The Help - dignity, respect and last names.
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I haven't seen The Help yet, or read the book. I may or may not do so. I haven't decided yet. So it would be impossible for me to write a review, and this isn't one.
It is however a commentary about feelings the discussion of the book and now film have raised in me, and others.
Both my grandmothers worked "in service". Yet there was a difference between the two of them. My grandmother who was white, was "Miss Bodine" and later when she married she was "Mrs. Oliver". My black grandmother was never given respect by white folks even when she married and retired from working as a maid, a seamstress, and then a cook. She would always be called simply "Ella Mae" by the white families that employed her, and any who came in contact with her. Never "Mrs. Roberts", except by black folks. Her husband would just be "George", as a Pullman porter - never Mr. Roberts.
The legacy inherited from the days of enslavement is still with us today. Few of us can say honestly that we have no relative, or ancestor who worked in service. And no matter what our response to the debate that now rages around the book and film, we can probably all agree that the women who nursed and raised other folks children, cleaned their homes, washed and ironed their clothes and cooked their food were never afforded the dignity of their full and equal womanhood.
When I decided to see what other black folks had to say about the book and the film - before spending my money - I stumbled across a blog post that I wanted to share with you all.
Sniffing Dirty Laundry: A True Story from “the Help’s” Daughter
I cannot quote the entire piece, but since the author encouraged other commenters to share as much as they liked - I will take that liberty.
She is the daughter of the black woman who worked for the now famous white author's grandmother.
Here is what that black woman had to say to the author of The Help.
“Have you ever thought about the fact that the woman you call ‘Odessa’ was the same woman my friends called ‘Mrs. Singley’? That she supported a family on the six dollars and bus fare (fifty cents round trip) your Grandmommy was paying her? That the woman you call your ‘best friend’ was forty years your senior and had another whole life of dignity, hopes, and dreams that had nothing to do with being in service to you and Grandmommy? That maybe “Odessa” didn’t like you as much as felt sorry for you because you were the baby of the family, the one your brother and sister slapped around, the one they were always leaving behind? You ever thought of that?”
She continues:
“And as for Grandmommy whose home was such a wonderful respite for you every summer, since we’re sharing stories, let me tell you exactly who Grandmommy was to me.”
I was fourteen when Congress was debating what they would pass the next year as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I was sure what they were talking about had something specifically and personally to do with me because we were discussing the same thing in school, too. So, our black segregated classroom conversation became the nail on which I hung the one thing that I knew definitely had to do—very specifically and very personally—with me. I was fed up with Grandmommy and the shitty way she treated Mama, most especially the six dollars and car fare slave wage (pardon the oxymoron) Grandmommy dispensed for an entire day of work she was too sorry to do for her own damn self much less her own family.
In my junior high class one day, we talked about how white folks insisted on being called “Mr. This” or “Mrs. That” while refusing to call black folks by anything except their first names. I brought that conversation home to our dinner table that night because that’s where we discussed the ways of white folks generally and specifically the ones whose houses Mama cleaned. Because, as she put it, they were constantly trying to find new ways to wipe their asses in her face. One of the ways they accomplished such a scatological result was that they always got to be “Mr.” and “Mrs.” while Mama got to be “Odessa.”
Please read the entire piece.
Most important is how she closed her conversation, with the white author about the role her white grandmother played in her life as a young black woman, daughter of the families maid.
“Remember how you said your grandfather Googled me and how he said wasn’t surprised at where I was or what I was doing because he always knew ‘that one was going to be somebody’? “Well, I owe it all to Grandmommy. She’s the one I have lived my total life in opposition to. Without her, I probably would’ve never made it this far. Grandmommy is the one who put a face to what I was up against as a poor, black Southern girl determined to make it in the world.
“If it hadn’t been for your Grandmommy, a mother who made it clear how far she was willing to go to step in the face of a black child to show me exactly what I could never hope to be; if it hadn’t been for that day she used the phone to pound me into submission, to show me where she intended to keep me and my kind forever; I might have lost sight of what I had to do to finally put Grandmommy in her place.
“So, the next time you visit Grandmommy’s grave, give her a message for me: Tell her Dr. Singley said, ‘Thank you.’”
Yes, many of us whose grandmother's labored as domestics went on to college, or grad school or to jobs not involved with cleaning someone's toilets. And some of us are now Doctor so and so, or at least Mrs. or Ms. But too many of us still have family that work in service professions - who still garner little or no respect. And too many of us no matter the title or letters after our names don't get it either.
Who bothers to thank the maid who cleans up the mess one makes in a hotel room?
Who thanks the woman who cleans up in a public bathroom? Who knows the proper name of the office cleaning woman?
I do.
Because of how I was raised.
Was I was a teenager my mom hired a woman to help out in our home. I called her Mrs. Jolley, as did my mother. We were raised to call no adult by a first name, unless aunt or uncle was the honorific attached.
