I do think "The Help" helps

I finished "The Help" a few days ago, but I've been sort of processing what I want to say about it. First off, let me preface this as such, I,
as perhaps the whitest girl alive, (I'm almost clear) have no idea, nor would I presume to know what it's like to be black in any era, much less
at the height of the civil rights movement. Also, I somewhat agree with the criticism that it's slightly egotistical for a white affluent female
author knows much more than I do about the subject. For that matter, she and I, as white women growing up in Mississippi, would probably struggle to find common ground.

That being said, I thought it was a good book. Certain parts made me cringe and wish I had been alive during that time, as I like to believe
I would've been "Skeeter" or someone similar, trying to spotlight the often ill treatment of the maids that kept the South running. I will say
that I think reviews like "If you only read one book let this be it," are vastly overblown. This is no "To Kill a Mockingbird." I'm sorry, but
other than the fact that they are both books set in the South, the similarities end there.

I know there's been controversy surrounding the book and the movie about perpetuating stereotypes and keeping black women in the outdated state of servitude and complacence. After hearing all of that, I guess I expected something different when I read the book. I couldn't disagree more with the notion that it portrays black people unfairly. If anything, white people come out looking like complete buffoons and frankly, uptight bitches. I would've much rather hung out with Minny and Aibileen than Hilly and Elizabeth, although Celia would've probably been a hoot, too, until she drank too much and threw up on me.

I think the thing that reviewers outside the South might not understand is that, as a Southerner, even in 2011, some of us recognize some of these characters and their behavior. If you visit Macon, MS where I grew up, you'll feel like you stepped into a time warp. People there still use "help," and I can confirm in some cases, they aren't treated much differently than they might've been in 1963. I'm not trying to malign
the modern South, but race relations in the South are still about 50 years behind race relations elsewhere, and that may be the sticking point to remember.

I found the book fairly poignant about how different people from different walks of life can come together and change things.
If no other message is taken away, take that one. If that weren't the case, where would our country be? Would Barack Hussein Obama be President? Hardly. And who was his closest competitor for the Democratic nominee? A woman. That, too, would've been unheard of, but that's a different cause for a different day.

I know we can never be colorblind, we can also never be class-blind, disability-blind, or gender-blind, to name a few. But I think that at
least the discussion of these issues is a good start towards maybe going from blind to just myopic or near-sighted. That's my hope anyway.