Not long ago one of the most powerful woman in the book publishing industry, ever, (white, now retired) confessed to me that inside "the incredible whiteness of publishing" (her usage), there is no one who is going to champion a story about "intelligent, educated, morally upstanding, self-loving, each-other-loving African Americans." I thought of this woman not long ago when my daughter emailed me a link to a New York Times OP-ED article on "The Help."
"One of the most noteworthy movies of the summer. . ." the Times article called it. "Set in Jackson, Miss., in the early 1960s, it focuses on the relationships between white upper-middle-class women and the black domestics who took care of them and their children."
My daughter knew I was not going to go see the movie, just as I don't watch TV shows in which children are physically abused or women are raped. They make me feel that I want to rush the screen to stop it. So I will leave my own living room if these scenes come on TV. Yes, I know that things like abuse and rape happen but I'd rather not watch them.
The Times piece says: . . . the movie reinforces stereotypes about black Southern households. The black heroines speak with a dialect that disturbs some viewers; the audience never sees an intact black household, and a black man's abuse of his wife is all the more chilling because we never see him, only the pots he hurls and the scars he leaves."
Films like "The Help" seem only one step removed from the TV scenes I don't want to watch. These films contain black people's image being, if not raped at least, distorted. The films are not really as bad as a child being physically abused but I do think of the psychological damage to a lot of black children, and the rest of the world, resulting from being treated to yet another powerful story that does not dramatize black folk as intelligent, educated, self-loving and each-other loving humans.
There are hundreds of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) that have been pouring out educated citizens by the thousands each year for more than a century. For perhaps a half century large state universities have increased the flow -thousands each year-- and now elite and other private universities turn out thousands more. Few of them ever work in anyone's kitchen but their own.
They are part of the black heritage too. Until some stories (just some) about them coming out of the story-industries of our nation -publishing, film, and television-- we are perpetrating a fraud that diminishes the motivation of African American youngsters and does immeasurable harm to the truth we need to set the nation free from the guilt/blame reaction that blocks our path to true post-racialism.
I am not saying anything bad about people who earn a living as "the help." Coming up in the South in the 40s and 50s I worked as a busboy at several racially segregated restaurants. I knew many people in my father's churches who worked as help. I loved many of them. They were among the "villagers" that raised me. They all had intact households.
I am simply saying that within the "incredible whiteness" of decision-making circles in the film and television industry there ought to be someone who will step up and champion a balancing set of images. Or a network that presents a balanced view.
Blacks in the present film/TV industry say "They (the decision makers) do it because stories about "intelligent, educated black folk won't sell." Wrong! "The Cosby Show" was the top TV show in America for 6 years in a row during the 1980s.
At that time some of my black friends complained that this show about the Huxtables, with a black doctor as husband and black lawyer as wife, was unrealistic." But the Huxtables are in the White House. (The youngest Obama daughter even reminds me of little, newsy Rudy Huxtable.)
So how unrealistic could it have been? Isn't it better to have the images of intelligent, educated, self-loving and each-other loving black folk as the self-fulfilling prophecy for our children rather than yet another film like "The Help."
George Davis is professor emeritus at Rutgers University and the creator of the 5-book, interactive, world-sourced, digital series, Barack Obama, America and the World.