We were taught respect. An etiquette that we were raised not to expect from those outside our community. To object could lose you your job, or get you killed.
Professor Ronald L. F. Davis discusses this history in Racial Etiquette: The Racial Customs and Rules of Racial Behavior in Jim Crow America.
Most southern white Americans who grew up prior to 1954 expected black Americans to conduct themselves according to well-understood rituals of behavior. This racial etiquette governed the actions, manners, attitudes, and words of all black people when in the presence of whites. To violate this racial etiquette placed one's very life, and the lives of one's family, at risk. Blacks were expected to refer to white males in positions of authority as "Boss" or "Cap'n"--a title of respect that replaced "Master" or "Marster" used in slave times. Sometimes, the white children of one's white employer or a prominent white person might be called "Massa," to show special respect. If a white person was well known, a black servant or hired hand or tenant might speak in somewhat intimate terms, addressing the white person as "Mr. John" or "Miss Mary."
All black men, on the other hand, were called by their first names or were referred to as "Boy," "Uncle," and "Old Man"--regardless of their age. If the white person did not personally know a black person, the term "nigger" or "nigger-fellow," might be used. In legal cases and the press, blacks were often referred to by the word "Negro" with a first name attached, such as "Negro Sam." At other times, the term "Jack," or some common name, was universally used in addressing black men not known to the white speaker. On the Pullman Sleeping cars on trains, for example, all the black porters answered to the name of "boy" or simply "George" (after the first name of George Pullman, who owned and built the Pullman Sleeping Cars).
Whites much preferred to give blacks honorary titles, such as Doctor, or Professor, or Reverend, in order to avoid calling them Mister. While the term "nigger" was universally used, some whites were uncomfortable with it because they knew it was offensive to most blacks. As a substitute, the word "niggra" often appeared in polite society.Black women were addressed as "Auntie" or "girl." Under no circumstances would the title "Miss." or "Mrs." be applied. A holdover from slavery days was the term "Wench," a term that showed up in legal writings and depositions in the Jim Crow era. Some educated whites referred to black women by the words "colored ladies." Sometimes, just the word "lady" was used. White women allowed black servants and acquaintances to call them by their first names but with the word "Miss" attached as a modifier: "Miss Ann," "Miss Julie" or "Miss Scarlett," for example. This practice of addressing blacks by words that denoted disrespect or inferiority reduced the black person to a non-person, especially in newspaper accounts. In reporting incidents involving blacks, the press usually adopted the gender-neutral term "Negro," thus designating blacks as lifeless and unknown persons. For example, an accident report might read like this: "Rescuers discovered that two women, three men, four children, and five Negroes were killed by the explosion." In general, blacks and whites could meet and talk on the street. Almost always, however, the rules of racial etiquette required blacks to be agreeable and non-challenging, even when the white person was mistaken about something. Usually it was expected that blacks would step off the sidewalk when meeting whites or else walk on the outer street side of the walk thereby "giving whites the wall." Under no circumstances could a black person assume an air of equality with whites. Black men were expected to remove their caps and hats when talking with a white person. Those whites, moreover, who associated with blacks in a too friendly or casual manner ran the risk of being called a "nigger lover."
I lived through the step off the sidewalk era. I'm still living in the hazardous "breathing and walking while black or brown" era.
While I was searching for other responses to the film - I found this clip of commentary by Professor Melissa Harris Perry
I'm sure she - like the rest of us has domestic workers in the family tree.
There are times when people here level charges against Black American Kossaks who bristle at the way the President is referred to. Those of us who object are then accused of being uncritical of certain administration policies. Nothing could be further from the truth.
What I don't think people understand is what it is like to live in a world where you don't merit respect simply because of the color of your skin. We do. We see daily that if even the highest office in this land will not garner that respect - what hope is there for the rest of us?
Will we forever be "Annie" or "Odessa" or "Maria" or "George" or perhaps just boy or girl even if a man or woman full-grown?
All I can say is - the Help has stirred up a hornets nest in the black blogosphere.
If you are interested in other opinions you can start here:
A Critical Review of the novel The Help, and follow the links.
Frankly, I really don't give a damn if Hollywood makes twenty more maid, mammy, chauffeur films. They know what sells.
What I do care about is building a world where people of whatever color or station in life merit respect - and a surname.
I don't think that is too much to demand from anyone.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Historically Black universities could become more reluctant to accept students who score poorly on law school entrance exams, critics fear. BET: Will Higher Standards for the Bar Exam Mean Fewer Blacks in the Legal Field?
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The American Bar Association, the accrediting agency for U.S. law schools, is considering a new proposal that will require law school graduates to score higher on the bar examination, which could in turn impact the number of minorities practicing in the field of law, The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reports.
