So, I stumbled upon an article today about this book called The Help, which came out in 2009 and was written by Kathryn Stockett. It is a novel "set in Jackson [MS] in the 1960s [and] focuses on the relationships between African-American maids and affluent white families that employed them". Which is cool, I guess. A potentially uncool thing would be the lawsuit a woman named Ablene Cooper is filing against the author for using her as a basis for one of the main characters. Apparently Cooper was once Stockett's brother's maid and the lawsuit claims the character "Aibileen" is based on her. It appears as though the fictional character shares a life story and certain characteristics with Cooper, but unlike the real person, she speaks in "a thick ethnic vernacular" and has "a skin color [similar] to that of a cockroach." Not the most flattering way to describe a brown person.
Not having read the book, it's kind of hard for me to make an educated decision about the racist or non-racist merits of the book or the lawsuit. I'm just going to put this one out there.
Sources: Wall Street Journal, Gawker
The person suing is just trying to find a way to make some money. Anyone with any amount of reason to sue will do so. It's pathetic.
ReplyDeleteThe reactions to this film have been as predictable as day following night. Broadly speaking white people like it (Oh its the best movie, and funny, I recommend it wholeheartedly) and black people curse under their breath “not another DAMN mammy film again”.
ReplyDeleteLets be clear, simply liking a film does not make you a racist. BUT, fawning over it and saying its the best movie you have seen, funny, witty etc and FAILING to notice the repetition of the same old tired stereotypes and themes DOES suggest that you are perhaps too “comfortable” (and thus not challenging enough) of those images and the status quo.
That unfortunately DOES make you complicit in maintaining the veneer of living in a “post racial” world despite the glaring inequalities (if you care to look) that still exist.
Its been done … nothing new here. A movie purportedly about racism afflicting an oppressed community, but actually about the experience of the affluent white person defending that community. “To Kill a Mocking bird”, “Cry Freedom.” “Mississippi Burning.”, “The blind Side” the list goes on …
To see why white people tend to like these films see these links:
http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2010/07/warmly-embrace-racist-novel-to-kill.html
http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2010/07/force-non-white-students-to-read-great.html
http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2010/05/rewrite-us-history-so-that-white-people.html
You will find a few eye openers there that may help take off the blinkers most of us have on, when we choose to fail to see what is happening around us.