Racism Exposed In Kathryn Stockett's The Help

Racism and its effects in Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960 is accurately portrayed in The Help. Some examples seen are that the help can not touch the whites; they can not use the same bathrooms, plates, or silverware; they can not ride in the same car as whites; they can not eat together. These depictions show the debasement of the African American people just before the Civil Rights Movement and the beginning reactions of the work for equality. Watching this movie and seeing the undignified treatment towards the help opened my eyes to the greater effects of words. Of course this is not my first exposure to racism and its negative effects, but one can only learn so much about racism in a textbook.

The movie, The Help, is full of social issues, the largest of which is obviously racism, followed by that of sexism of both men and women, classism of both genders and races and even mentions of ageism with certain characters.

“Many years later, little had changed. A black man named Rodney King was involved in a high-speed chase in Los Angeles. California, on March 3, 1991. Police pulled him from the car and beat him. A bystander took video footage of the beating. The four police officers involved were indicted, but they were acquitted in 1992.” ( "Police Brutality and Race.")The quote from the article “police brutality and race” shows a situation that happened in 1991 that is similar to the incident in the book. A lot of times when incidents like police brutality the police officers often win because they are “doing their jobs” when in reality they are often accusing many citizens. Often cases of police brutality the civilian that is abused is male and black. This is because they are stereotyping thinking they are up to no good when they can be innocent by standers. Racism and stereotyping in most cases end badly. Police officers abuse their powers and hurt and or injure people because they “assume” which often leads to a bad ending. “FBI statistics show that white officers killed black suspects twice a week in the United States over a seven-year period. That’s an average of 96 times a year.” (police officers abuse their power).studies show that WHITE police officers are the ones to kill BLACK suspects due to “assumption”. Their is a very high statistic that shows how many blacks are killed in a

Aymer wrote an article named “I can’t breathe,” the last words that Eric Garner was saying before he died. Aymer goes through the whole experience of this court case and how a huge protest took over the U.S. by storm called “Black Lives Matter.” Aymer brings up almost all of the cases of unarmed black men that were not recognized to all the most famous cases. Aymer’s last half of the article speaks of how black men engaged in psychotherapy will explicate how racial profiling by the police triggered race-based traumatic stress, as well as talks about the Black men who have been affected by race-based traumatic stress stemming from "living while Black." (2016). This gives the paper the one side of how the victims of police brutality are being affected. With this being a such a recent issue there was a bit of a confusing situation that is similar is Cha-Jua article. Cha-Jua writes an article called “We believe is Murder,” that talks about how a Champaign police officer Daniel Norbits shot and killed fifteen-year-old boy named Kiwane S. Carrington. Three governmental investigative units ruled the killing accidental. Cha-jua believes that critical social capital needs to be

In The Help, Kathryn Stockett presents the view that racism is often used in societies as a way to profit off an oppressed culture, mostly when associated with social classes. Throughout the novel, there are many events where prejudice is present, as the colored maids are always being treated with disrespect and are never thanked for their assistance in households. One of the main, and most obvious, issues in the book is the treatment of people based on their skin tone, and this being prevalent in the story allows for the reader to understand the culture of African Americans during the 1960’s in the southern United States. First, the theme’s presence in the novel is represented when Hilly introduces her bathroom initiative to Miss Leefolt,

The novel The Help is a very interesting and monumental book. The book takes place in Mississippi during the 1960’s. A southern girl named Skeeter returns home from college. Skeeter dreams of becoming a famous writer that writes about important things facing our society. Skeeter astonishes her small town by choosing to write about her interviews with the black women in her community who have spent their lives taking care of white families. At the beginning only one maid Aibileen will speak. As the two women continue more women come forward and speak about the terrible troubles they face. The two main themes of this novel are how Skeeter defies the sexist standards of women in the south and how black maids are treated while taking care white

Segregated toilets – a recurring symbol in The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, are mentioned in over 18 pages of the book. The author uses this symbol to represent the racial bias against the colored by the white. The words “disease” (Page 8, page 10, page 184) and “diseased” (Page 28) are commonly used as a fact while describing colored people in a bathroom context. “All these houses they’re building without maid’s quarters? It’s just plain dangerous. Everybody knows they carry different kinds of diseases than we do.” - a racist character named Hilly Holbrook exclaims on page eight. Although that statement had no basis, almost all of the white characters immediately accepted this piece of information due to a societal notion that colored are unclean and ignorant.

