The Help

Looking back, I should have followed my initial black feminist inclination to skip out on seeing a Tyler Perry approved film about race and gender in America. I feared that The Help would follow the trite “white person saves poor black person/people” storyline that characterizes too many Hollywood films. Ultimately, I realized that it wasn’t fair for me to critique a film that I had never seen before. Given that truth, I went against my gut. I caved in to the voices around me that were describing in the film in a neutral or even positive light and walked into Regal Cinema in DC Chinatown and took a seat.

The vast majority of movie goers in the theater that Friday night were white women, the target audience for the film. The trail of trailers shown before the film set the stage for the film itself. My friend described the previews as a sign that we were entering “romantic comedy Hell”. Lol.

Once the film began, I braced myself to see a white person rescue seemingly powerless black people from their miserable existence. Instead, I witnessed a 23 year old white woman, Skeeter, chronicle the stories of her own black maid and those belonging to her friends. As heroine of the story, she bravely picked up a pen and wrote down the stories of the oppressed domestic workers in Jackson, Mississippi during Jim Crow. Perhaps a full on rescue would have been too much for a genteel young white woman of those times.

The black maids in the story were literate; however, they did not write their own stories. Instead, they spoke them to Skeeter, a white woman half their age, so that she could document them. Skeeter’s motivation to share the black women’s stories was born in her pity for her own black mammy from childhood, who was suddenly fired after 30 years of hard work because of an unwritten rule in wealthy white ladies superficial social club culture.

Looking intently at the screen, I patiently waited for a plot turn that included an act of serious resistance by one or many of the black maids. I thought that maybe the black women would stand up for their rights as workers and go on strike or maybe they would start a letter writing campaign to their state legislators. After all, acts of civil disobedience were central to the civil rights movement. Much to my dismay, the most powerful act of resistance involved a maid baking a pie for her white boss lady.

Once I heard about the lawsuit initiated by Ablene Cooper, the maid whose story inspired the book from which the movie originated, I became even more remorseful for buying tickets to this movie. The black woman who told this story is not receiving her fair share of the royalties gained from either the book or the movie. Cooper’s painful story has been appropriated to generate profits that she may never see.

High School Graduation Rate

I know that this blog space is entirely too small to properly address this issue, so I'll just give my two cents in a few paragraphs realizing that I'm not going to get past the tip of the iceberg. The issue of the extraordinarily high rate of high school drop-outs is concerning because it means that new generations of Americans aren't even finishing high school in shocking numbers. And while I understand that college may not be for everyone, I definitely believe that high school should be, especially in such a developed nation with comparatively high standards of living to most of the world. The education reform debate, like many other policy debates, is split between progressives and hard-liners. Education progressives are more likely to support increased funding for schools and community improvement initiatives, while hard-liners favor Rhee-style measures that fire ineffective teachers and close down underperforming schools.

Not surprisingly, I happen to side more with the liberals on this issue. Part of the reason is because I have enough hard-working teacher friends who are clearly undervalued and underpaid. Firing them based on performance measures would be unjust and more of a reflection of the conditions in the communities in which their schools are located than on their own effectiveness as instructors. Unfortunately, real life is not a Hollywood studio and replacing a principal in an actual low-performing school will never have the same consequence-free wide ranging success that Mr. Clark achieved in Lean on Me. Teachers are real people who work hard to earn a living.

I do, however, think it's important to provide teachers with incentives to continue their education and learn strategies that can help promote student engagement. Teachers with advanced degrees have mastered proven teaching techniques that can help even the most challenged students. Academic concepts like accountable talk, which helps to develop students' reasonable discourse skills while simultaneously keeping them engaged in their studies, are central to improving the quality of education in our country's schools.

In the end, however, education reform in itself may not be enough to reform education. This sounds counter-intuitive, but we all know that there are pervasive systemic problems in society that lie at the root of the drop-out crisis that cannot be solved by replacing faculty or even closing schools.

NAACP is slippin

Wow! I felt so disappointed to learn that the NAACP supported the Tea Party in their push to fire a black woman from her job for reverse racism. Of all groups, I would have thought the NAACP would be more critical of Tea Party and extremist right wing claims, especially those made against African-Americans. After all, it was barely a week ago when the NAACP called out the Tea Party for harboring racist elements among its factions. And for the record, anyone who's been near a Tea Party protest and seen their swastikas and heard their racist chants can attest to fact that some of their supporters are racist.

Why then, would the NAACP rush the Tea Party's aid at the expense of a hard working black federal employee? The answer is politics. The political pendulum is shifting to the right and conservatives are gaining popularity and credibility, even in the eyes of race-based social justice organizations like the NAACP.

During the late days of the Bush Administration, progressives had a powerful grassroots political voice and were able to succeed in securing the election our nation's first African-American president. However, now that Obama has been getting things done as president, conservatives have begun a spirited movement in opposition to his policies. The passage of health care reform legislation and other big government initiatives has fired up fiscal conservatives and the fringe elements that follow their lead.

Hopefully this incident will serve as a wake-up call for the NAACP and other progressive groups. Tea Party accusations may be hyped up by the media because of their current level of political hotness, but media coverage doesn't always equate with legitimacy so it's still important to investigate the validity of right wing claims before backing them.

American Christmas

What is the meaning of Christmas? Why are so many people buying gifts? Is there a real spiritual root to this holiday? Why is our society so defensive of it? What are YOU going to buy this season? What IS the reason for the season? Why is everyone going to scurry to church and the mall? What's up with this holiday? While the majority of the world is suffering in relative poverty, why are we spending wildly?

My study abroad experience in Cuba and Nicaragua (2000) ended in a rude awakening. After having spent a semester abroad, I returned to the United States only to be bombarded with a culture rife with greed. When I stepped off the plane, I experienced the largest contradiction of my life. I walked from the severely impoverished into the tremendously wealthy in a matter of seconds. Needless to say, it was a life changing experience.

Nothing could have prepared me for that moment of dramatic transformation. Not the de-briefing session designed by the study abroad program, nor the spontaneous skinny dipping episode on a remote part of the Nicaraguan Coast. There was no easy way to go from Managua to Houston.

In Nicaragua, people celebrate Christmas to p. ay homage to their spiritual beliefs. The Nicaraguans are mostly Catholic and celebrate Christmas as the birth of Christ -- their one and only Savior. Nicaraguan families do not exchange gifts. They only gather together and pray.

In Cuba, the people hardly celebrate Christmas for two reasons: their roots in the Yoruba oral tradition and their adherence to socialism. Ever since Fidel emphasized the Island's African roots following the 1959 socialist revolution, Cubans have embraced their African heritage. Also, the redistribution of wealth that followed the Revolution strayed Cuban citizens from Christmas based on the holiday's capitalist origins.

Poor nations have offered a wide range of critiques of Western consumption patterns. Developing countries with strong ties to the Church, like Nicaragua, feel that the US has strayed too far from religious ideals in the name of greed. Other more secular countries, like Cuba, feel that Americans are more concerned with material things than more meaningful aspects of life. Whatever the underlying explanation may be, the fact remains that our country's spending habits are out of control and Christmas is the most clear evidence of this growing problem.