In 2007 the ABA required that for a law school to remain in good standing, at least 75 percent of graduates must pass the bar exam in the state where the school is located in at least three of the past five years, the report states. Law schools can maintain good standing if their first-time bar passage rate is not more than 15 percentage points lower than other law schools in that state, the report adds.
The proposed requirements would raise the bar passage rate to 80 percent or no more than 10 points lower than other law schools in that state. The difficulty of bar exams varies from state to state.
Many college deans, especially those at historically Black universities, fear that in order to meet those standards, universities will be less likely to admit students from disadvantaged backgrounds who typically score lower on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT).
LeRoy Pernell, dean of College of Law at historically Black Florida A&M University, is one of those deans speaking out about the potential impact on incoming Blacks to the field of law.
“When the statistics tell you that virtually every Black college will be in noncompliance, it’s a matter of grave concern,” Pernell told the National Law Journal.
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Duchess Harris "For 20 years I have read how Black women felt alienated by the second wave of feminism, but because I was born during this time period, I never “felt” it until the 2008 Presidential election." Race-Talk: Kathryn Stockett needs help
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It started with the extremely unpleasant showdown between Gloria Steinem and Melissa Harris Lacewell, (now Perry) surrounding Steinem’s NY Times Op Ed about then-Senator Barack Obama.
“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. …He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
And even now that we have an elegant Black First Lady, our popular culture obsession is with the “largely fictional” book, The Help. Sounds like an opportune moment for second wave feminists to engage in some serious deconstructionist critical analysis.
Or maybe not.
I recently purchased a copy of the New York Times best-selling novel with an open mind despite its criticism. I assumed the book would be racially problematic, because for me, most things are.
The first chapter is in the “voice” of a Black maid named Aibileen, so I hoped that the book would actually be about her. But this is America, and any Southern narrative that actually touches on race has to focus on the noble white protagonist (in this case, Miss Skeeter, in To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch) to get us through such dangerous territory.
As a Black female reader, I end up felling like the “help,” tending to Miss Skeeter’s emotional sadness concerning the loss of her nanny (whom she loved more than her own White momma).
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'For black Britons, life seemingly improved but has steadily descended again.' Guardian: For black Britons, this is not the 80s revisited. It's worse
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This is not 1981. Nor 1985. As has been pointed out over the past few days, things have changed a lot since the "inner-city unrest" – as it was quaintly named back then – erupted in Brixton, Tottenham, Toxteth, Handsworth and other parts of Britain.
But with each passing day, the old maxim, "The more things change, the more they stay the same", has increasing relevance. In the 80s, as now, rioting was sparked by a confrontation between black people and the police and spread to the rest of the country, including to "white" areas. In 1981, the Conservative prime minister dismissed suggestions that the Brixton riot was due to unemployment and racism. Time proved that she was badly wrong. But fast forward three decades, and David Cameron tells the House of Commons that this week's rioting was "criminality, pure and simple".
In the years up to 1981, tension had been building between black people and the police over the "sus" laws, which gave officers powers to arrest anyone they suspected may be intending to steal. For them, a black youngster glancing at a handbag was enough. After Brixton, this law was repealed. Today, however, black people are seven times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched. And under the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act – which allows police to search anyone in a designated area without specific grounds for suspicion – the racial discrepancy rises to 26 times. This is symptomatic of the many ways in which, for black Britons, life seemingly improved but has steadily descended again.
In 1985 there was not a single black MP. The main community voice came from Bernie Grant, then leader of Haringey council. Grant became a media hate figure in the aftermath of the Tottenham riot in which an officer had been killed, when he quoted youngsters gloating that the police had had "a bloody good hiding". However, his connection with local people made him hugely popular and two years later he was elected MP. Similarly, Paul Boateng, who had been a campaigning civil rights lawyer, greeted his own election the same night by declaring: "Today Brent South, tomorrow Soweto."
Today we have a dozen black MPs, including some in the Conservative party, but their backgrounds are a million miles from the community activism of their predecessors. Today's crop, well groomed in spin, ensure they remain on message. "I'm not a black MP, just an MP who happens to be black," is their common refrain. Aside from Diane Abbott (also of the class of 87), can anyone imagine them speaking with the passion of a Grant or Boateng? In the late 80s there were black leaders in three London boroughs. Now there are none. So who, today, speaks for black people?
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On Wednesday the BBC apologized for what they called a “poorly-phrased question” that a news anchor asked during a live interview with Darcus Howe, a community leader and writer who was commenting on the riots. Colorlines: BBC (Sort of) Apologizes for Accusing Darcus Howe of Rioting in London
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In the video clip that’s been seen close to two-million times around the world, Howe was standing in the aftermath of the riots in Croydon when BBC News anchor Fiona Armstrong asked him a loaded question. ”You are not a stranger to riots yourself I understand, are you? You have taken part in them yourself,’ the anchor asked.