In 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, Aibileen, a black maid, working for the whites. During the time, Rosa Parks goes to jail for refusing the go in the back of the bus. Skeeter graduated college and receive a job to write letters. She is very passionate, kind and ambitious. However, during the time, she did not have a husband nor a boyfriend. Therefore, her friends regard her as a failure. Nevertheless, she and the maid come together and write a book about the injustice the black community facing in the south.

Set in the 1960s, Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help, is a story of black maids working in white Southern homes in Jackson, Mississippi. Portrayed through multiple character perspectives, Stockett’s writing largely focuses on a maid named Aibileen. Aibileen is a compassionate, strong-willed, and wise character. She teaches the white children she rears important values and throughout the novel Aibileen grows in the face of racial adversity. Aibileen is a protagonist.

In the article, Racism and Brutality in America, author Cassandra Chaney presented the case of Rodney King, a forty-seven year old African-American taxi driver, who was brutally attacked four LAPD police officers. According to her novel, the aim of her study was “to examine how the public generally perceive police and how race and racism shape this discourse.” Unfortunately, the public was left clueless. Rodney King’s case was left unfinished as the media never released any studies of implications or findings concerning the beating of Rodney King. Instead, the media shifts public attention towards increasing rate of brutality against blacks.The case study shows, that the media is biased in the way they are retrieving and presenting information.

Kathryn Stockett, the author of The Help, highlights women trying to fill the stereotypical roles of housewives in the early 1960s and how segregation brought tension to a small group of women. Stockett sets up the story to be told from the perspective of two colored maids and one white woman. Through the colored maids, she details the daily lives of the different women they work for. For example, when Aibileen begins describing the household she works for, she emphasizes how bad Miss Leefolt is with her daughter, Mae Mobley. For instance, Aibileen said Mae Mobley would not be changed from the time she left to the time she came back to work; that would leave the baby girl in her mess for twelve hours (Stockett 15).

Racial segregation is the practice of isolating a group of people based on their race, class or ethnic group. This practice provides the means of maintaining the economic advantages and superior social status of the politically dominant group, and was primarily employed by white populations to maintain their dominance over African- Americans (Britannica). Racial segregation was implemented or at least encouraged, and as a result has negatively affected the lives of African-Americans as a whole. The Help written by Kathryn Stockett takes place in the early 1960’s in Jackson, Mississippi, a place where racial discrimination occurs on a large scale, and is actively practiced and enforced by the government and the people within the city. The protagonists, Skeeter, Aibeleen and Minny all fall victims to this segregated as they attempt to reduce the racial tension in the city (Shmoop). Much of the novel depicts the typical life of African-American maids and the inequality they experience in comparison to southern white women (Literature Nerd). Because of this segregated setting, characters are treated differently based on their ethnicity and status. There is a large contrast between how society treats the two African American maids, Aibeleen and Minny, compared to the “socially acceptable” yet different white woman, Skeeter and Hilly.

The Help brings light to this idea of domestic victims being very mistreated and ultimately being dehumanized because of the color of their skin. “I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain't a color, disease ain't the negro side of town. I want to stop that moment from coming – and it come in every white child's life – when they start to think that colored folks are not as good as whites.”(Stockett 80) This passage brings up how children are born with prejudice thoughts and how it is taught by the older generations. Aibileen tries to keep Mae Mobley's mind from being polluted from these horrible thoughts. Critics argue that the maids should not teach the child this because they are not really their parents it still seems as if it is their job to teach the child this because they are so affected. Kathryn Stockett does a great job of demonstrating the racist and prejudice thoughts that affected these innocent

The book and movie The Help focuses on issues such as race, society/class, and socioeconomic status. Each chapter of the story is written by a different person, whether that be a black maid or their white owner. The story takes place in Mississippi 1962. Throughout The Help the opinions of the black maids reveal the truth about what they think of their white employers. The differences between the white and black communities are clearly displayed throughout the story.

The movie industry has developed tremendously with movies made that are not afraid to address the current social issues in the world. There is also a trend today where more books are made into movies with the list being endless such as the popular hunger games and Harry Potter books. This caters to those who prefer watching the aspects of the book rather than reading and those who have read the book and what their imagination of scenes in the book fulfilled. The Help (2011) is an adaptation from the book with the same title by Kathryn Stockett. The movie is about African American maids and the hardships they had to endure working for white families during the civil rights