Sunday, August 14, 2011

Why I won't read or see "The Help"

I've been thinking about this for a while, letting it germinate. This morning, I got an email from my mom, who saw the film last night with her sorority sisters.

"You can't judge it till you see it," she writes. "I'm surprised you don't want to see it. It's history. It is humorous... White folks need to see how we were treated back in the 60s and so do black folks. A lot of it came back to me. I remember my mother wearing a uniform when she worked for Mrs. Dawson on Franklin Park West..."

And there's the rub and why I feel compelled to write about why I'm not going to read the book or see the film. And it's really not about this particular book or film--it's about a point in time where I'm feeling the confines of the netherworld in which I dwell as a Black (Irish-German) American and as a person who's psyche, outlook, and family history is shaped to this day by the legacy of slavery, and by the subjugation of this particular people. It's a reaction to the fact that there's not more outrage when a white politician calls a sitting president a "tar baby." And I'm not trying to tell anybody how to feel. I'm just speaking my truth.

Several of my wonderful friends have suggested I read "The Help." They know that I love a well-written book, they thought I'd enjoy the humor, the sense of history, and a story about proud Black women getting their due. From the first, I hesitated. I was grieving my father's life, which includes a healthy dose of grieving his mother's life, a hard scrabble existence as a dark Black woman raised in the south, who brought her little boy north to find a better life. She worked in a white home for many years, cooking and raising the scions of the family. I don't know a lot about how she was treated within this family, but I know that she was beloved and that the family helped her send my dad to college. I also know that she inculcated my dad with a volatile mixture of pride, self-hatred, race-hatred, and low self-esteem that resonates in the family today.

There's no blame to assign here; how the hell anyone survived living in a society that screamed on a daily basis that you were less than human, that you deserved to be hungry, and uneducated, and maligned, and that any dignity that you presented would be derided at the least and beaten out of you at the most is more than most humans can bear. And the fact that my grandmother survived this and raised a brilliant son who would go on to be an enormous contributor to his chosen field as well as an example and influence on his many students of many colors, speaks to the fact that she was ahead of her time, and, like many black folks, had faith that a change would come for her boy. That amazing ability to have faith in the face of no evidence is also one that resonates in our family today.

So I wasn't too interested in reading about a bunch of Black maids, no matter how noble or funny or triumphant.

Then there is the other thing, a very hard thing that speaks to the very dichotomy in which I live.

I resent stories that are about how a white person is the catalyst, the great white hope, swooping in to help some black folks at this particular time in history especially. Here's one more white lady, fulfilling her quest to rise above by using these women's experiences. It's a common theme in our popular culture (The Blind Side, being one example), and because it's not countered by actual historical education, or by mass cultural offerings, it diminishes the struggle of those like my grandmother and father. I don't mean to say that any of us would be anywhere without the assistance, and love of all of the other people, regardless of color, who inhabit our lives. I'm just tired of the black narrative not being taught, realized, recognized. We need that soul fulfilling knowledge that a lot of Black South Africans have--that we changed the course of history by largely peaceful means, that we reacted to injustice with faith and intelligence and pure courage. Think how much that would mean to the maligned teen age Black kid, to the black girl in the all white school, to those of us who are biracial. We don't need the stories of conquerors who ruled with force; we don't need the stories of great wars; we need our own narrative--that mighty men of faith, that brave women of dignity and hope, laid their lives on the line, people we know today, our families, rose above the mire and changed their own world and ours.

So I won't be reading a book that even lightly reinforces the idea that we didn't have a large hand in saving ourselves.

Now, to the movie--it's painful to believe that one of the greatest actresses in America has to play a maid to get a major role. Viola Davis has talked about how she agonized over it, but damn, can we have a movie this year with Black folks in it that has nothing to do with them being Black folks, much less an updated version of mammy? It's the same kind of feeling I get when I go to a romantic comedy and the woman who ends up with our hero is the size 0 with an impossibly bountiful bosom--sending the message that only people who look a certain way deserve to be happy. It's not entertaining or edifying, and it doesn't have any value to me.


My racial background means that many times I live in an in-between place. We know that skin color has nothing to do with anything, yet we live in a society where it still makes a major difference in how you are treated, educated, viewed, desired, approached, and interacted with. The fact that I'm black and white, but seen and classified as black is a weirdness that I can't even address with any intelligence. What does it mean? How do you define this identity? And then there's the fact that my parents were the first in our family to shift our economic identify, another marker in American culture that seems to have an even larger and more meaningful affect on identity than race. So I'm a solidly middle-class, biracial, adopted woman. And because of my family, my country, and living at this point in time, I get to create what I want to out of that. I feel a duty to grandma Emma and Melanie, to grandpa John, and much tortured and beloved Daddy Elson to speak my truth because they lived and died so that I could do so.

I'm sorry to miss this opportunity to discuss "The Help" and it's contents with my friends who are truly interested in sharing reactions and thoughts on it as a genuine way for us to discuss this fractious topic and thereby enhance our understanding. And I'm happy to talk about any of this and welcome your comments. I'm learning every day that it's vital that we live from our hearts and speak our own truths. I hope to hear yours, too.