youwereamazingtoday:

I have no problem with ‘The Help.’ In fact, I loved it. I’m a black woman whose grandmother worked in a white household from the thirties through the sixties until a (SHOCKER) white woman she’d befriended offered her a job as a secretary at a hospital.

I’m not getting why black people feel like this being written by a white woman is an example of OH GOD WHITE PEOPLE TRYING TO TELL HOW IT WAS. It’s just a book. It’s just a movie. It’s based loosely on some things that the author observed years ago.

Maybe I’m way off base. I’ve already been told I’m not ‘black enough’ so maybe that’s my issue. I’ve read all the articles and arguments and recaps of rage, and I just want to tell everyone to calm down because it’s not called ‘The Help: An Actual Account of How Life Most Definitely and Exactly Was for All Blacks and Whites in the South.’

I think if anyone is telling you that you shouldn’t like the book or the movie, they need to stfu. Other people don’t get to tell you how to feel about the story. On the other hand, I also really understand why people dislike it so much for the way it still manages to put a white woman at the center of a story about race even though The Help is ostensibly a story about a group of black women. So, you know, just as it’s crappy that people have told you you’re not “black enough” (damn that is fucked up), maybe telling people who were hurt by the book to calm down isn’t so great :/