The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression
Of late, the most influential situation regarding prejudice was in the movie, The Help. If you have seen this movie, you know what I am talking about. If you have not seen it, I encourage you to watch it with an open mind and open heart.
The movie is based on a book that was written by a white author, however, the stories in the book are all told by black "maids" from the South in a time when segregation was still abundant.
With that said, you can imagine the types of prejudice, bias and oppression that were described and acted out in this movie. From major racial slurs, to out right mean and hatred for black people is all riddled throughout this movie.
For the most part, I cried during this movie. I have never seen such a moving expression of how people can be so unloving and hurtful to another human being just because of their race. These "maids" were made to use an outhouse to relieve themselves, eat in the kitchen and never with white people, and basically take abuse and racial slurs from their bosses just to keep their jobs.
Usually when I watch this type of movie I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame that my "white" ancestors would treat other human beings this way. I know it was another time; another world. However, it does still exist today in some parts of our country.
I can only hope that a movie such as this was an eye-opener for others. I can only hope that we are a country can learn to love and respect each others differences.
I found the movie The Help to be both inspiring and sad at the same time. The situations that occured in the movie were true dipictions of life for African American women during that time. Although I laughed and cried during the movie, I also felt a sense of encouragement and triumph. This movie was definitely added to my collection. Great Post!
ReplyDeleteBeau, I am glad that you watched the movie and had the reaction that you did. The Help was a good movie that told of the incidents that happened to African Americans during those times. It was downgrading how my people were treated during those times and I am glad the author had the courage to tell the story to bring awareness to the mistreatment. I had moments when I cried but there were also moments of laughter-especially with the pie. It was disgusting but still funny.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote a great post. I hope that our country can learn to accept others and cancel all biases; but we still have a lot of racist activities continuing in the country so it's not likely gonna be in our life time. Janine