English Help with Assignment

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Karina Calderon

Professor Ocasio-Russe

English 2316

14 April 2023

The Help: The Point of View of American Society

The Help (2011) is a fantastic film not only being an upbringing of comedy but

showing what America was like back in those times and shows how dramatically it has

changed from today's era. In this film it is a comedy/drama genre about African American

women working as maids for high status white American families. These African American

maids would tell their side of the story from the other side and expose every event they could

remember starting from their first family. Causing their stories to be written in a book and

became recognized and read all throughout the state. During this time period is during the

Civil Rights Movement after they ended segregation and the Jim Crow laws. My argument on

this film is about how the history of race and ethnicity in America has affected African

Americans throughout this period and how they are affected socially and how they are

treated, also how discrimination has changed throughout history.

Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson played by Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, were

the main characters of this film and they represent the hard times and the discrimination they

had to go through. Discrimination throughout the years has evolved in better ways but still is

being used today. Stated by Race and Racial Identity Are Social Constructs that skin color,

hair texture, eye shape, ancestry, identity performance and even name, does not mean that

racial classifications are free of consequence or tangible events (Race and Racial Identity). In

the movie The Help, The African American maids, Minny and Aibileen were seen as they

were animals just because of the color of their skin. As in one scene where Hilliy Woldbrook,

a white American woman of high status, did not permit Minny to use their bathroom inside

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their home because they believed that they had some kind of disease (30:15-33:18). In

the book Race and Ethnicity of America it states that following the war African Americans

took the lead in confronting racial discrimination and pushed southern governments through

various court cases and mass protests on the streets to dismantle segregation. (Race and

Ethnicity pg. 4 section 2 ). The Help had a scene in the movie where the KKK was lynching

and killing poor innocent black americans just for being black and protesting the end of

segregation and discrimination based on their color of their skin. The discrimination

throughout this scene where a shooting happened and the bus stopped and the conductor told

the main character, Aibilieen, to get off the bus because whites are the only ones allowed on

the bus throughout this incident. A black man was killed only because he was black, he got

shot in front of his family causing many African Americans to become scared. (1:23:01 -

1:30:02).

The history of race and ethnicity in America has become better throughout the

decades but we as Americans still have to overcome some obstacles to end this. In this article

American Radical and Ethnic Politics in the 21st Century: A cautious look ahead, in the

early 1960’s African Americans enjoyed the “perverse equality” which could pass on their

status to their children. With regard to income, education, victimization by violence,

occupational status (American Radical and Ethnic Politics). The Help showed how different

the neighborhoods are from the bright colorful white residential suburbs to the dark gloomy

“bad side of town” neighborhoods where all the African Americans live. They live in houses

that are not as nice as the ones that white Americans own. The education systems

differentiate between blacks and whites in America. Whites education have a more variety of

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classes and teachers that are highly educated, unlike black Americans their schools are

funded not as much and excluded from higher education institutes (Unequal Opportunity:

Race and Education). In The Help, African American girls at the age of fourteen start

working as beginner maids working for white American families. Minny’s daughter turned

fourteen and started working as a maid and as Minny’s daughter got on the bus Minny

warned her about what to do and what not to do when it comes to working with a white

family. (48:15 - 49:50). Many men throughout the movie work as gardeners and handymen

working around the house and garden. Not only were African Americans targeted by the Ku

Klux Klan but there were attacks on any ethnicity, race, or even religion that wasn’t white or

considered the “norm” like Jews, Catholics, and foreign-born people. (Race and Ethnicity of

America pg. 4). Resulting after the civil war many african americans were freed under the

thirteenth amendment resulting in four million free slaves, they also gained the right to vote

under the fifteenth amendment.( The Civil War Era). Despite many African Americans being

free it was very hard for them to find jobs and provide food but with the Freedmen’s Bureau

assisted many former slaves to provide food, find homes and stable jobs for them to provide

for their family (The Civil War Era). The Help, really helped viewers look into the struggles

of financial status and survival off of anything to help their family move ahead. In one of the

scenes a black maid named Yule May, was the replacement maid after Hilley fired Minny,

and in this scene Yule was seen asking for a loan to the Holbrook’s to help her and her family

send one of her sons to college. After Hilley refused, Yule was cleaning the house and she

found a gold ring. She knew she shouldn’t have taken it but because of her family she risked

everything just so she could send her son to college. Hilley later soon found out from the

pawn shop that Yule pawned the ring that it was in fact stolen. Hilley called the police and

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had Yule arrested for the stealing of Mrs.Holbrook’s gold ring. (46:02 - 48:00)(1:28:14 -

1:29:05).

In class we talk about how we should talk about how ethical some events are and how

we should explain in our own words if we believe that it's ethical or not. Speaking about The

Help. The Help to me was very unethical, because there is no reason for anybody that is a

person of color to be treated the way that they were treated. Being black in a predominantly

white American suburb family meant that they were worthless, useless, animals, thugs,

thieves, and just awful people. In reality that was just the stereotype that everyone in America

during this time knew it as. Talking about Race and Ethnicity of America and The Help they

are both unethical because in Race and Ethnicity of America it talks about how difficult it a

can be to deal with discrimination and how America has changed in so many ways. America

has overcame obstacles like from The Help that was based off a movie in the 1960’s to now

in the 2000’s it has came a long way to how our society has changed today. I found how

unethical it was in Race and Ethnicity of America how this books talks about how it was such

a problem that people that are different races and ethnicities come to the US help make the

US the US but are treated very differently just because of the color of their skin, religion and

ethnicity.(Race and Ethnicity of America pg.1 intro).

In conclusion, The Help was a fantastic film that represented the life of African

Americans during this time and how it also experienced some of the readings that we have

read during class. Race and Ethnicity of America helped bring out the argument that I have

shown today about how the history of race and ethnicity in America has affected African

Americans throughout this period and how they are affected socially and how they are

treated, also how discrimination has changed throughout history. With this film and the book

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it has came clear that discrimination has slowly gotten better throughout the years but we will

never forget where it came from and how we are better today.

Work Cited Calderon 6

Darling-Hammond, Linda. “Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education.” Brookings,

Brookings, 28 July 2016,

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-opportunity-race-and-education/.

Hochschild, Jennifer L. “American Racial and Ethnic Politics in the 21st Century: A Cautious

Look Ahead.” Brookings, Brookings, 28 July 2016,

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/american-racial-and-ethnic-politics-in-the-21st-ce

ntury-a-cautious-look-ahead/.

“How Fluid Is Race?” The New York Times, The New York Times,

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/16/how-fluid-is-racial-identity/race

-and-racial-identity-are-social-constructs.

Iceland, John. Race and Ethnicity in America. 1st ed., University of California Press, 2017.

JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctv1wxqk7. Accessed 4 Apr. 2023.

“The Civil War Era.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.,

https://www.britannica.com/topic/African-American/The-Civil-War-era.

Stockett, Kathryn. The Help. Penguin Books, 2011.