Pajiba

Amen to this. I haven't read the book (in part because I've read a lot of things pointing out how racist it is), but I do feel a lot better about the movie because at least, as you point out, it means that some black actresses are getting work in a well-publicized movie. It's sad that that's progress, but there you have it.

"But don’t tell me that book changed your life. Did the book change your life? WHY ON EARTH DID THAT STUPID BOOK CHANGE YOUR LIFE?"

Oh, honey. Come sit by me. I couldn't even get through that tripe.

I have to believe that the people whose lives were changed by the book are ill-read and selectively-educated. This story has been told before - and better - in fiction and non-fiction.

you're awesome. this was awesome.

Didn't priviliged white women go through this same exercise with the book/movie "Eat, Pray, Love"?

Yeah I thought so...

(FWIW - I am a [formerly] priviliged white boy who had to listen to his mother about both the book and the movie for "EPL" and am finding the "life changing" comments similar. Ahthankyew.)

Thank you! I think The Help falls under the same category as Eat, Pray, Love -- those books that are billed as beautiful and profound but are just full of empty, trite phrases and tear-jerking plot "twists." Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, Secret Life of Bees. It's this push for strong emotion over originality or substance that has given Twilight a platform. We'll love anything that makes us cry, even if it sounds like it was written by a 14-year-old fanfiction author.
There isn't a shortage of good books in the world -- in fact, these days we seem to have an abundance of brilliant and prolific authors writing novels just as powerful AND as accessible as The Help. Book Club Men and Women, please go check out Zadie Smith or Jhumpa Lahiri or Ha Jin and get back to me on you "all-time, hands-down, universal recommendation."

Maybe it hasn't actually changed their lives. They just think that it should (or someone told them that it would, but it didn't, so they lied).
I think a lot of crap gets more popular or more attention because of that. If everyone else likes it, then I should too, right?

Admittedly, I kind of liked the trailer. I found it inspirational and heartwarming and kind of cute in that inspirational-and-heartwarming-movie kind of way. I felt totally ready to cheer the main characters on as they showed that 'evil' snobby bad guy/girl character.

I also distinctly felt my heartstrings being tugged and my emotions being manipulated. It left a sour taste in my mouth because this was not what actually happened. It wasn't cutesy with pastel-coloured title cards and cheerful 'change your life' music and together-we-can-overcome-(especially-if-a-white-person-is-leading-us). Being from the Netherlands, I know admittedly little about the segregation in the American South. But I do suspect that it was not at all like this.

So I'm not seeing this in theatres, nor am I reading the book (at most, I'll get it from the library to see how big of a trainwreck it is). I want my historical movies who pretend to be serious to have at least some semblance of historical accuracy.
This actually makes me want to watch Mad Men again. Yay Carla!

Scratch, this book has a movie coming out soon and a recent NYT article about, making it topical.

If you'd like to see someone shit all over Eat, Pray, Love then why not check out this review, where Dustin does just that.

http://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/eat-pray-love-review-jump-up-my-ass-lady.php

Is there any way we can blame Oprah for this?

Hell, I don't even want the white Zooey Deschanel.

I want to ask them why they think this story about the civil rights movement needs to be told by a white woman.

Isn't that pretty fucking racist? I would ask, "Why not?".

The Story of B changed my life, but Ishmael was a close second in the life changing category.

I want so much Zooey Deschanel that I also want Katie Perry and Lynda Carter. Really, any black irish woman will do.

Shit, is "black irish" racist?

I don't want to read the book. I don't want to see the movie. My mother read the book and said that's exactly how it was in the 1950's in the south. Except, except, without the whole, young white woman writing a book about it to make it seem uplifting. In reality, the help were still black and still segregated. It took a generation to overcome that mindset.

And in the movie? The black actresses get to play the maids. I actually think it would have been interesting to have all the actresses swap roles, so the black actresses get to play the white women and the white actresses get to play the maids, but I suspect that kind of thing only really works in the theater and not so well in movies. I know "White Man's Burden" didn't do well at the box office, and it had a similar gimick.

So, we're agreed? Emma Stone will win this year's Best Actress Oscar for her stirring portrayal of a well off pasty white person helping/writing about/doing something for the po' black folks? I'm calling my bookie.

