Black Feminist Thought and The Help

Not too long ago I wrote a post called "Wrestling with The Help," realizing and contemplating the ways the film and book have been critiqued by the black community.  I have since continued thinking and 'wrestling' with it, and talking with others about their opinions.  What follows is a response for my feminist theory class, one that I wrote after reading Patricia Hill Collins' "The Politics of Black Feminist Thought" and several other articles concerning Black Feminist Theory.  Since there was such a great discussion that followed my last post on The Help, I thought I'd share this response for further conversation. . .

While reading Patricia Hill Collins’ piece “The Politics of Black Feminist Thought,” I was reminded of the recent controversy over Katherine Stockett’s book The Help and the movie released last August. The book and film depict, through a particular perspective, racism of Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960s. Skeeter, a young white woman has just returned home from college and begins writing the stories of “the help,” hoping to become a ‘serious’ writer. Aibileen and Minnie are two of the black domestics who share their stories of raising white children and experiencing the oppressive roles as hired domestics, working for small wages and little respect.

As a young white woman myself, I read the book and watched the film, touched at the depiction of the black women caring for the white children like they are their own; for me, Aibileen is the real protagonist. I thought, naively, that the film and book had both portrayed the story of these women in a historically accurate way. However, I started reading articles and blog posts arguing that The Help depicted unrealistic and nostalgic images of the real race issues in the 1960s south, and I began to see that the black community was not nearly as receptive as the white community.

It soon became eerily reminiscent of what Collins asserts as “[s]uppressing the knowledge produced by any oppressed group mak[ing] it easier for dominant groups to rule because the seeming absence of an independent consciousness in the oppressed can be taken to mean that subordinate groups willingly collaborate in their own victimization” (52). I began to worry that the book and film did not fully articulate the complex intersectionality; instead as Trina Grillo writes, “sometimes the governing paradigms which have structured all or our lives are so powerful that we can think we are doing progressive work, dismantling the structures of racism and other oppressions, when in fact we are reinforcing the paradigms” (30). In other words, I started wondering whether The Help was dismantling or reinforcing racism and the oppression of domestic workers.

I watched a segment about The Help on Melissa Harris-Perry’s show on MSNBC, called “The Help doesn’t ‘help’ domestic workers.” Harris-Perry and guests’ criticisms of the film connect to Collins’ discussion of the “suppression of black feminist thought,” which “has been structured along three interdependent dimensions” (53). These dimensions include women’s labor, political mistreatment, and “the controlling images of Black women” (53). The controversy over The Help touches on two of these three dimensions specifically – women’s labor and the stereotypical images of Black women.

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First, Collins writes, “the exploitation of Black women’s labor – the ‘iron pots and kettles’ symbolizing Black women’s longstanding ghettoization in service occupations – represents the economic dimension of oppression” (53). One of the arguments against the film and book is that it only depicts Black women as domestics, unable to do anything else other than clean, cook, and take care of white babies. While this might be a historically accurate depiction of the south in the 1960s, it is perhaps one reason why the black community was so angry with the book and film; it is a contemporary depiction of women in exploitative roles that are represented in a somewhat nostalgic way.

Another dimension the controversy touched on – as well as Melissa Harris-Perry’s segment – is the “nexus of negative stereotypical images applied to African-American women” (53). Collins writes, “From the mammies, Jezebels, and breeder women of slavery to the smiling Aunt Jemimas on pancake mix boxes, ubiquitous Black prostitutes and ever-present welfare mothers of contemporary popular culture [these] negative [...] images [...] have been fundamental to Black women’s oppression” (53). Harris-Perry specifically mentions the danger of the depiction of black women in The Help, similar to what Collins asserts, as a way “to keep African-American women in an assigned, subordinate place” (53).

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To articulate this connection of the women’s roles in The Help and the dangerous stereotypical images connected to slavery, Harris-Perry suggested that viewers not only read the book and watch the film to form their own opinions, but also read Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in 20th Century America, by University of Connecticut professor Micki McElya, who argues, “Assertions of black people's contentment with servitude alleviated white fears while reinforcing racial hierarchy” (Google Books). Collins also mentions this reinforcement of hierarchy in her article: “Black women’s exclusion from positions of power within mainstream institutions has led to the elevation of elite white male ideas and interests and the corresponding suppression of Black women’s ideas and interests...” (53).

What I’ve learned as a young white woman after reading The Help, criticisms of the book and film, and Collins’ piece is that we must be receptive of these issues and how they might differ based on our own identities and experiences. Because members of the black community feel that The Help is a contemporary example of “economic exploitation” for Black women and a continuation of “negative stereotypes,” we must openly try to understand these arguments and why they are important in shaping and affecting our current culture and society.

Still, I see where the film and book can point out – even in small ways – the very injustices the black community wishes to bring to light. For example, in the film Skeeter tells her editor, “These colored women raise white children and in twenty years those children become the boss. We love them and they love us, but they can’t even use the toilets in our houses...” (The Help). Even though the film does have its many flaws and historical inaccuracies, I find moments like this, pointing to Maria Stewart’s own “object[ion] to the injustice of this situation: ‘We have pursued in shadow, they have obtained the substance; we have performed the labor, they have received the profits; we have planted the vines, they have eaten the fruits of them’” (qtd. in Collins 51). The lines from the film also point to what Collins calls Black women’s roles as “outsiders-within,” which “allowed African-American women to see the white elites [...from] a special Black women’s perspective” (56). Though The Help has its many flaws, and as a white woman I cannot fully understand, I can see how it can become a useful place for conversation about important race, class, and gender issues.