Replies

I posted these rants non this book and movie the other day here given my loose personal connection to some of the characters...it should be mentioned that a few of my fellow Mississippians do not share my negative view of it all...for differing reasons...either too young to remember it as I do or remember class distinction negativity more painfully than do I

snip

I shudder to think about how Obama loving ..now totally northernized Kathryn Stockett ..the darling of the Atlantic crowd actually treats where I grew up.
My grandfather was a contemporary of her grandfather's and I duck hunted at the Caldwell place in Sidon Miss for over a decade as a teen with her dad Robert.
I can tell you having being surrounded by black help too as a boy that we did not treat our help that way at all and I doubt Robert Sr or Jr did either.

She makes a big deal about separate staff bathrooms and dishes...anyone here every been in a Manhattan mansion...I have...same thing...The Biltmore..same thing...Newport...same thing. Same thing about it's so awful to call them maids or help...geezuss how silly...I guess housekeeper is so much sweeter and all..like stewardess versus flight attendant..same job.
We have folks who come clean out house every two weeks...we have nothing for staff like that but were it a huge house it might come with it.
Kathryn Stockett moved to New York with serious issues with mom and dad who divorced and her brother who finds her a cultural traitor and wrote a book she thought would endear her to her new world and it worked.

I have read enough of the book to know it's just another “bad South” piece of tripe meant to make folks feel morally superior.
Not sure how the movie is but I can only imagine...I have heard black political groups feel it's not damning of whites enough and makes black men look bad.
Whatever..I'm over it...you the think the Old South was bad...come to Jackson proper now and enjoy...check out how all is now so much better since evil white folks have been driven from power there. It's a veritable paradise over on Lynch street. or Delta Drive

Sorry...not your fault...I just take this one personally...an honest movie about the transition of the South the past 50 years would be refreshing but will never happen...you are either gonna get this crap or Black Snake Moan or some other tripe...Steel Magnolias..though a chick flick was non offensive except for casting Olympia Dukakis

I read an interview with Robert Jr (lawyer and retired real estate guy who was very gutsy visionary sort) about his daughter Kathryn and her book...he wondered how could she write with such knowledge about something she based 10 years before her birth and that after she spent almost 20 years in Manhattan that she was a New Yorker now and “not one of us anymore”. When asked if he had her phone number, he said “no”. Kathryn now lives in Atlanta with her maiden name married with one kid to some computer guy from up north..ironic the name thing..estranged but keeps the name. Her family was never Klan...that woulda been so stupid...no way...they were many social rungs above that..her grandfather may have joined the Citizen's Council...not sure..many rich men did.

One of the maids is suing Kathryn for using her as an inspiration with no credit and her brother..a lawyer..is supposedly behind it...bad blood there...in that family. I don't know her..she was child when I was a mid teen and up..but her dad was nice enough and I participated in their wagon rides they had in the fall and everyone knew who they were because they had owned all the bottomland in downtown Jackson and the Interstate and fairgrounds and state bldgs and hotels came in and made them rich...folks knew her parents were estranged and her mom was beautiful but spirited and ..hmmm..hard to keep home at night...it's not easy to say really..anyhow...The Help comes from that..it's complicated but it's just comes across to me as another denunciation of a way of life I grew up with written for a purpose and feeds right into folks who believe these myths...myths designed to make them feel superior in their homogeneous enclaves outside the south and relieve whatever misplaced guilt those in the South harbor..obviously not me.

Where I grew up...folks who were nasty to their help were frowned upon...and I never once heard of sexual harassment of a black maid...lord they were usually rotund and excellent cooks...ridiculous but hardly sex objects to anyone this side of Tallulah Bankhead
This is a post I have meant to write over this book...not directed at you as a flame naps. I though about doing a thread on it to rant.

Rich folks everywhere with serious staff have separate bathrooms and often kitchens too ...it's not a race thing.
It's just a separation especially if they are live ins and works better really...gives them their private quarters.

We did not have that but my grandfather did...but no one would refuse them food or water on the fine china.

I don't have illusions either...especially now. I know this...however bad it was then...black culture was intact...black illegitimacy was only 20%...black crime and corruption was negligible except on Farish streets on Saturday nites..and I could have my car break down any where and all the city was safe.

Today it has all fallen apart.

It's difficult to judge really how much better is progress. We were never truly segregated and now we are not fully integrated...Jackson has resegregated with richer blacks joining whites on the perimeter or in pockets of the Northeast holdouts.

Every year exponentially more whites murdered or raped etc by blacks than the total of all blacks killed during everything from Reconstruction thru Jim Crow

so what did we really gain?

a clearer conscience..mine was fine already after New York

or a larger black middle class that votes for entitlements after decades of pundits assuring us that once opportunity and education gave them this they would adopt out values

hell they shared our values more when they were oppressed.

I never thought it would turn out like this...it's a very mixed bag and the future is grim.

Right now my kinfolks who stayed in Clinton are trying to get out because they see where it's headed...down...they don't know whether to go to Raymond or Madison...maybe down below Terry...

helluva way to live....it's like South Africa..staying ahead of the blight