First, "The Help" can't even be compared to "Eat, Pray, Love", because the latter was just a bad, bad book and an even worse movie. "The Help" was wonderful. Yes, it had racist elements - it was PORTRAYING racism, racism that was REAL and HAPPENED during our country's history. Do I think the woman who wrote it was racist? No, not one bit. Is it a little strange she is white? Yes, but her "voice" is a good one, and I think she writes real and well developed characters with respect and compassion.

I loved the book. I am recommending it to all of my friends. Did it "change my life"? No, not hardly, but it was one of the best books I've read all year.

Worked for Sandra, admin.

I'm pretty happy with my life as it, so I better not read THE HELP - any change would be more likely to be for the worse than the better.

"I want to ask them why they think this story about the civil rights movement needs to be told by a white woman". That had me scratching my head; for one thing seems like there's lots of books about the civil rights so there's room for diversity among the authors.
They're not throwing all the other books away and leaving only THE HELP, are they?

Why no love for pissant? I thought he/she was pretty spot on with that comment. You guys are all too wrapped up in your Joanna love. Admittedly, though, she is pretty great, and I very much enjoyed this post.

"Emma Stone will win this year's Best Actress Oscar for her stirring portrayal of a well off pasty white person helping/writing about/doing something for the po' black folks?"

I will blow my damn brains out. Seriously.

Because the person who is really putting herself out here is, of course, the privileged white woman who has the temerity to write about the black domestic workers in her community. [Screams in frustration]

I for one love the word cunt. I use it on a daily basis. It really accomplishes what no other word in the English language can. I have now gained some respect for aziz.

It's a tricky thing, oy vey, deciding who is a "reasonable" person and who isn't. Which of your offenses you should apologize for, and which you shouldn't. How do you make those decisions? Where do you draw those lines? I want you to know that I'm not operating under the assumption that you're bad at making those decisions (two short paragraphs aren't nearly enough to make judgements about you). However, comments like, "the problem is not mine, it's theirs" make you seem more than a little entitled.

"However, comments like, "the problem is not mine, it's theirs" make you seem more than a little entitled."

Sounds more to me like somebody who is never wrong. It's natural to get defensive when confronted, but a reflective person revisits the comment to see if it was, perhaps, offensive.

@superasente I think I know where oy vey is coming from.

I am a liberal leaning white chick who is married to a man that is Trini/cuban/jewish. My sister is a STAGGERING racist. She loves to pick on everyone, but lately it is the Trinis cause her husband works with a lot of them. Her husband also has epilepsy.

After an evening of my sister being a fucking douche, and me gently telling her I do not want hateful language around my (Trini/cuban/jewish) daughter, I tell a story. The story was of my daughters first tantrum. I did not know what was happening, and I explained it was so violent that I was afraid she might have been having a seizure. Truly, I was concerned. My sister got all in my face and demanded I apologize. My husband did not miss a beat, told me to hold my tongue, and told my sister to sit in the corner and try for some empathy.

My sister is still an entitled bitch, and I still feel that I did nothing wrong. But she got her empathy.

We all know that the civil rights movement was all about white people, right?

Isn't that what The Help is all about?

I never said I don't reconsider my comment if I am called out by someone as offensive. However, if I do review the comment and their reason for taking offense had nothing to do with my original intent, I simply tell them that I'm sorry they took offense to it, but it wasn't meant that way. I don't see the need to do anything more than that. Why should I apologize for something I said because someone didn't understand what I meant and decided to chastise me for it? I'm sorry they took it the way they did, but I'm not sorry I spoke my mind.
You know what I do when someone I don't know says something that offends me? I ignore them. It's amazing how well that works.

Actually, "The Help" opens on Wednesday. And the reason it does is quite racist.

I grew up in the South, and I found a lot to identify with in The Help. I agree with Pat C. and, actually, Three-nineteen; it's not that there's anything inherently wrong with the book, it's just that this single representation shouldn't be a person's only exposure to that era of history. That the publishing and film industries might favor a white woman's interpretation is truly problematic, but not the fault of The Help or its author.

Rigby (and pissant), there's a couple of different things going on here.

First of all, let me say that the experiences of white people and their perspective on the civil rights movement are part of our history, and I do not wish to invalidate their stories or their voices.

However, the problem that I have with the frame of stories like "the Help" and "Blind Side" (as a more recent example of a story based on an actual person) is that the main perspective and concentration of the story, the head protagonist, the individual with all the agency and ability to create positive change... is the White Lady.

