Intersectionality in Movies: The Help

[obamanut2012]

13. And also reactions from Southern whites knowing she was being crazy racist

We all went to college with young women (and young men) like this, people who come from families with a huge sense of self-privilege and sometimes, but not always money. That self-privilege comes from having a certain "name," a name that goes back a long time, and a name that quite a few enslaved blacks carried against their will.

They talked about their old nurse/housekeeper/cook whom they just loved and whom they send Christmas card, and who they would later invite to weddings and christenings, but never to a family dinner or an informal barbeque. Oh no no no.

They had a certain attitude, a certain disconnect about racism and the whole history of Blacks in this country. Their racism had (or I should say Has, since I still know and work with the same type of people) no maliciousness behind it, but that doesn't make it any better.

Just like Blacks can see and know a certain type of racism when they see and read and hear it, so can those of those who saw it from the side of those brandishing it, while thinking they are pretty fine unbiased folks.

To excuse the casual, unknowing, paternalistic racism of Stockett's work, is to also excuse the same casual, unknowing, paternalistic sexism, homophobia, transphobiam, xenophobia, classism, ageism....

Again, I found the movie much, much less mired in this than the book, although it was often still problematic.