Wednesday, January 18, 2012
THE HELP--THE OLD SOUTH'S ODD SEPERATE BUT EQUAL AND INTEGRATED BUT UNEQUAL RECENT PAST
I watched the movie "The Help" on Monday; it is a must see for all southerners a little bit young than me and older than me who grew up in the period of this movie. While the setting was Jackson, MS the scenery, ranch style home and countryside could have been in Atlanta, Augusta, Macon or any other southern town. And the story told would have been the same.
I hope everyone who saw the pie scene understood its connection with the desire to have in homes where maids worked in the south a restroom that was separate for them and the anxiety that was caused if the "help" used the boss's restroom in the home. The rectory in my former parish in Augusta which was a 1950's ranch style house (which I had torn down about 10 years ago) had a separate toilet in the utility room with the washer and dryer (not heated or cooled) off the carport which could only be accessed by going outside using the kitchen door.
I'm old enough to remember segregation, separate counters for eating at Woolworth's and others places,seperate restrooms, water fountains and places of business, and blacks sitting at the back of the bus. I rode the bus in Augusta frequently as a child and was told by a bus driver when my friend and I on the way home from a downtown movie sat on the long seat at the very back of an empty bus that "ya'll must be "niggers" sitting back there!" I must have been 10 or 11 and yes my parents and my friends' parents allowed us to go downtown on the bus by ourselves! It was another time in many ways! And the buses at that time were exactly like the ones used in the movie! Oh what memories, good and bad! It was the best of times and it was the worst of times to say the least.
Another time, and this was in Atlanta, my mother, her friend and I (I was about 4) took the bus downtown with my mother's friend's maid. We sat at the last seat for the whites and the maid in the first seat for the "Negroes" so that they could converse. The bus driver stopped the bus when he noticed the conversation and made them stop talking to one another. This was around 1957 and there was a lot a fear amongst whites concerning Negroes uppity behavior in buses--think Birmingham and Rosa Parks only two years earlier!
Our family didn't have "help" (my Italian mother was the "help" and that's a novel in itself!) but we knew plenty of families that did and I have friends today who identify with being "reared" by the "help" as was depicted in the movie. Southerns were integrated with blacks; they lived in our homes, prepared our meals, reared our children,took care of us when we were sick and drunk but they were not equal. But there was love in a twisted sort of way for each other. The movie captures that sentiment too! Early on in my ministry when I was at predominantly black St. Peter Claver Church here in Macon as a deacon, I went to many black funerals in black Baptist, Pentecostal, AME and CME Churches and found whites there grieving the most over their beloved "help" who had passed! The movie captures that too.
This movie is a must see whether you are my age and live in the south or not.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
Twisted? "Lord I am not fit that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and I shall be healed."
I think it would be good, in the true sense, if more people had resisted that system, but it is in the nature of man to adjust to the surroundings he inherits and change only those parts he feels safe in changing. Not many people would give up all of their friends and the love of their family for even a just cause. There is the soft bigotry of low expectations that may put up barriers, but if the person with those bigotries acknowledges the humanity of that other person and at least supplies, what in his mind, is the human essentials then I say the bigot has acted charitably.
There is an elephant in the room these days that excuses the exact sort of behaviour white bigots attributed to black people as black culture. The irony is that so many of themselves are black or civil rights advocates. I do not see a great deal of change. in the expectations.
rcg
I read the book first(having been raised in Mississippi, it interested me) and I must say after having seen the movie the saying that "the book is always better" holds true to this case as well.
Thanks for sharing your stories! It is always interesting to hear how something common across the county affected different people.
Here's a link to a story about a Church in NC today (2011) struggling to find it's middle ground between Anglo and Latino communities within the same Parish.
http://endeavors.unc.edu/catholic_in_a_small_southern_town_a_new_kind_of_segregation
For my part I reject, or at least supress, feelings of Nationalism when it comes to who I am. It was not always so, but as I have grown I have come to identify myself as a Catholic first and foremost, and an American second. So many issues, like segregation, are born of cultural identities. The same goes for the post about the Ghanian Bishop introducing inculturation into Masses. Our identity should be as Catholics, and not Ghanian, Polish, Italian, etc, at least as a primary. Culture should be secondary.