It is through this kindly White Lady's eyes that we see the plight of the poor downtrodden, and lo, she deigns to lower herself to speak to said downtrodden and save them from their plights.

This is one of the many tricky problematic tropes that exist in storytelling that while on the surface can appear to be a nonthreatening way for white people to connect to and feel good about diversity, and the reason why it is often comfortable is because the person holding all the cards (the narrator/agent of change/etc.) is someone we can personally identify with. "See?" white people can say to themselves, in the comfort of their theater seats, "...that is just what I would be like were I to exist in the South during the Civil Rights movement." or "...I would do just that very thing were I to encounter a large homeless black youth with a propensity for football."

This trope, however, tends to reinforce the basic notions that all black people need is a good, common sense white person to tell them what to do, and then they will be rescued. Among many, many other things. It also reinforces the current power structure (white voices/experiences > black voices/experiences), and at a more general level, these sorts of stories tend to be more numerous/more widely read/more heavily marketed/what have you than the stories actually told by the groups that the kindly White Folk are so generously saving. It's sort of a chicken-egg vicious cycle kind of thing -- hard to point the finger at the start of it all, but it keeps looping back to a large overarching problem of "dominant voices get to tell the stories, even when it comes to non-dominant groups."

Once again, this is not to say that white people cannot tell stories about anyone else but members of their own race, just like it would be equally ridiculous to state that only women can write about women. But taking into account privilege, power dynamics, and context is important. In this particular case, the framework of the story is full of white privilege -- and is part of a larger more systematic structure of white privilege found throughout the way we talk and think about history, and as part of that, the civil rights movement.

http://resistracism.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/those-tears/

This poem really speaks to me about the importance sometimes of recognizing the privilege inherent in dominance, and how sometimes it can serve to co-opt voices of others, despite the best of intentions.

Just some things to chew on -- my perspective is far from perfect, and it's a damned complicated issue.

Bodhi -- thanks for the Daniel Quinn rec -- he looks really freaking cool. *wishlists*

I had a whole post mapped out in my head about how white people needing to hear a white voice to take these things seriously is an example of white privellege, but then linny went ahead and said everything I was thinking.

When an inferior product (I'm taking Joanna's opinion here, since I have not read the book) that just so happens to be written by a white person does better than it's quality would imply, it's a bit fishy.

Your naivete borders on foolishness. Best of luck, sir.

I ready The Help, and found it not worth the energy that is being expended to expound it as the work of the ages or the energy being used here to vilify it. It was, as they say, "ok".

Like others here, I had my mother read it and she affirmed many parts were much as the truth in that time. It was well researched, at least.

For all of those so completely sure of their judgement of a work they have never read, there is at least one passage in the novel where the protagonist (a white woman) is blisteringly taken to task for having the presumption to write a book about black women. I took this to be the author questioning herself openly, and I thought it was nice that she at least acknowledged the idea.

It didn't change my life, but then again it had little chance too; I already understood there was racism in the world, and I've spent considerable time trying to understand it, how it must feel to be the victim of it, and trying to eradicate any sense of it in myself that I could find. The southpark episode "With Apologies to Jessie Jackson" was certainly a much better attempt at addressing the issue though.

And as Stan acknowledges to Token at the end of that episode, "I get it - I don't get it".

-Frob

Sorry. I'm not trying to reopen a conversation that apparently ended while I was typing my comment. I just wanted to offer my perspective.

that's why i'm trying to get friends who are every skin color and every religious type so i don't get called racist. in my family my cousin just married a guy from mexico who dosen't have a green card yet but i already accept him as part of the family

Well I'm glad that you get that, but my main point is that it should be more about what you said than about what they heard. Seeing as your initial post is about people being too quick to call something racist, sexist, etc... I'm not certain we're reading that phrase the same way.

i think we are ALL missing the point, which is Ugh, The Gays.

But I cannot believe that white people are completely incapable of understanding another person's experience at least to the level any other race/sex/person can experience any other race's/sex's/person's experience.

Oops. That second "experience" should be "understand".

