Rewatch the Help + Elite Boarding Schools

Yue X.
Yue X.
Jul 28, 2017 · 5 min read

Recently I have spent more time in my head and consuming a lot of tv. I guess that’s the state when you finish college and are experiencing identity crisis. I am for sure in a crisis, partly it has to do with the entertainment industry and media. Wherever I look, I see no one like me. NO ONE. I literally cannot watch Hollyhood movies without feeling my blood boiling. Wonder Woman came out and all I can think about is great, another example for white feminists to scream progress. NO NO and NO! Where are my black and brown women? Where are Latino women? Where the hell are Asian women? I cannot stand with the idea of an Asian women waiting to be saved by yet another white man who does nothing but exoticize her. I just cannot stand this mindset of letting white women get their equality first and then women of color could maybe one day get equality. The intersection of racism and sexism, along with a lot of other -isms is a lot to carry for women of color.

Roxane Gay talks a lot about race and the entertainment industry in her book Bad Feminist and one of her essays are on the movie the The Help and the idea of the magical N*****. It was basically a prototype of black charaters in Hollywood movies where there is little nuance to these black characters and their sole goal of existence is to help the lost white characters find their ways. I was facsinated by the idea so I decided to rewatch the movie.

I first read the Help as part of my summer reading assignment from my boarding school in the South. The following summer, I went to see the movie with my friends. I was really moved by the movie at the time. It moved and shocked me that I was in fact, in the South and that people were treated with little to no dignity. However, I felt a bit relieved from the humanity of the narrative. Even though the helps had to raise white children, their bonds with the white family gave me some hope for race relations.

Call my cynical if you will. I don’t feel this way after watching the Help again. There was a lot of wistful thinking in my understanding of the movie. First off, those white families did nothing to fight the system of oppression imposed on these black women. NOTHING. One of the “touching” stories shared by one of the helps was about a shortcut that the help takes to work and her boss bought the fields for twice the market price when he heard that she was threatened by the previous land owner. Her boss bought the land so that she could continue to take the shortcut to work. Ok. Very moved but it just reminds of how often white people pet themselves on the back when they do something decent. Let me break this down for you: the help was pointed by a gun by a white man. We could say she was transposing, but if she were white, that men would not threaten her life with a gun. The help works Monday through Saturday from 9am to 4pm and was being below minimum wage. Jim Crow was very in tact. The boss bought the land. Nice. So what? The boss did not protest to change the segregation. He did not pay her much. The system stayed and here we are today with th esmae income gap between the white and the black. Wealth accumulates. Generations of wealth accumulations leads to where we are today.

Skeeter’s help (nanny) Constantine was the magic n****. She has to keep working for this white family. She comforts Skeeter when she is rejected by the boys from her high school. She tells Skeeter that she is pretty and that she is go on to do big things. Great. At the same time Constantine lives in the segregated south and does not really have any choice but to work as a help. I mean, it makes me cringe that Constantine’s expereinces the most pain when Skeeter’s mom kicks her out and that she has to go and live wtih her daughter in Chicago. It was as if the best life Constantine could ever have is with the white family, as their help, because Constantine does not have ambitions or want to do more with her life. The most inspirational thing she could be is to be of the support of Skeeter.

Now I am going to talk about one of the favorite charaters: Skeeter. I full-heartedly can see why people connect with her: she’s a bit quirky, she goes against the norm a bit: she does not marry a man in college, she has a job, she wants to do something for the help, she is awkward, her hairy is really curly as curly hair is not attractive, she has trouble finding a man who appreciates her talents and who she truly is. I even connect with her for a bit. I mean, she seems to be a feminist and I whole-heartly support ambitious women. She also makes me sigh. She reminds of those liberals who say the right things, go to the right protest, has black friends (or awkwardly her maid Constantine). She lives on a plantation (a farm?). All the workers are black. Is it just so awkward? Where does the land come from and again, wealth accumulation? She reads the Jim Crow and decides to continue with her project. She is going to be fine if she gets caught because she’s white. Yes, her social life is ruined but how does that compare to the help losing their lives because of the project? I am not sure about the historical accuracy or the wistfulness of the narrative. I feel complicated about Skeeter because she reminds me of a lot of modern day liberals and particularly those who have the access to elite education.

The same night I watched the Help, I also found out about this video:

https://youtu.be/LuM_L6pRowk

It was a video produced by an Afro-Latino group at Philips Exeter Academy, one of the top boarding schools in the nation. The video exposes both microaggression in the classroom and also more than one incidences when N word was used and targets racialized and sexist messages against a girl. I just want to closely examine elite bording schools. Most of these institutions especially the ones in New England area are known to be liberal. However, elite education does not mean active removal of an oppressed system. Instead, some of these institutions facilitate raciest system by sending the already most wealthy and most powerful to elite high education institutions. Yes, we have affirmative action, but is it enough? If in high school, there’s alreay the exclusivity to certain groups of people and it is okay for them to target the marginalized on the same campus with little consequence, how do we even imagine the post-racial society? The implicit racism dwelling within the elite institutions are not going anywhere. How do we create space for the undrepresented on elite schools so that they don’t have to white wash themselves in order to fit in? How do we reconcile classism intertwined with racism, sexism and more?

Yue X.

Written by

Yue X.

a feminist and a woman in a color trying to outlive the whiteness in the work place. Reflecting, always.

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