Feminism In The Help

Use the other door. Don’t touch the white folk, they think we have diseases. Don’t make eye contact for too long. Never hand them their coffee. Don't tell them how to treat their babies. Don’t react when they hit ‘em, even if that baby feels like your own. Don’t miscount the silver. Use the bathroom outside. Don’t fight back. Don’t fight back. Don’t fight back. In the 1960’s, racism, sexism, classes, and many other evils hung low in the air like a heavy fog. People of color in the South especially, were oppressed in so many forms. They were oppressed due to their race, their financial status, job opportunities, and gender. The list could go on and on. In The Help, all of the main characters experienced all of these, until a white woman
She is gathering black women in secret to share and record their stories of oppression as black help in the South. The reader might argue that change and commotion on the subject only arose because a white woman brought it up, or started the dialogue, but the same can be said about women's suffrage 40 years prior. That women were only granted rights because of men...but in reality if it weren't for those men, women's equality wouldn’t have been an issue in the first place. The same goes for the white people in The Help. If the white folk hadn’t built racist social constructs against them, black folk would already have been equal in the community. Skeeter using her voice as a white female was just another way for the black help to preach through her.“Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought.” The author was using the main white character, an equalist, as a way to strengthen the voices of the oppressed and convey her message to the reader. Social constructs built around minorities, can be demolished from the inside out, the other way around would have been ignorant hypocrisy on the authors, and histories