I didn't read the book and have no intention of seeing the movie. It just looks like another "white person helping out the po' black folk" movie to me. Nothing wrong with that, per se, just doesn't really interest me. I'm sure there were plenty of helpful (ie, not racist) white people during the '60s or whenever this story is supposed to take place, but for whatever reason, seeing yet another version of it just doesn't make me wanna rush to the theater.

And I'm pretty effin' white. But if other people like the book and/or movie, that's cool.

While we're on the topic of racism... anyone seen the latest white-girl-doesn't-realize-how-racist-she-is video? As a birthday gift to her friend, she taped herself smearing yellow mustard on her face and taping her eyes shut in an effort to show people what it's like to be Asian. Yes, a WHITE girl. Trying to tell others what it's like to be ASIAN. Oh, don't worry, there a 2 second snippet of porn in it too. Look it up.

http://alturl.com/j9u36

wow. just...wow. also, NSFW for like a second.

Why are you in this Emma? Why?!

I'd really like yo give you a piece of my mind. You think that's "Pretty F*cking Racist?" Huh? It's people like you that make me sick. By being so anti-racist, you have become racist yourself. Why CAN'T a white woman create a piece of fictional writing that describes the plight of racism? If you REALLY weren't racist, then you wouldn't care if it were a white women writing this book, and you wouldn't care if it were the "SPANISH SPEAKER" whom was watching your kids. Is it racist that they have an ethnic haircare isle in the supermarket? NO. The fact is, we're all different; that will never change. No matter how hard you try to be colorblind, they're still visible to everyone else. We overcome prejudice and racism by acknowledging the differences, and not letting them weigh us down (like what's happened to you).

I loved The Help. It didn't "change my life," but I think it was an interesting story. My grandmother is from Mississippi and would have been about the same age as the main character in the book during the time in which it was set. She said the book is a surprisingly close reflection of the things she experienced and the people she knew back then that it was actually painful to read.

There is one other thing.... It really pisses me off when people get all judge-y about others book choices. So many people stop reading completely because they are made to feel embarrassed about what they enjoy reading. Just because I loved The Help, doesn't mean that is the only type of book I read, (and really, why does anyone else give a shit if it were?) The thing is I am a librarian. I'll read and usually enjoy anything from Tristram Shandy to Harry Potter. I always tell my students that it is not what you read, just that you read.

Love this post!

Knew the thread would become a $#*%show, but still, love it.

All y'all whiny privileged-pants saying,"But(thurt) I like Nice White Lady movies! Whyyyy don't people understand I'm not raciiiist!" need to take a deep, calming breath, and go watch Driving Miss Daisy for the millionth time.

....so no one else is bothered by the horrible hair? no? okay then, carry on.

"Why CAN'T a white woman create a piece of fictional writing that describes the plight of racism?"

I think a person can write outside their race just fine: William Styron, Zadie Smith, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Mark Twain, etc. They're gifted writers, though. I'm crazy enough to a writer can be a sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic piece of dogshit and still be a gifted contributor to the canon who should be read.

This particular white woman, however, isn't particularly talented and, thus, her effort falls flat and becomes suspect. For example, writing a book about Southerners during Jim Crow where only the black characters speak in heavy dialect is lazy, clunky, ahistorical and just plain irresponsible. This laziness somehow gets spun into "controversy" because critics have gone to town on Stockett for that writing choice (if it was even conscious). The Help's not "controversial" - it doesn't have enough to say to be controversial.

Im a bit confused why everyone is saying this book was written from the perspective of a white woman. As I recall, it was told from several different perspectives, including two of the black maids, and more than once those maids call the white woman out on the very "white lady savior" issue that everyone here is up in arms about. At least that concept was acknowledged as it played out.

It wasn't the best book Ive ever read and it certainly didn't change my life, but it was ok, and it seems like a lot of the people talking about it here didn't read it.

The book didn't change my life but I liked it alot. I don't even remember getting the Magical Negroe notion from the book. Maybe I was so happy to be reading something a little different and fresh that it just flew over my head.

I don't think I want to see the movie because I just don't see Emma Stone as Skeeter. It just doesn't fit right with my brain

Therefore, Fredo, there can never be any more credible or enjoyable fictional stories from the point of view of a WWI or Civil war veteran because there aren't any of them left?

Hardly. The difference is, though, those are fictional story from a WWI vet's pov (such as Atonement) or from a Civil War vet's pov (Cold Mountain). Not the same as what "The Help" is affecting to do.

