American ladder of success, climb she does: over their sweat, their tears, their tragedies, their stories, and their bodies to New York to begin the fabulous new career she has always wanted, with a salary that gives her some measure of financial independence.

More than anything else in the book, THAT part of it -- historically – rang very true.*

Moving Forward,

Adar

* The author of "The Help" is being sued by her brother's maid for using her name (in the book, "Aibileene Clark", in real life, Ablene Cooper) and likeness without permission or compensation. As was part of the character "Aibileene's" story in the book, Ms. Cooper has a gold tooth and had an adult son who died just before the birth of her white employer's first child. The author's publisher insists that there is no basis to Ms. Cooper's lawsuit.

** For a non-fictional read, go to http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/80/ "We Are Literally Slaves": An Early Twentieth-Century Black Nanny Sets the Record Straight.

Appreciation, Appropriation, and Micro-aggressions

Okay, so I have been thinking about this for awhile, mostly because my work on these issues and because of what I see as a growing trend of those with white skin privilege: at what point does “appreciation” -- the recognition of the quality, value, significance, or magnitude of people and things -- become “appropriation” -- the act of setting apart or taking for one's own use (personal, commercial, cultural, etc), often without the consent of the owner? And does racialized and cultural “appreciation” and “appropriation” blind us to the racial micro-aggressions –“everyday insults, indignities and demeaning messages sent to people of color by [the] well-intentioned who are unaware of the hidden messages being sent to them”, as defined by Asian-American Columbia University psychologist Derald Wing Sue, PhD – that people of color regularly experience?

Now, bear with me here . . .

We see racial appropriations all the time. They are like the air we breathe, the water we taste: expected, unnoticed, and necessary. From TV shows who use hip hop and other music to emphasize story lines and the actors in them as being "cool" and "hip" and "street smart" and "dangerous" -- and other adjectives that are racialized as the cultural norm -- while only using white actors as the lead characters; to young white suburbanites who are the major purchasers of hip hop music; to these self same youth who easily purchase and walk around decked out in the hip hop styles that Afrikan Descendant youth can't afford; to the white people we see walking down the streets in dreadlocks and who will argue that dreadlocks are not an indigenous style from the loins of the Afrikan Diaspora but is instead a "lifestyle choice" found naturally in all cultures (free tip: don’t fall for that. . .).

Appropriation – otherwise known as being a “culture vulture” (someone who not only racially appropriates but makes reputation and money off that appropriation – for example, Elvis Presley, Eminem, and Quintin Tarantino are names that are often mentioned. . .) -- has long been part of the American Narrative. And although one could debate the degree to which America in 2011 finds its Afrikan descended citizens palatable – despite the election of President Obama – there can be little credible argument regarding the role of America’s racial appropriation and white-washed assimilation into the white cultural narrative the cultural markers of Afrikan Descendants.

So now here we are in 2011, and because of what has become the “norm” in the American Narrative as racial appreciation and marketed and prostituted through racial appropriation, we have normalized more than ever racial micro-aggressions.

In other words, we have people – acting individually or under institutional authority -- who feel free to act out their racial biases with unconscious abandon. Think about the debate that percolates just under the surface (and in many cases, on top of it) about whether it is “racist” for white people to say “nigger” since Afrikan Descendants say it in rap songs. Or whether pulling a college student off a plane and arresting him because of an originating complaint about his pants not being pulled up – while letting a white man dressed in ONLY women’s lingerie regularly fly with the same airline without complaint or incident is “racist.” Or commemorating the Civil War and “celebrating” soldiers on both sides while divorcing the national narrative of the war from the horrible crime of enslavement and 100+ years of American Apartheid (how must that feel to Afrikan Descendants?). Or a rising-in-popularity party that has as almost an anthem the phrase “take our country back” within the context of the country’s first Afrikan Descendant president?

When conversations such as this one are raised, many say that folk are being too “sensitive” and just need to get over it.

But Sue and his colleagues are building upon the works of African American psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce (who first coined the term racial micro-aggressions) and African American Stanford University psychology professor Dr. Claude Steele (who is known for, among other things, his groundbreaking work on stereotype threat) to explore and document how the societal normality of these “psychological slings and arrows” erode mental health, the quality of social experience, identity, and even job performance.

"It's a monumental task to get white people to realize that they are delivering micro-aggressions, because it's scary to them," Sue asserts. "It assails their self-image of being good, moral, decent human beings to realize that maybe at an unconscious level they have biased thoughts, attitudes and feelings that harm people of color."

Sue is developing a theory and classification system to describe and measure this slice of American life that is as old and familiar as our national apple pie. He first proposed a classification of racial micro-aggressions and how they manifest in clinical practice in the American Psychologist (Vol. 2, No. 4). The three types of current racial transgressions that he notes there are:

Micro-assaults: Intentional actions or slurs, such as using racial epithets, displaying swastikas or deliberately serving a white person before a person of color in a restaurant.

Micro-insults: Nonverbal communications that subtly convey rudeness and insensitivity and demean a person's racial heritage or identity. An example is an employee who asks a colleague of color how she got her job, implying she may have landed it through an affirmative action or quota system.

Micro-invalidations: Communications that subtly exclude, negate or nullify the thoughts, feelings or experiential reality of a person of color. For instance, white people often ask Asian-Americans where they were born, conveying the message that they are perpetual foreigners in their own land.

Social psychologists Jack Dovidio of Yale University, and Samuel L. Gaertner, PhD, of the University of Delaware, have also conducted studies that established that many well-intentioned whites who consciously believe in and profess equality unconsciously act in a racist manner, particularly in ambiguous circumstances. This often unconscious pattern -- one that is not necessarily grounded in any white supremacist ideology but refers in part to the aversion of whites to being seen as engaging in racialized thinking -- especially given the conscious belief of these people in the adherence to racial equity principles (these are the people who will triumphantly crow or quietly beam that they “marched with Martin Luther King”; or that they have Black people in the family [“my son/daughter is married to a Black woman/man. . .”]; or that they have “given my life to the struggle”) -- is called “aversive racism."

Because whites very rarely-to-never are held accountable for incidents of aversive racism or micro-aggressions, and because the impact to people of color in the face of the same is that they are left dealing with the emotional baggage and confusion or social condemnation if they call a white person out on the behavior (as surfacing such behavior will lead to denials that such a thing took place, as well as the onus being turned on the person surfacing such behavior as being "the problem" while the micro-aggressive attacker is treated as the one being attacked), it is important to understand aversive racism, micro-aggressions, and the whole vocabulary. Surfacing and understanding these prevailing types of racialized manifestations in the 21st Century provides us all with education, protection, and a base of empowerment when it (inevitably) occurs.


Moving Forward,

Adar