At the 84th Academy Awards this past Sunday, Octavia Spencer won for Best Supporting Actress for her role in “The Help,” based on the novel of the same name written by Kathryn Stockett. The film received generally favorable reviews, which is not surprising since it is yet another “feel good” movie for white viewers, like “Mississippi Burning,” “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Glory,” where white viewers are allowed to avoid addressing the social realities of the times, by being provided the comfort of a virtuous white protagonist to identify with ,who “rights” the wrongs. People don’t like to be discomfited by things like guilt. Unfortunately, truth gets in the way of revisionist history. Despite what this film may suggest, white women were not particularly high profile members of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and the “sanctity” of white womanhood was a useful excuse for the thousands of lynchings and murders for 100 years after the Civil War; among these were 14-year-old Emmitt Till, savagely maimed and beaten to death, allegedly for “whistling” at a white woman. It has been my observation that white women so inclined are really no different, or less culpable, than white men in the level and consistency of their racial bigotry.
This movie also has that feminist “sensibility” of making light of the racism experienced by black men, portraying them as “cruel” when not absent altogether, according to one group that panned the film. The Association of Black Women Historians also criticized the film because “Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice” it in fact “distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers…The Association finds it unacceptable for either this book or this film to strip black women’s lives of historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment.” Now, I don’t really have a horse in this particular race; some black individuals have “issues” just as some white people do. I was composing the previous paragraph on the bus, and when I got off at my stop, some tough-guy, gangster-type deliberately threw out his elbow to jab me in the arm, and it amused his girlfriend. Why? Because, I suppose, “Mexicans” are fair game, thanks to the imagery supplied by the media like the Seattle Times and various local television news, a one-way conversation in which the affected parties are given no opportunity for redress. Nevertheless, I understand something that blacks with “issues” do not: Condoning racial bigotry against one group as “acceptable” in principle eventually makes it “acceptable” to practice against you.
But back to the topic at hand. The images we typically receive in the entertainment media are either yet another Tyler Perry movie about the angst of affluent black women, the "feeling good about feeling bad" melodrama, or movies like “The Help,” the kind of patronizing mendacity that would easily find a home on the Lifetime Channel. Here we have a story about a southern white female who one day decides to feel "guilty" about being part of a society that degrades blacks, and as atonement she decides that the black maids isn't so far beneath her station to converse with in normal human terms. She wants to be a writer, and using the maids’ “stories” as fodder (in a surprising “twist,” Stockett was sued by a maid who claimed she was used by Stockett as her “source” without permission or compensation). In the end, the white woman (with the help of—you guessed it—a northern white female editor) publishes her book, and the maids are fired from their jobs for their participation, but the white woman generously gives the maids a small stipend to tide them over hard times. The white woman then escapes to New York to avoid participating in the really hard work ahead in implementing civil rights laws.
So what is this story really about? It is about a white female who “empowers” herself to overcome guilt, to achieve a moral “victory” over ignorance. But the black people are still black, and there is the consolation of knowing that if the social pressure gets too hot, you are still white, and you abandon your pretenses, and all will be well again. But the guilt of belonging to a racist society is gone, because despite the fact that you have the good fortune of living in a world of white "privilege," within the confines of your mind you have satisfied yourself that you do not personally hate. But you've done nothing to change the wider culture that maintains your status, nor do you wish to. You are a fraud, and made a lot of money off that fraud.
The problem with this particular film is that guilt cannot be washed away simply on personal whim; the ugly truth remains. In the mid1960s, James Baldwin wrote an essay about white "guilt" and history. "The guilt remains, more deeply rooted, more securely lodged, than the oldest of old trees; and it can be unutterably exhausting to deal with people who, with a really dazzling ingenuity, a tireless agility, are perpetually defending themselves against charges which one has not made. One does not have to make them. The record is there for all to read. It resounds all over the world. It might as well be written in the sky. One wishes that Americans, white Americans, would read, for their own sakes, this record, and stop defending themselves against it. Only then will they be enabled to change their lives. The fact that Americans, white Americans, have not yet been able to do this- to face their history, to change their lives-hideously menaces this country. Indeed, it menaces the entire world." In other words, those who forget history are bound to repeat it. And deeds speak louder than words in a novel, or film script.
People will say that the world has changed, and to a certain extent it has. White America accepts blacks insofar as they can entertain them, like the gladiators of ancient Rome who were nevertheless tied to a subservient social strata (how it accepts Latinos can best be “explained” by Pat Buchanan).We even have a black president, who serves as a "beacon" for American tolerance--but nevertheless is a figure viewed with suspicion and fear by many, kept on a leash so that he will not change the culture of white privilege. That is one picture; another picture is that white women, like the protagonist in this film, have the lowest unemployment rates and the highest college enrollment, while black men have the highest unemployment rates (probably double the "official" rate), and there are more black men in jail than in college. We may "debate" the reasons for this, but there is no mistaking that it has come to be "accepted." Heck, even Oprah accepts it, even rejoices in it; she still doesn't realize that white people still have their hands on all the levers (just look at her audience).
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