Immigration in America (for all but Africans) was different in our parents day and age. It was controlled and limited. Italian communities (for an example) started out with the same inward looking approach that other communities who are "segregated" have, but being limited in numbers they could not withstand the societal pressures and became American within a generation. Current immigration is essentially unlimited, and the feelings of segregation will go on much longer as the larger size of the nationality pools will allow them to resist the societal pressures to become American longer, perhaps several generations, if not in fact changing America to be more like their homelands and in a manner of speaking, conquering America.
Black segregation is a differnt beast entirely. Not counting new African immigration, whose people clearly self identify with their homelands in Nigeria, Ghana, etc, many blacks in America were brought here as slaves and their cultural roots are not naturally developed. It's not based on nationalism because many have no idea what their true nationality is. Many blacks still have the indignity of carrying the surname of a nationality they have no ties to. Because of this black segregation is based almost entirely on race not culture. The race has developed a culture, but it is not a culture with national ties, it is a culture based on race. It's unique among the American "immigration" experience.
I for one, will follow the advice of MLK Jr and judge based on a man's character and not his color (or nationality). But I will also always be a Catholic first, an American second, and a Sicilian third.
Race relations in this country are worse than they have ever been. Blacks feel no ownership of this culture, its history, or its traditions, nor do they want to. "Black theology" and religious expression are largely jaded, socialist political cant and anti-white, anti-american diatribe. Anyone who questions it is reflexively called a "racist," the most misused, albeit powerful, word in the language. Liberal social policies and white guilt have allowed this to happen and I see no future except more of the same. Anybody wanna' wake up and take a look? Such a slide down the moral/social values hill and such tolerance of political and social engineering enormities is far more likely to end in significant violence than demands for standards, values, and consequences for those who flout them. At some point, people simply get sick of it and reject the bureaucratic, socialist non-solutions that do not work. They find other means of combatting them. So, where do you want to raise your kids? Like the globalist, egalitarian, socialist anti-Christian propaganda they are learning in the government schools? Like the rap music and vulgar gestures of the cheerleaders at the high school ball game? Like Chris Rock and Whoopi Goldberg and their vulgar, degrading humor? Like the urban, pro-homosexual, pro-casual sex "sitcoms" your kids watch on TV? Call yourself Catholic...?
I very much enjoyed the book and thought the movie was as good a "film adaptation" as I have seen.
I grew up in Savannah. The same black woman worked for us as "maid" for 23 years. There was no separate bathroom for the "help," she rode in the front seat of the car with Mama, and my older sisters and Ethel's children actually got along well, I am told.
Mama did not want Ethel to wear a maid's uniform, it was Ethel's choice to do so.
After reading the book and seeing the movie, I did wonder what all those maids talked about when we went to the park in the afternoons to play, and they sat on the benches jabbering away.
After 23 years, Ethel left our employment, went to nursing school, and workd as an LPN at a Savannah hospital until she was 65. I had the great honor of attending her funeral a few years after her retirement. Ours was the only white family in the church.
Although I cannot claim to be colorblind, I thank God often for having been raised in a family where disrespect toward people of another race was not tolerated.
Pater, I am delighted to be able to say that you have posted something with which I can take no exception, find no fault, and the reading of which put a smile on my face.
God Bless you.
Is it any wonder that many African Americans do not feel ownership of this country? Even here on this post, "Blacks" are still being blamed for society's ills.
I take responsibility for who i am and the difference I make in the world. However too often, I am checking out at the grocery store or buying shoes when the person behind the counter begins to make small talk and assumes I am a waitress or secretary. I suppose many factors could play into this, none of which make sense to me.
It saddens me to know that through all my years of ministry, all my degrees and education, all of my life-changing conversations with racists and hate-mongers, the people of this country would rather assume they know me, rather than ask or get to know me. They'd rather prejudge me, than consider that who I am may not fit into their fantasy of how black people behave, or what black people are capable of.
These people imagine me delivering a plate of food rather than being a professional, even when it is them doing the serving.
I wept when I watched this film...not just for the injustices of our past (which thankfully, I am too young to recall), but for those right now. Even though I worked diligently to get where I am in life, and am well-respected in my field, I have seen and heard white people distil all that God has created me to be down to just an "uppity negro". How dare they!
In the end, it makes no diference. I give everyone an opportunity to know the unique me until they give me a reason to take it away. It is difficult to come to the realization that someone you loved isn't who you thought they were the minute they honestly start speaking about race.
I suppose what is the most upsetting of all of this banter, is that Americans still don't understand that the color of my skin is not a reason to hurt me--then or now. I am not successful in spite of my heritage, but because of it.
