airellia:

karnythia:

socalfeminist:

karnythia:

socalfeminist:

karnythia:

emilytheslayer:

coldbitterness:

shewentthere:

socalfeminist:

If you know your basic history then the issues inherent in White Mary Sue profits from the lives of black women shouldn’t need an explanation. Newsflash, at no point in the Civil Rights Movement did a plucky white woman’s giggle mean more than the work put in by actual black people. For that matter, the problems inherent in the need to have a white woman “translate” the words of black women for white audiences should be clear too. Mammy isn’t real, black domestics didn’t love the people doling out the dehumanizing treatment (and that includes their children), or being paid less than a dollar a day for backbreaking work. That’s before we get into the sexual violence that so many black domestics faced in these homes, or what it cost their families to never have mommy around because she had to work 12 hour days just to keep food on the table. This romanticized portrayal of Jim Crow is appalling on so many levels & every time someone buys into it a little bit more of the reality of life as a black woman in the South gets erased. The only reason black actresses in this movie took these parts is because this is what was on offer for them this year in Hollywood. The woman who’s name is used for this piece of trash is suing the author. At the time this book was set there were black women writing & publishing books about their lives. There is no way these black women would have been unaware of that fact so the “feminist community” you speak of is impossible as long as people keep pretending that black women (who have for the record written books about the reality of being a domestic), have no voice or agency and need some white woman to speak for them & take the money, the credit, and the fame? That’s not community. That’s white feminists once again oppressing WOC.

^ This last bit sums up my problem with it. 

Also, this: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/family-maid-files-suit-against-author-of-the-help/

“Ms. Stockett herself has acknowledged the risks of putting that into words, especially given that the book is mostly narrated by black women, and she is white.”

So why did she do it if she knew it was problematic? Ugh too white savior for me. No thanks.