I don't know how the fuck anybody can complain about the Pajiba staff being racist, what w/ Dustin bitching about "white privledge" every third column or so.

I am finding myself more and more in demand as a Magical Negro these days. I don't know who to blame.

BTW, Joanna,
You missed the BIG racist story of the day. A bunch of white kids, for the sheer hatefulness of it, decided they were going to go kill a n*gger. And they did. And it's on videotape. And it's on CNN. Now that's fucking racist.

Willaim, I love how whenever the topic of racism comes up, there's always someone who refers to an incident like that as if to say, "Look, look, white people get picked on by black people!" What are you trying to say with that? That we shouldn't feel bad about racism because that sort of thing happens? That that somehow releases us from expectation to not be bigots? Or you're probably trying to turn it all around on us bleeding-heart liberals to make us feel like we're ignoring the "Great White Plight" and we're the actually racist ones. That's a cheap silly ploy and it's empty. That incident you linked to was terrible. But it has nothing to do with a discussion about racism just because it involved black people attacking white people. And in no way is it somehow indicative of the oppression of white people. The very concept reeks of white privilege.

As for this back-and-forth about intention vs reception: it's a little of both. Bigotry and prejudice can be invisible even to the person who possesses it. As someone who's dealt with a little bit of that, I absolutely agree that someone can be bigoted without realizing it. People say things without realizing how they may sound to people. Now, that doesn't mean that you should sit around policing yourself, but you should be aware. It annoys me when people blame political correctness as if without it we'd all be better off. As with most things, it's best in moderation. Of course none of us want thought police or something. But maybe you shouldn't use racial slurs. Or refer to women as whores. Or use words like "f*g." And to be honest, it's not completely on the other person if they misunderstand your meaning. If I'm offended by something someone says, but didn't necessarily mean, that's not entirely on me. They could've phrased what they said differently or used better judgment.

I never read The Help. Like many here, my ma loved it. It strikes me as a book with the best intentions at the very least. If I was raised in a racist environment, I'm sure I'd have quite a few things to say myself. Can't really comment though. I didn't read it. So I have no idea. It seems like people are more turned off by the life-changing/book-club image it has picked up more than by the book itself.

As for this back-and-forth about intention vs reception: it's a little of both. Bigotry and prejudice can be invisible even to the person who possesses it. As someone who's dealt with a little bit of that, I absolutely agree that someone can be bigoted without realizing it. People say things without realizing how they may sound to people. Now, that doesn't mean that you should sit around policing yourself, but you should be aware. It annoys me when people blame political correctness as if without it we'd all be better off. As with most things, it's best in moderation. Of course none of us want thought police or something. But maybe you shouldn't use racial slurs. Or refer to women as "whores." Or use words like "faggot." And to be honest, it's not completely on the other person if they misunderstand your meaning. If I'm offended by something someone says, but didn't necessarily mean, that's not entirely on me. They could've phrased what they said differently or used better judgment.

I never read The Help. Like many here, my ma loved it. It strikes me as a book with the best intentions at the very least. If I was raised in a racist environment, I'm sure I'd have quite a few things to say myself. Can't really comment though. I didn't read it. So I have no idea. It seems like people are more turned off by the life-changing/book-club image it has picked up more than by the book itself.

does Scout use her awareness of racism's flaws to then turn around and change society?

No of course Scout doesn't do that.

But that's not what you said in your post, you said a white woman couldn't write a book about racism because her experiences were secondhand.

And MY point is that Harper Lee did just that, and quite effectively.

Wow. How is it nobody mentioned Mark Twain?

---

Hell, I don't even want the white Zooey Deschanel.

Posted by: Todd at August 9, 2011 4:55 PM
---
Me either. I want the white Emily Deschanel.

I'd take Halle Berry too, in staying OT.

I read The Help this summer, after a number of recommendations from various people. So, putting aside the racial implications for a moment, as far as a piece of popular fiction, I enjoyed it -- the story was engaging and the characters, I found, were well-rounded. It was not Literature-with-a-capital-L but better than, say, Dan Brown or that Twilight dreck (which, sadly, I've read as well.)

Okay, opening up the race debate. The afterword was very telling, I think: the author described her desire to tell this story based on her own upbringing with a black housekeeper in the South. This book is a result of that, so while it was well-researched, it also came from a personal place, which I think mitigates some of the discomfort she admits to having felt while writing (more on that below).

