The Help: And How it taught me About Myself

                The movie The Help has been out on DVD for quite some time and I hate to admit that I only just recently saw it. Despite the negative reviews I had read about the movie I enjoyed it. My sister recommended it to me and it lead to some very interesting discussions. Especially because my sister let her eight year-old son watch it. Alie, my sister, said she felt it was important for him to see the movie.

                For those of you who don’t know, The Help is about the Jim Crow laws and how African-Americans were mistreated by their employers. It is set in Jackson Mississippi in the 1960’s. In the movie issues such as separate bathrooms are discussed as well as many of the other Jim Crow laws. At one point in the movie Viola Davis’s character talks about how her cousin’s car was blown up because they registered to vote.

                When my nephew saw the film the one thing that blew his mind was the fact that they didn’t want black people to use the same bathrooms. Alie told him that people believed that black people carried different diseases and that people were really mean to them. My nephew, in his brilliance, replied, “People back then were stupid!” (Out of the mouths of babes…)

                Then came the hard part for my sister, she told him that even though the movie was set in Mississippi, it used to be that way in Georgia as well. We (at this point I was involved in the conversation as well) explained to him that there was a time when a black person and a white person were not allowed to go to the same school, to drink out of the same water faucet, to go to the same bathrooms, or even sit together at a restaurant.  He had learned about Martin Luther King Jr. in school and knew some things, but he didn’t know it happened where he was living, and he didn’t know it was that bad. (And to think, at this young age he barely knows about slavery and knows nothing about lynching’s, the KKK, and so forth.) He ended the conversation saying that he was glad that people were smarter now.

                And this is when the conversation about southern guilt began between my sister and I. To my nephew, the time of Jim Crow laws might as well have been a hundred years ago. (He is after all eight so the 1960’s to him is ancient history) However, Alie and I grew up with only one generation separating us from the era of Jim Crow laws. So we grew up with people who still held certain ignorant beliefs.

I remember as a small child telling my grandfather about what I had learned in school about Martin Luther King Jr. Just as my nephew told me what he had learned in school about the man. The difference between my nephew and I is that I told my nephew that MLK Jr. was a great man who fought for what he believed in, and did it peacefully. I told him that there was a reason that the man had his very own holiday; it was because he was a hero. When I tried to tell my grandfather about the same man, I was told about how the man was a communist. My grandfather would tell me how when MLK Jr. was put in jail for protesting, that he would be released in secret out of the back doors. It was all for show. When I asked my mother about this she simply told me, “Your granddad grew up in a different time. Don’t listen to EVERYTHING he says. And don’t repeat any of it at school.” She then explained to me that whenever my granddad talked about anybody that was black that I should just ignore him. I now know why she did that.

I honestly do not remember the first time I heard the word “nigger”. To me it’s like asking the first time I heard the word “spoon”. It was a word I grew up hearing. And again, my mother was there telling me it was a bad word, like the word “shit”, and I should never repeat it. When I was old enough to ask why some members of my family still used that word, despite how it was really mean toward black people, I was told something I will never forget. I was told by a family member (someone other than my grandfather) that a “nigger” was just a worthless person. That you could be black, white, Hispanic, Asian, or anything else. It was not a racial slur, just an adjective. But one thing I could not get over was the fact that I had never heard anyone in my family call anyone else that word, except a black person.

All of this was talked about between my sister and I. How we had shielded her children from the racism we grew up with. Alie even admitted that whenever she passed black people she felt the need to smile and wave at them, to let them know that she wasn’t a racist. And I laughed because I admitted I did the same thing. Then I asked if that was racist? Alie told me to shut the hell up that she didn’t want to think that deeply into it.

But one thing my sister and I learned was that my nephew was not racist. And unlike her and me, he didn’t have to be taught not to be a racist. And the thing that touched my sister and I the most, was the fact that he wouldn’t ever have to be taught not to think ignorantly about other people. The fact that he is one more generation removed from hate, from bigotry, from lies, gave us hope.

If you are someone from the north, or the west of the U.S. you will look at it differently than Alie and me. We, being born in the 80’s, still grew up with ignorance and prejudice that people from outside of the south cannot understand. But it’s disappearing. And the fact that I had to be taught how not to be racist, and my nephew is learning what racism is because he doesn’t know it naturally, it truly is a beautiful thing.