Posted: January 31st, 2023

Racial Discrimination and its impact in America with reference to “the help”

Racial Discrimination and its impact in America with reference to “the help”
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Racial Discrimination and its impact in America with reference to “the help”
Introduction
Kathryn Stockett novel ‘The Help’ has featured many issues that affect the society today and during the time setting of the story. She has captured some themes as racial discrimination on the people who perform this prejudice and its victims, power relationships among the people, ill-treatment of man by man and love/hatred relationships. However, the themes of racial discrimination and segregation of the ‘colored’ people, stand out in the novel.
The book covers the issues that are centred on the blacks’ life and their survival strategies in the United States during the Civil Rights movements. Throughout the novel, the author embarks us on a journey of the liberation of the blacks that came at a hefty price. The author also uses stereotyping to emphasize on some themes like racism and develop the plot of the novel. This research paper, therefore, focuses on racial discrimination, the struggle of Blacks during the civil rights movement and stereotyping as presented by the author.
Racial discrimination
It was a common practice in the United States especially before and during the Civil Rights Movement era. The Blacks and other minority races always found themselves on the receiving end of all manner of racial discrimination, inequality and subjugation. The author of ‘The Help’, Kathryn Stockett, narrates an orderly account of the typical life under racial inequality which the Blacks went through especially the house helps to white families in Jackson, Mississippi, during the Civil Rights Movement Era.
Aibileen, Elizabeth Leefolt’s house help, is a character in the novel that helps us understand the predicament of being a help to a White family during this era. She is a loving and caring person who holds no grudge against the wrongs they have done to her. Despite her good character, she is ill-treated by her employer on the basis of her color. Her separate bathroom is built for her so that she does not have to share with her employers. Hilly believes that the Blacks should not share bathrooms with the Whites as they are ‘dirty’, and they carry diseases with them (Pg. 8). When she learns that her daughter, Mae Mobley, uses the Aibileen’s bathroom, Mrs. Leefolt is furious about it and advises her that she should not use the maid’s bathroom (Pg. 95).
Racial injustice was documented and legalized. When Skeeter visits the library to read on articles related to racial discrimination in the southern states she was shocked, the Jim Crow laws. Some of the laws denied Whites from nursing Negroes. Interracial marriages were unlawful and not recognized under the law. Blacks were not supposed to be barbers to female Whites. Learning resources were strictly divided along racial grounds forbidding interchange between the colored and whites’ schools. Even after death, these racial segregation laws followed them to the grave as they were not allowed to be buried alongside whites. Skeeter wonders the difference between the legislation in the booklet and the Home Sanitation and Health Initiative law Hilly was pushing for of having a separate bathroom for the maids. The separation of resources was applied to almost everything!
When the situation demanded some sacrifice so as to allocate the available resources, the Blacks were sacrificed. When a bus Aibileen is travelling in with other people at night comes to a road block following a nigger who was shot, the driver turns around and instructs all the colored people to alight (Pg. 193). The Whites stayed, and the driver allowed only Whites to board the bus. Aibileen and the other Blacks had to walk home in the dark just because of their skin pigmentation that they had no control over. There were some blacks on the bus, but they were instructed to alight to give room to the whites.
Mrs. Hilly is a Caucasian lady who came up with the idea of having separate bathrooms for the maids. Though she is a self-proclaimed leader, she doesn’t have leadership traits, and she overlooks the importance of Blacks in the region. She also accuses her maid, Yule May, of stealing her ring and she is imprisoned for four years (Pg. 251). She wanted to raise tuition fees for her children in college. She also wants Skeeter and the maids to suffer for helping Skeeter come up with the novel she had written. Throughout the book and the movie, she represents the perpetrators of racism.
Racism is also taught to the children. When Mae Mobley is reprimanded by her mother for using the colored maid’s bathroom is one of the ways racism is taught to the younger generation (Pg. 95). At some point, we see Mae Mobley insisting that Aibileen has to use the restroom first before she uses it to show that it was safe for her to do so (pg. 93). Most of the Caucasian ladies in the novel are young and have been raised by colored house-helps but when they become of age they turn and mistreat the same people who raised them.