Now, is it problematic that she is not only telling the story from the perspective of Skeeter, the young white girl who facilitates the book of maids' stories, but that she also attempts to tell the story of persecution and institutionalized racism from the black female perspective of two maids? Yes, probably, and she admittedly questioned her own decision. Is it even more problematic that the attempts to tell their stories in Southern black dialect, as opposed to record their writing in Standard English? Yes, definitely, if only because she is attempting to recreate a voice from a culture of which she is not a part.

HOWEVER, Zora Neale Hurston was an African-American female anthropologist who also wrote novels that captured Southern black voices in dialect, and she was lambasted by many of her fellow black writers and critics for pandering to stereotypes of her fellow blacks. She wanted to record their voices the way they spoke, as an anthropologist; others like Richard Wright claimed that she was putting on a minstrel show for white audiences.

Thus this debate about black dialect, whether written by a white author or a black author, remains the same: it makes people uncomfortable. Is it racist if it's authentic? I think this depends on "intent vs. impact" -- Stockett may not have had the intent to offend people, but (I think it's clear from the afterword, in which she acknowledges as much) it certainly had that impact on some people.

It also had "life-changing" impact for others, and though I personally didn't find it so affecting, I'm also a high school English teacher in an urban school who has been trained in anti-racist education, so I'm probably not part of the crowd who would find it such. Is "life-changing" perhaps a little hyperbolic? Hey, anything that moves people from blindness toward the first stages of Racial Identity Development is better than nothing.

A couple of final thoughts: There is no such thing as "colorblind." It's a nice thought, but it's foolish to pretend that people don't see color. Besides, people of color can never be "colorblind" because their "color" is an important part of their identities; it is only white people who desire "colorblindness" because it's easy for white people see themselves as "colorless" and to desire for everyone else to "just be individuals" instead of parts of a group. Black culture exists, white culture exists, socioeconomic class runs through color, gender issues run through all of them. The problem, of course, is when white culture (or Christianity/women/gays/non-cis-gendered/etc.) is prized above all others, and other cultures/colors/etc. are not valued as authentic and equal parts of society.

My thoughts here come from my identity as a white anti-racist educator. But I'm also white, and thus I've been acculturated to an extent to white ethnocentrism. I attempt every day to fight against the structures and thought patterns that create inequity in our society, but as a white person, I know that I'm going to sometimes say or do things that offend others, although that's not my intent. So I apologize in advance for any unintended impact that my opinions here have.

Blerg, my comment double-posted. And got cut off. Whoops!

And thanks, Craig! It's not that we don't recognize how bad a violent crime like that is. It's just that to assume that it has something to do with race and that it somehow stands up as an example to be discussed is a little beyond the pale. And when people bring that up in a race discussion, it suggests that this is somehow a game being played between teams. "They" attacked "us" so "we're" justified in hating "them." It perpetuates the idea that our race says something about our personalities and thoughts and that what one person does represents their race. It says that anyone who doesn't see an act like what William referred to as oppression of the whites is the real racist. It's a sort of post-racism racism. It still has that old-world bigotry, but it attempts to say that we liberals are the true racists twisted into that position by our misguided white guilt.

Here's the bottom line: racism is a terrible, disgusting thing that is without justification. And I don't believe that because I'm white or a liberal. I believe that because I'm a decent human being.

Good point, MRod. It's always important to remember that one salient fact. Preferably in song form.

Not sure if this was mentioned since I last perused this post. Apparently she lifted not only the enotional experience, but the actual *name* of her sister's maid http://kingfish1935.blogspot.com/2011/02/maid-sues-author-of-help.html

I hate how these conversations always devolve. No one is saying that white people can never write interesting, important, non-racist books about racism and/or people of color. People are saying that it is problematic when:

a) the only books about the experiences of people of color that become bestsellers and/or big budget movies are the ones written by white people
b) a white author writes only the black characters as speaking in dialect even though all of the white characters would have had strong southern accents -- making it clear that they think white southerners were the norm, and that black southerners were something unusual whose differences from the norm need to be explained
c) a white author writes a story about racism in which a white protagonist takes action to fix things for and/or rescue passive black characters

Point a) is a problem both with Hollywood and with the reading/viewing audience. I'm willing to bet that 90% of the people whose lives were "changed" by this book have never read a story about racism written by a person of color -- because if they had, those books would have also been bestsellers and would also have been made into big highly publicized movies. That's a macro issue of racism that is unrelated to whether or not this specific book was well written or itself racist.

