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.
>>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
I taught 3 years at Wingfield High School in Jackson, you know, the hellhole on Raymond Road, and I can say that the hard-working blacks are FEVERISHLY TRYING TO GET OUT OF JACKSON. Jackson politics is a joke.
I lived in a neighborhood in Byram that was half black and white. No crime, no loud music, and no loud parties, because the black community on that street would deal with any section 8/renters that end up there.
What is immensely sad is the kids that I taught in Wingfield and the total abdication of responsibility by the black leadership of Jackson. The black leadership of JPS (Jackson Public Schools) gets a $150 million dollar bond issue passed to rebuild schools, and guess what happens? $30 million of it disappears by the end of the year. The superintendent resigns after spending hundreds upon thousands defending himself legally from a principal that he sexually harassed. Peeples Middle gets left in its decrepit state (with cracks down the middle of concrete ceilings, reflecting the moral cracks that caused 9th grade girls to walk into my classroom with cute pictures of their 3 year old children).
You want to help and push these kids into a life of happiness and self-responsibility, and some of the kids get it, BUT THEY DON’T see this in the black leaders around them. The kids know that the mayor and city council are a bunch of money grubbers that get millions a year and leave Raymond road still looking like a hellhole.
And the hard-working blacks run off to Rankin, Madison, and southern Hinds county as fast as they can. God bless the ones that get out of Jackson and God save the ones that are still in Jackson.
> Not sure how the movie is but I can only imagine <
A guy that graduated from Murrah a couple of years ahead of Kathryn’s dad told me the other day that he’d seen the movie and that it was “not as bad” as the book.
I guess that’s what you’d call damning with faint praise!
I didn't get that, at all, from the book. I'm certain there were some folks who DID treat their 'help' in a very snooty manner. And it's no stretch to believe that there were separate bathrooms for the 'help', considering there were separate public bathroom facilities for 'coloreds', in the South at the time.
I have no illusions about the South of my youth. I'm sure that there were many who looked down on their 'help', treating them badly, just as I'm sure there were many who treated them well. I was only 10 when the three civil rights workers were murdered, so I wasn't that aware, politically, of what was going on, since my family was not of the socioeconomic class that employed regular 'help'. I do remember my Mama hiring a young black woman to do some ironing for us, but that was only for a few weeks, after the birth of my youngest sister. I don't remember the young lady at all, since I was always in school, when she came, but I don't remember Mama ever saying anything about her not using our bathrooms. I can't imagine that Mama would have done that, since neither she, nor my Daddy, ever had that attitude about black people.
My wife’s sister graduated form Prep with her (Stockett).
I read quite a bit of the book, but had a hard time with it. Since you are from Jackson, I’m glad to read your perspective.
I didn’t recognize many things that Stockett wrote about.
We bought a very old home in NC to remodel. It had a bathroom for “the help” and a butler’s bell in the dining room floor. So, I guess she wasn’t totally making up stuff. However, this home was so old that she wasn’t even a gleem in her grandmother’s eye at the time.
I’m going to be out of town for a while...just so you know. It’s good to see you. ;o)