When Skeeter finally falls in love with the senator’s son, Stuart Whitsworth, she opens up to him on her project, and he cannot stand it (Pg.381). Though Stuart was supportive to Skeeter in helping her realize her dreams of becoming a writer, he develops cold feet, and this leads to ending of their relationship. At last Stuart decides to let kindly go of Skeeter by telling her he wants to ‘get head straight’ (Pg.273). This is a strong indication that Stuart was racist and that he was comfortable with the manner the Blacks were treated in the society and wanted things to stay that way.
The author is also criticized for being a racist. Kathryn Stockett is Caucasian, and some of the critiques of her work believe she cannot tell a story about African Americans when she is Caucasian. They argue that the tone of the novel and the theme she addresses are sarcastic, and they actually depict blacks as lesser beings compared to whites. All the whites described in the novel seem to be better off than the blacks who are maids and do mean jobs to survive. She is also criticized for showing that the blacks spoke in a funny dialect that was not grammatically correct to shows that the whites are brighter than the blacks and could communicate eloquently yet they came from the same region. She is also accused of portraying whites falsely. The truth is that they raped, hanged, murdered, molested, castrated, and inflicted all manner of injustices on blacks, but she did not expose them candidly.
Some Whites are not racists and help quell the racial discrimination theme and show that not all Whites are racists. Celia, Minny’s employer, gives her maid, Minny, favourable working conditions than most other White employers. She even refers to her as a friend though Minny doubts her (Pg. 224). She gives her weekends off and invites her to dine together. She also gets her leave early in the day though this was Celia’s plan to ensure that her husband does not know of her scheme of employing a house help. Though Minny views her preferential treatment to her as fake and pretentious, she seems to be one of the few Whites who treated the Blacks better.
Skeeter is another person who shuns racial segregation and inequality. She enlisted help from Aibileen, and other house helps to help her expose on the plight of Blacks in Mississippi. She was not a racist from the beginning, and she comes out strongly to challenge Mrs. Hilly’s opinion on having a separate bathroom for the maids (Pg. 9). She also was very fond of the maid who raised her, and they were great friends even she wrote to her when she was in college (Pg. 67). She was fair in dealing with the house help though they did not trust her at first, but later she won them over, and they made very profound contributions to her manuscript. She paid Aibileen for her time, and she was jubilant. She had helped her reach the other house helps in the region. She is the key mastermind of the revolution of the racial segregation and discrimination in the novel, and her efforts pay off at the end of the story when it ends on a reconciliatory note. She is one of the few examples of how collaborative working without racial discrimination could produce good results. The expose she was working on could not be successful without Skeeter working cohesively with the Blacks.
Meanwhile, as the plot develops the Blacks team up to end racial discrimination and segregation. All maids decided to help Skeeter to see if they would change their fate amidst a great risk of losing their employment. Through the publishing of Skeeter’s book, some like Aibileen won their freedom from their oppressive masters and started a new life. Notably, even the imprisoned Yule May writes a letter to Skeeter to share her story just to see things change. When Skeeter finally publishes her story, it had a profound effect on the plight of maids in the south, and they now had hope that things would change.
Some extremists like Minny decide to make a ‘special’ pie out of her excrement and insists that Hilly takes it. This was a stratagem to ensure that she felt even for how she had treated her. She cleverly devised this scheme to liberate herself from the guilt of forever having to be submissive to her racist master. She is also characterized to be very mouthy in the novel, and she spares no effort to justify herself. Her character made her lose over seventeen employers but amidst the struggle she finally meets Celia, who treats her well. For her, she becomes free of racial prejudice at her workplace.
It must have been hard for the blacks to live this way yet they had done nothing wrong but they struggled relentlessly and hoped for a better future. For over five decades since the time setting of the novel some people are still racist but today the president of the United States is a Negro, and this is a good indication that this war is near won.
Throughout the novel, racial discrimination has been the center of interest as described above. However, the author showed a bright future for those who fought to end this regressive culture. Aibileen and other help win their freedom for working with Skeeter, and they defeat their oppressors like Mrs. Hilly. Skeeter also makes a break through after working with the Blacks in her career. Celia and Minny relationship becomes strong, and they start to trust each other when they overlook their differences.