I have broken down stereotypes and changed the way people thought about African Americans just by being the strong Catholic woman I am. This is my America and if you can't hear me because you saw me first, that's concerning to me but really not my issue. It would be your problem, wouldn't it?
Blacks are not being blamed for society's ills. Liberal social and educational policies are the root cause. With the exception of people like you, blacks as a class have done nothing to integrate into American culture after over 40years of opportunity and forced egalitarian policies. This country, in the sixties, integrated a huge under-class in one fell swoop with no effort to truly educate them about their heritage as Americans or to bring them up to the educational standards of the culture. Things were dumbed down, countless exceptions were made for sub-standard work, and job requirements were diluted or just ignored. I was there, I know. I was in class with blacks in college and grad school, taught in a public high school, and ran a construction company. Jim Crow never went away; it was institutionalized in the double standard created by failed social policies.
This continues in government schools and in society everywhere. Text books are written to provide a black American history that does not exist. Black teachers are given a pass for poor grammar, incorrect teaching of history, and editorializing in their presentation of historical facts. The entire college athletics program is based upon a lie because the majority of black athletes should not have even been admitted. They are given courses like "Public Park Management," "Recreation Development," and "Athletic Research," and graduate thinking Shakespeare was a tackle and Charles Dickens played point guard for the Pickwick Papers. We tolerate black crime, public vulgarity, a black drug culture that is epidemic, institutionalized illegitimacy, and the dilution of Western values (those values Martin Luther King wanted Blacks to assimilate)by a primitive, tribal world view. Anyone who dares question this is immediately labeled a "racist," another term blacks misuse and do not understand.
What I hear in your post is more of the same. We are long past the day when white people assumed any black woman they saw was either a waitress or a secretary. We now assume they are on welfare with ten illegitimate children. Blacks have done nothing, as a class, to rectify this attitude. Where is the black outrage over the black view of women...the vulgar descriptions in mainstream radio music and on tv? Why are blacks not outraged by black on black crime and gang control of neighborhoods and entire cities (see Detroit). And, you wonder why whites are suspicious, disgusted, and just throw up their hands? And we are the racists? Come November, over 95 per cent of blacks in this country will, again, vote for Barak Obama and the same failed policies. They will do it for three reasons, 1.) He's black; 2.)they are willfully ignorant politically; 3.) they think he is going to give them something. I imagine you will, too.
PS (Short history test):
1. Who passed more civil rights legislation than Lyndon Johnson?
a. John Kennedy; b. FDR, c. Bill Clinton
BZZZT! Wrong. It was Richard Nixon
2. Who said, "Blacks and whites were not meant to live on the same continent together."
a. George Wallace, b. George Bush, c. Lester Maddox
BZZZZT! Wrong. It was the mythic deliverer of blacks everywhere...Abraham Lincoln.
pinanv525
I see that you feel that I am the exception to the rule, but I am not. I am Black America. I am educated, I am hard-working, I am respectful and respected. I am not an anomaly. But you will only see what you want to see, you even presume to know my thoughts and actions. You don't know me.
I am fortunate to love people of many races within the world, my family, my church, my circle of friends, my household, etc. If I were to limit my view of how all people of one race or class behave as you do, I would never see Christ in them. I'd never know their love and I'd never change their assumptions and they'd never change mine. However, I would not assume that I could change your views. You seem to have everything figured out to your liking, complete with a quiz (answers provided).
I understand you are angry, but why would you assume I would vote for Barack Obama? Simply because I am African American? Did you not also understand that I am Catholic?
This will be my last post. My words are just words. I know I can make a bigger difference with my actions--gifts and talents. I'll be helping God's people today. I will not assume to know their hearts or actions for I truly want to be like Christ. I will not discount their unique experience or lump them into a group. That is how stereotypes and hate are perpetuated.
I choose to break the cycle every day. Jesus did not discount those scorned by society, he offered them the same opportunity to come follow Him. In this case, I realize that you must feel scorned. Please know that you too can make a difference with your actions and thoughts.
People are not perfect, but given the opportunity they may change your worldview. You could see people as individuals and they could see you the same way. Imagine that.
Anonymous, I do not feel scorned, anmd I do see people as individuals. The evidence for the things I wrote is undeniable, exceptions acknolwedged. BTW, a large percentage of Catholics voted for Obama, so being Catholic has nothing to do with it. This is also not about whether I can see Christ in people of all races or not. We are talking sociology here and not theology. I believe you are stereotyping me. You must be a racist. I'll pray for you....
Post a Comment