”I have never taken part in a single riot. I’ve been part of demonstrations that ended up in a conflict,” Howe responded. “Stop accusing me of being a rioter and have some respect for an old West Indian Negro, because you wanted for me to get abusive. You just sound idiotic — have some respect.”
On Wednesday, the news agency began back tracking. ”We’d like to apologize for any offense that this interview has caused,” the BBC said, reports The Telegraph.
The BBC said Armstrong had no intention of showing Howe any disrespect and that the questions were intended to gauge his reaction to the events.
On Tuesday, the Independent Police Complaints Commission released initial findings of their investigation of the shooting of Mark Duggan, the north London man whose shooting by police sparked London’s riots. Duggan did not fire a shot at police officers before they killed him.
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African-American homosexual men, who make up half of the new HIV cases in America, require multifaceted efforts in diagnosing HIV, a new study reports. BET: HIV Diagnosis in Black Men Varies on Testing Method, Study Finds
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Diagnosing African-American men with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can vary depending on the type of test administered, a new study in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine has found.
The findings are based on a multiyear report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which found an alarming spike in new cases of HIV among Black homosexual men—nearly 50% of all new cases in the U.S. between 2006 and 2009.
These startling numbers prompted researchers to look at three methods of diagnosis in order to learn which was most effective, including:
— Partner services, which involves identifying, locating and interviewing HIV-infected persons to provide names and contact information of their sex and needle-sharing partners, notifying partners of their exposure to HIV and providing HIV counseling, testing and referral services to those partners;
— Alternative venue testing, in which rapid HIV testing is conducted in bars, churches or mobile units;
— The social networks strategy, where HIV testers engage HIV-positive individuals to become "recruiters." Through active enlistment and coaching processes, staff build relationships and help recruiters engage people in their social circles into HIV testing.
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New research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that blacks under the age of 50 actually do much worse on dialysis than equally sick whites who undergo the same treatment process. Nephrology News: Young black patients on kidney dialysis do much worse than white counterparts
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The findings, called "surprising" by the Johns Hopkins research team, could have a serious impact on long-held practices guiding who gets referred for lifesaving kidney transplantation and who remains on dialysis indefinitely, the researchers said.
For years, medical studies have reached the same conclusion: black patients do better on kidney dialysis than their white counterparts. But previous research on this issue, according to the Hopkins team, has been based on analysis of racial differences in dialysis outcomes for all patients with end-stage kidney disease, a majority of whom are over the age of 50.
The new analysis continues to show a survival benefit for black patients over 50, though not a large one. But when the investigators looked at racial differences stratified by age, they found that the population-based analyses were camouflaging the fact that younger black patients do much worse on dialysis than white patients with a similar health status.
Results of the new study of 1.3 million patients with end-stage kidney disease, led by Dorry L. Segev, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, show that black patients between the ages of 18 and 30 are twice as likely to die on dialysis than their white counterparts; and those ages 31 to 40 are 1.5 times as likely to die.
"As a medical community, we have been advising young black patients of treatment options for kidney failure based on the notion that they do better on dialysis than their white counterparts," Segev says. "This new study shows that, actually, young blacks have a substantially higher risk of dying on dialysis, and we should instead be counseling them based on this surprising new evidence."
In patients ages 18 to 30, the study found that 55% of white patients got new kidneys during the study period of 1995 to 2009, while only 32% of comparable black patients got transplants. Meanwhile, 28% of young black patients died on dialysis during the study period and only 14% of white patients died.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
Loss and separation and a long walk across a far bridge to an empty bandstand in a forgotten park. A coastal wind blows through juniper and pine, conjuring the scent of a distant past. Waves crashing on the rocks below the precipice beat out a steady and familiar rythmn; and memory becomes a fading melody.
Blues for Almost Forgotten Music
I am trying to remember the lyrics of old songs
I’ve forgotten, mostly
I am trying to remember one-hit wonders, hymns,
and musicals like West Side Story.
Singing over and over what I can recall, I hum remnants on
buses and in the car.
I am so often alone these days with echoes of these old songs
and my ghosted lovers.
I am so often alone that I can almost hear it, can almost feel
the half-touch of others,
can almost taste the licked clean spine of the melody I’ve lost.
I remember the records rubbed with static and the needle
gathering dust.
I remember the taste of a mouth so sudden and still cold from
wintry gusts.
It seemed incredible then — a favorite song, a love found.
It wasn't, after all.
Days later, while vacuuming, the lyrics come without thinking.
Days later, I think I see my old lover in a café but don’t,
how pleasing
it was to think it was him, to finally sing that song.
This is the way of all amplitude: we need the brightness
to die some.
This is the way of love and music: it plays like a god and
then is done.
Do I feel better remembering, knowing for certain
what’s gone?
-- Roxane Beth Johnson
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