Kathryn Stockett contribution to ending the war on racial inequality is very insightful. She echoed the same theme Harper Lee expressed in her work ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ of racial discrimination (lee 1960). She explicitly tells the tale as a victim bringing out the retrogressive side of this development enemy and exposes the quandary of the Blacks during this dark period of their history. She also shows the great lessons and advantages of embracing egalitarianism in the society and the teething troubles of upholding racial discrimination.
The novel and Civil Rights Movement Era
The story was was set during the African American Civil Rights Movement between 1950 to mid-1960s. The theme, therefore, expressed in her novel directly corresponds to the struggles of the Blacks to end racial discrimination in the United States. The Jim Crow laws that suppressed the Blacks and put them in ‘equal but separate’ conditions can be in identified in this novel (Klarman 2004).
To fully understand how the novel relates to Civil Rights movement period, we can closely analyse how things were during this dark edition of Black’s life in the United States. The federal government had instituted laws ensured Whites received preferential treatment in any state facility than the non-whites (Pg. 172). The famous ‘Jim Crow’ era led to serious divisions amongst the United States citizens (Klarman 2004). Almost all public facilities were either labelled ‘Coloured’ and ‘Whites’ and though under the law they pretended to recognise the rights of the ‘coloured’ citizens, they underfunded their facilities (Shapiro 2004). There was an obvious difference in the preferential treatment of the White citizens in the way the government addressed their problems (Joseph 2006 – Write a paper; Professional research paper writing service – Best essay writers). Laws instituted and enacted under Jim Crow mandated exclusion of learning institutions, public places and public transportation (Bouie 2011). In some cases, bathrooms, eating places and drinking spouts for Whites and Blacks were separated and legally protected.
In her novel, Kathryn Stockett depicts the Blacks as lesser humans and are supposed to attend to all mean jobs in Whites households and their farms. The government seems to allow such preferential treatment to Whites. Laws existing are inclined towards exploiting the blacks and treating them as if they are lesser citizens. With time, the Blacks got fed up, and they sought liberation from social discrimination. They stood together to change things and that’s how civil rights and that is how Civil Rights Movement was founded to liberate them from the claws of exploitation and oppression (The rise of cultural and ethnic pluralism 2008 – Affordable Custom Essay Writing Service | Write My Essay from Pro Writers).
Skeeter visits the library to see if she could find a book that was related to racial segregation in the Mississippi. After a long search, she stumbles upon “Compilation of Jim Crow Laws of the South,” booklet. It contained very stringent laws on rules of conduct of how the blacks should relate with the Whites. The laws were not friendly, and they obviously seemed to favour the Whites. These laws were introduced long before the setting of the novel and for many years had beleaguered the blacks. These laws led to the Civil Rights Era that through series of legal battles was brought down in 1965.
The legal framework that existed disadvantaged the Negro. Hilly was pushing for an act that would require all Whites to build a separate bathroom for the maids in the whites’ household to be instituted (Pg.9). The Home Health Sanitation Initiative she is pushing for to be legalized cannot go through if there is no underlying mechanism that excuses it. Today such a regulation cannot be drafted because democracy in the United States is for all not for a certain race like what we witness in the novel. We can, therefore, surmise that the government allowed some of its citizens to be mistreated and protected those who did these inhumane actions. She drafts a law for so that all black maids use the separate bathroom to keep off contagious diseases. The Whites regarded the Blacks as dirty, and they were not worthy to share their bathrooms with them. Hilly refuses to use bathroom used by Aibileen (Pg. 185). Some even made sure they had their meals alone in the kitchen while in most cases they would serve the meals to the Whites on the dining table. What Hilly was doing was totally normal, and though she wanted a law to be drafted and instituted for this, it was legal in most southern states in America.
This struggle went on until 1965 when the Blacks’ revolution was won and they were recognised as equal citizens with the Whites under the law though the mistreatment did not end immediately but over time it went under the carpet.
