The Help

That's right friends tonight I went to see The Help with a co-worker.  Please tell me you have seen the previews for this movie and know what I'm talking about.  It was a pretty long movie, but definitely worth it and didn't feel like the two and a half hours that it was. 

First, I think Emma Stone is quickly becoming one of my favorite actresses.  I have loved her in Easy A, and now most recently Crazy Stupid Love and The Help.  Not only is she gorgeous, but she's one of those girls that doesn't act like or know she's pretty.  And of course, I think she's pretty funny. 

In the movie, Emma Stone's character is a white woman living in Jackson, MS during the 1960s.  She wants to be a writer and decides to write a novel from the perspective of the black maids that work for the local families. 

Overall, it's a very touching movie.  You often have to shake your head and resist the urge to reach into the movie screen and slap the white women for the things they say and do.  The movie and the stories the women tell and all the hardships they had to endure, make me realize how strong these black women were.  What character they had.  They were treated like second class citizens, low life people that had different diseases  It was an outcry for the maids to even use the household restroom, which inevitably caused one maid to be fired.  Separate bathrooms were built outside of the home so the maid wouldn't use the same toilet as the white family members.  Separate but equal right?

It just amazes me how belittling some white families were towards their maids and yet they were the main caretaker of their children.  You didn't want to use the same bathroom with a black woman, but you would allow her to care for and love your children as if they were their own?  If the blacks were so ignorant and unworthy, why would you let them have such a valuable position in your child's life?  Because you were too busy with your bridge games and clubs and your looks to be bothered to raise a child?  Because the child was more of an object that put you into a different social status, that made you a lady of society, instead of someone to actually love? 

It's just incredible to me that this is really how our society was and not all that long ago.  It makes me wonder what I would have been like in those times.  Of course we all know that slavery was wrong and the treatment of blacks during that era was beyond wrong, but what position would you have taken if you had actually lived during that time?  Would you have been like Emma Stone's character?  One who loved her black nanny like a family member?  One who believed in real equality and saw the maids as people with a valid story to tell?  Would you be a person that stood against the inequalities?  Would  you be a pioneer in the civil rights campaign? 

Or would you, like so many others, do what you could to keep the black race down?  Would you pay them unfair wages? Leaving them with the decision to choose which child could go to college because they could only afford to pay for one tuition.  Would you build a bathroom outside your home because you couldn't stand the thought of sharing one with a black person?    

Our society has come a long way from those days, but there are still battles to be fought and issues to stand up for.  In fifty years when they make a movie about our era which person do you want to be?  One of the oppressors or an advocate and pioneer for equal rights, for all people, across the globe?