Points b) and c) are a micro issue of racism related to this specific story and its author. Because here's the thing -- sure, white people can write valuable, important, non-racist works about racism and the experiences of people of color. But if they want to do that, they need to be really fucking careful about how they do so, because it isn't their story and it is very easy for them to get it wrong -- and if they do get it wrong, a lot of people won't realize that because they aren't reading the books written by the actual victims of racism (see point a) above).

And this author? She did not do it carefully enough. She fell into two very common mistakes in these works: she made it a story about a white girl fixing things for black people, and she wrote the black characters as though they were exotic others while making the white people seem like the norm. Why did black characters need to have their accents written down while white characters didn't? Because the black accents are so interesting! and colorful! and NOT NORMAL. Whereas the white accents, to the ears of a white girl, are just how people talk and don't require any description.

And if that isn't enough, here's a REALLY FUCKING OBVIOUS CLUE that your book might be racist: you base one of the main black characters on a black woman you knew, give her virtually the same name (Ableen Cooper vs. Aibleen Clark) and a similar background (a dead child, maid for a southern family with the same number/gender of children as the book, a gold tooth), ask the woman's permission to base a character on her and then do it anyway when she refuses, and then have the character compare the color of her skin to a cockroach.

No one is saying that everyone who read this book and liked it is a racist. But people ARE saying that it's important to ask WHY you liked the book (and whether you've read and/or enjoyed any books written by the actual targets of racism) and to ask WHY the author wrote it the way she did. Because as long as people discussing racism spend more time being upset about things being called racist than they spend on BEING UPSET ABOUT RACISM, we have a serious problem.

That is possibly the most eloquent thing I've ever read, Artemis.

Oh -- and I didn't read the book, have no intention of reading the book, don't fucking care about the book. It's the premise of the STATEMENT with which I take issue.

If it's a shitty book, then that's an entirely different issue -- but it could be a shitty book about racism written by a black man -- still wouldn't have a THING to do with the colour of the skin of the author.

Well, I dislike pretty much everyone, and I've never had to resort to their pigmentation (or gender or lust-preference(s)) to do so.

Suddenly, I feel like I'm missing out.

can someone please tell me what the fuck is wrong with having a cleaning lady? or cleaning couple, as is my case, who are not "spanish speaking" but Polish, exactly like I am? I'm white. I have a well tailored chest. I work hard, and choose to spend a few bucks to have someone else vacuum and scrub the bathroom twice a month. Why does that make me some stuck up suburban asshole?

I also *gasp* use a daycare service. With lots of different-cultured people watching my kiddos. I pay for these services, I give nice christmas presents and I don't boss anyone around or treat them like they are below me- they have their job and i have mine and we both do a pretty good job at what we do.

So yea, my experience is a LOT fucking different than the southern 1950s era "the help" is depicting thankyouverymuch. Or at least what my understanding of the book is- it looked shittacular and I haven't bothered to read it.

"can someone please tell me what the fuck is wrong with having a cleaning lady? or cleaning couple, as is my case, who are not "spanish speaking" but Polish, exactly like I am?"

I don't recall anybody coming down hard on people who pay others to do their cleaning, gardening, etc.

What a fucking crock of shit.

James Baldwin: "Giovanni's Room." Guess THAT shouldln't have been written -- black man writing a white man.

"Cry the Beloved Country" -- white man writing a black man.

Elmore Leonard -- hell, half his characters are black. He isn't.

And, of course, as others have mentioned, "To Kill A Mockingbird" would not exist if the rules some people here wanted followed were.

Piffle.

where would be without racism ? look at the number of comments
sre posted on this subject. racism sells and it isn't going
anywhere now that we have a " victim " class.

illanna28 hits the nail on the head when she skewers the notion
that everyone who employs a cleaning woman is a condescending elitist. that has become a stereotype of its own
but no books or movies will challenge it.

and why the flap over a white woman writing about black ex-
periences? the point of the book/movie is that she was simply
recording the feelings of the black women and that it was from
their perspective that the book was written.