Avoiding the Help

Now don’t get me wrong I’m up for a really nice feel good movie as much as anyone else but when I saw the ads for the latest perky white woman with great intentions, saves the day by teaching oppressed African-Americans that they are beautiful in spite of their conditions, themselves and their surroundings, I thought to myself, this is bull. Yeah I said it. I’m sick of these depictions of the saintly white and usually blonde angel floating in to save the day, ala The Blind Side, for us po African-American folk who can’t do it for ourselves. By the way, I refused to see that one too. Unfortunately, this is not some historical tale of African-American female empowerment during a troubling time in American history. This is not a story of how they overcame their oppressors and triumphed against all odds. Instead what we get is some sanitized fictional version of the African-American experience written and told through the paternalistic eyes of a White person minus all the ugliness and pain endured geared to play into the White liberal guilt of its target audience.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting you don’t see it, films featuring African-American Actors are few and far between. It’s just not a story I care to see again. I’m sure there are great performances and especially from Viola Davis, a well respected two time Tony Award winning and previously Oscar nominated actress. The word is she’ll be nominated again for this role but my question is, why does she have to get nominated for playing a maid. Is this 1939 and Hattie McDaniel? I can’t remember the last time Meryl Streep received an Oscar for playing a maid...oh yeah, it was never. Why is such a well respected and honored actress reduced to playing such a role? This was a time of lynching, rape and murder for African-American men and women if they even looked at White people sideways so why was this role even written as the background for a happy story. Yeah I’m sure there were happy times for African-American folks during this era, I’m just not so sure they came as a result of some fresh from college animated southern White woman from the 1930’s who thought, “them po, po nigras I sho would like to help em”.

There is a story to be told here but I think it’s one about the countless number of white children raised by their African-American Mammies for whom they professed love but grew up to be hateful racists when they came into contact with the general population and the real world. You know kind of like White Republican Senator Strom Thurmond who fathered a child with his family’s African-American maid. The same Senator Thurmond who grew to be one of the most vile and loathsome separate but not equal seeking, Civil Rights Act opposing bigots of the 20th century. May he not rest in peace. But I guess that wouldn’t make anybody feel good.