Mrs. Hilly had her maid arrested and imprisoned for stealing her ring to raise tuition fees for her son (Pg. 250). This forms an example of how Blacks ended up in prison for small mistakes or rather an action that their livelihood depended on it. Four years in prison is a long time for stealing a ring to have the cash for school fees for your children. The crime was punishable by six months, but Hilly made sure she was sentenced to four years in a state penitentiary. She had approached Mrs. Hilly for some money to raise money for her sons but she refused. She was that mean. Putting someone in prison for doing something that her livelihood or that of his/her kids is very despicable yet this the way how some of the White masters treated their coloured helps. Some of these actions fuelled the war for equality and even from the movie we see the other maids joined Skeeter’s mission when Yule May was imprisoned for stealing that ring.
On the other hand, the Blacks treated the Whites with contempt and hatred. Skeeter found herself on a rather hot spot when she wanted to expose the plight of the Blacks. Though she was doing something to liberate the coloured helps she met a strong opposition from them just because she was White. The maids thought that she was not fit to address their problems yet she belonged to the class that oppressed them.Aibileen had to step in and help her to win the trust of the other maids to share their stories to Skeeter though she had refused to help her initially. So in the struggle for equal racial America there is the contribution of some Whites whose contribution has never been recognized.
Hilly takes two ‘special pies’ made specifically for her by Minny (Pg.339). Minny was callous to the Whites, and she plans revenge to make pies just for Hilly, which had faeces in them. This is the epitome of hatred and Minny carefully executes her plan, and she insists that she takes them. This was all because of the strained relationship that existed between the two ladies. Blacks maximised each chance to revenge against the Whites who they loathed. She detested Hilly so much that she made special pies for her out of poop. This did not make things between them better, but they felt a sense of justice for being mistreated and this was just one instance of Blacks’ revenge to the Whites especially during the Civil Rights Movements.
The laws that existed during this period obviously favoured the Whites but side-lined Blacks. In the novel, the Blacks are working in the fields of the Whites just as they were working during this period. Most women worked in the Whites’ household for peanuts, but they dared not do otherwise. They were ill-treated and viewed as dependants, thieves and stupid, but they endured all this to have means of survival.
Through put the novel there are a several instance that give a picture of how the Blacks related with the Whites before and during the Civil Rights Movement. The time setting of the novel reflects the Civil Rights Movement and it also represents the state of affairs during this period. In my view, it accurately gives a picture of the true state of affairs during this period. The Whites mistreated the Blacks and instituted laws that favour them and maliciously degraded the lives of the coloured citizens. The Blacks retaliate by fighting back like how the ill-treated house helps helped Skeeter pen the novel that would expose their struggle for equality and fairness in the society or in extreme cases they do what Minny did to Hilly by feeding her with pie made out of her poop.
Towards the end of the novel things change for the better. Minny secures a job with Celia, who is not a racist. Aibileen leaves the Leefolt to be a columnist. This signifies a better future for the blacks in the novel who had braved the odds and emerged victoriously. They refused to be intimidated and oppressed and through that they look up to tomorrow hopefully. As the novel comes to an end, the civil rights movement is also ending, and blacks start a new lease of life.
Civil rights movement was born to fight for the rights of the blacks (Klarman 2004). The government was not very supportive of their mission but united they pushed for the change of things. Until the liberation of the Negroes, most of them lost their lives in the struggle for equality and fairness. They were American citizens, and they wanted fair treatment from the government and the Whites. Blacks finally won the war after series of legal battles, but the journey to complete fairness had just begun. Most state and public resources were manned by the Whites leaving the Blacks the mean jobs.
Today the United States of America president is a Black American, Barack Hussein Obama. This shows a significant change of the states of affairs after five decades. The Civil Rights Movement has finally paid off. Blacks and other minority groups across the United States enjoy protection from racial prejudice and exploitation. The Jim Crow laws that exploited them have been abolished, and racial discrimination completely outlawed.
