The work that I will be examining for injustice, power, and identity is the movie The Help directed by Tate Taylor based on Kathryn Stockett’s novel. If you’ve ever seen this movie you know from the start the vast amount of injustice occurring to African Americans. This movie takes place during the early civil rights movement in Jackson, Mississippi where slavery was supposed to be over with. That did not stop white people from treating their help so poorly.
A vast amount of the movie is based around racial segregation. One of the bigger concepts that shows injustice and racial segregation is when one of the main character Miss Hilly influences her many white friends that their African American maids/help need to have their own bathroom. Her reason for this racist action was because African American carry diseases that white people do not.
Another form of injustice is where it is unacceptable for the help to eat with the families they work for. The help knows they are meant to be treated poorly and work for little money. One of the maids, Minny happened to work for Miss Celia in which she was not racist at all. She did not treat her by the color of her skin as the other families she had worked for did. The injustice action towards African Americans is so common that Minny is unsettled that Miss Celia eats with her, lets her use her bathroom, doesn’t abuse her, and considers Minny a friend.
African Americans truly have their identity stripped away from them because they are made to be obedient to these rules set by white people. Skeeter a young main character who is not racist writes a novel exposing all of the maid’s stories of being mistreated from the families they work for. By listening to their stories and watching all the maids interact, their true identities are shown. This is because they feel comfortable being around maids that are in the same situation and trust Skeeter to keep their identities a secret in her book.
I believe that the creator wants us to take away from The Help is the history during this time. African American were truly stripped away from their identity. They had little to no power against white people. The injustice during the time was very unfortunate and unfair but we still see injustice in today’s society for African Americans. Even with slavery being done away with, white people stayed with their traditions of treating their help poorly. All they needed was that one person to help them get their stories out and that was Skeeter.