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I recently read The Help by Kathryn Stockett on the recommendation of a friends, or friends I should say. I immensely enjoyed reading it, even though at times it was painful to read how so many people felt not so long ago about skin color. I know that there are still predjudious people, don’t think I’m that naive, but to read about a time when it was the accepted norm that blacks couldn’t use the same water fountain as whites is so insane to comprehend.
The book is set in deep south Jackson Mississippi in the 1960’s and is told in the perspective of a privileged, educated, young white women who wanted to be a writer, and a couple of maids who have worked for “white women” all of their lives. These women eventually formed an unusual friendship that was life-changing and empowering for all of them.
The antagonists in the story are mainly the white women who the maids worked for, although when certain walls are broken down, not all of these women are truly bad. They have just been bound to a culture of hate, and learned to show kindness quietly and carefully.
The saddest part of the book to me is when the maids talk about the white children that they have raised and loved as their own, only to have the kids turn on them in time and look down on them. Entire generations were brought up by a black nanny, wet-nursed and cared for better than they were abled to care for their own children.
The book is full of references of “colored” people having germs that would hurt whites, or how they are unable to control their lusts or desires. As I mentioned above, these are painful for me to read. A year ago they would have been awful and horrifying, but now that I have and love two little girls with brown skin – words like these hurt me to the core. It hurts that people may think less of them or worse, assume they aren’t smart, beautiful and talented individuals all because they have more melanin in their skin.
Pain is what I feel when I hear a joke that is inappropriate or when a “look” is given that I am supposed to understand why they feel a certain way. When I hear excuses of why people are bigots or have rotten racial attitudes (they come from a different time, they have never been around black people, they are just repeating what they have heard their whole lives).
I am so greatful that I live in a time when adopting my kids is possible. A few decades ago, this would have been all but impossible for most of us, simply because of the social ramifications, let alone the laws that would be broken.
While The Help is fiction, I can feel the truth in it. We have to remember the past and how far we have come, so we can be inspired to work harder for a better future for all of us.