Stereotypes and Stereotyping
The communities discussed in the novel are believed to behave in a certain manner and to ascertain precisely if the novel was stereotypical, and we have to deduce evidence from the novel. In the novel, Black men are depicted as drunkards and often abusive. Leroy, Minny’s husband, is a drunkard and abusive. Though we cannot say that all Blacks are drunkards and abusive, but from the novel his character reflects the common belief that all Black men are drunkards and abusive. Though through the novel instances of Leroy are very few, he is also presented as absent and a passive member of the family. From the novel, we have an image of Black men as irresponsible, domineering, passive members of the family. This kind of image the author is making using Leroy is directly stereotypic as he is the representative of Black men in the novel.
The Black women in the novel are presented as maids and as the people who struggle for the basics. Though this was more likely in the sixties, it is currently not viable. They are employed by Whites who mistreat them, but they choose to stay so as to earn a livelihood. I think not all women in America even in the time setting of the novel who were struggling to earn a livelihood through being house helps. Some critiques of Stockett work view the idea of having Black women as maids as stereotypic (Valby, 2011). They did this to survive but the perception brought by the maids was that they were just maids for the Whites.
The Blacks especially the maids in the novel speak a funny dialect (Pg.443). Their pronunciation often brings a different meaning from the one intended. Skeeter must have had a rough time compiling their stories to write her book. Most of the maids if not all are not literate and their English is grammatically not correct; ronunciation of ‘law’ and ‘Lord’ is the same for Aibileen (Pg.121). This is a good example of stereotyping. The Blacks have been known to have a pronounced dialect when speaking and in the sixties due to high illiteracy levels of the Blacks their pronunciation was unmistakable. That dialect is what Blacks were identified with when talking and the author included it to help emphasize the naivety of the Blacks during this period.
On the other hand, the White women are depicted as weak, manipulative and conniving. Hilly suits this description for scheming to lay off the telps for participating in writing Skeeter’s book. They are very manipulative to survive, and this is evident when Aibileen refers Minny to Celia pretending to be Leefolt (Pg.25). She also looks up to the help to do the house chores. Celia employs a help to cook for her and ensure that her husband never discovers it. She does this behind her back to take the credit for cooking delicious meals. Elizabeth Leefolt also joins the list for giving up on parenthood to Aibileen to take care of her kid. Her daughter has stronger bonds with Aibileen than her mother and all these examples point out that the White women are weak, or rather a lazy manipulative and conniving. However, this might be a stereotype of White women of the sixties.
The White men are described as passive and elusive. Hilly’s husband leaves the room when Yule May, Hilly’s maid, requests loan and he adamantly refuses to discuss the issue with the women. He was avoiding the situation, and he runs away from it. If maybe he would have listened to her, she would have granted her a loan, and that would have saved her from going to the prison. They are passive in the affairs of running the house and throughout the novel we see them leaving the issue of handling of maids to their wives and do not directly participate in their affairs.
Women are supposed to do all the house chores and especially the cooking. Often, it is assumed that the kitchen is the place for the woman. In neoteric society, things have changed, and this is no longer the state of affairs. Men cook and do other house hold chores. The society in the novel seemed to place the woman in the kitchen. Mothers also want their daughters to be married and do the same thing (Pg. 55).
As illustrated above, the novel is stereotypic to all the categories of people represented in the novel. The author might have chosen this approach to ensure that the novel fitted a particular society and time period. Most of the people who have criticized this novel have had varied opinions on the perception of the author towards a particular category of people based on the stereotype. If any community or society feels targeted by Stockett’s literary work, it is because they have owned up some of the stereotypes about them either positively or negatively and are reacting to them as presented in the novel.
Conclusion
In conclusion, ‘The Help’ is a realistic novel that is based on the Civil Rights Movement era in the 1960s. The author addresses some important themes like racial discrimination and segregation, love/hate relationships and human oppression by fellow humans. The novel was not specifically targeting any community but to unravel the struggle the Blacks went through to earn justice. The untold stories of the Whites who were on the receiving end like Hilly for mistreating the Blacks are also brought to light. She also eulogises the unsung heroes and heroines who fought relentlessly for justice especially for the coloured Americans. In a nutshell, the novel contains invaluable lessons from the past and emphasizes the need for living in harmony with everyone irrespective of culture, skin colour, religion or ethnic background. For a country to move forward, all citizens should embrace nationalism and view racial diversity as a privilege to be preserved for future generations and eschew anything that would relinquish this.
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