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.

H.R. 358, The Protect Life Act

As if it weren't enough to attempt to limit women's access to abortion care in the case of rape (HR 3), House Republicans are also trying to block women from receiving abortions as treatment for life-threatening medical emergencies. HR 358, The Protect Life Act, was introduced by Rep. Joe Pitts on January 20, 2011 as an amendment to the new health care law. This bill would allow doctors and hospitals to refuse to treat pregnant women who arrive in emergency rooms with serious health concerns if such treatment involved terminating a pregnancy. And to make matters worse, hospitals would no longer be required to refer women to another hospital that offers the care needed to save their lives. Essentially, HR 358 would make it legal to leave a woman to die rather than terminate her pregnancy.

Needless to say, pregnant women and women who plan to become pregnant should be extremely concerned about this initiative since they could be denied life-saving emergency care during pregnancy. The so called "Protect Life Act" fails to do just that, protect life. The measure would neglect the lives of women who are pregnant and experiencing a serious health crisis in the interest of preserving the life of a fetus.

I wonder if Rep. Pitts were a woman would he would still support denying women abortion care in their last minutes of life or in the case of rape. It wouldn't make much sense for a woman to stand against her right to an abortion if her life were at risk, would it? Well, apparently it does for some women. These restrictions are a great idea in the minds of several Republican women, including Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who are cosponsoring both HR 3 and HR 358. Perhaps they are not concerned about the harms of these pieces of legislation because the women forced to carry their rapist's child and those left to die are likely to be poor. After all, the scope of these bills can only include hospitals and insurance plans that receive federal funding for programs like Medicaid.

Finally, I'll leave a word to those who are on the fence on this issue: making abortion illegal or cost prohibitive doesn't make it go away. Think back to the back alley abortion scene in Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls or talk to women who witnessed the nature of abortion before Roe v. Wade.

Nicki Minaj’s Rise to Fame

I would like to begin this post by commending Nicki Minaj for successfully climbing to the top of the success ladder in a male dominated industry. Female rappers have always been few and far between, but the void has been even greater in recent years. Minaj is the first female hip-hop artist to top the industry charts since 2002 and she's reached this point entirely through her own merit. Born in Trinidad and moving to Queens with her family as a child, Minaj faced numerous obstacles growing up but still managed to graduate from a high school specializing in performing and visual arts. Not afraid to compete with male emcees, Minaj released a series of mix-tapes proving her lyrical rhyming expertise and was soon discovered and signed to Young Money Entertainment and then Cash Money Records. Her first major album, Pink Friday, debuted at number two on the charts and went platinum within a month of its release in 2010. As the only female rapper in mainstream media, Minaj's conspicuous position has made her a target for both praise and criticism.

Many argue that Minaj's lyrics and image do not make her a positive role model for young girls. Like a majority of top record-selling male artists, Minaj's lyrics involve sexually and otherwise explicit language and themes. It seems to me that Minaj has been placed in a hot seat simply for being a woman. Yes, I am aware that some critics are consistent in their critiques of the corruption rampant in mainstream hip-hop, however Minaj is getting an undue amount of attention for talking openly about sex while male artists with similarly offensive lyrics are not held to the same standard. Also, Minaj has come under fire for challenging the heteronormativity that characterizes hip-hop and even once suggesting that there will be a widely revered openly gay male emcee in the near future. Reporters have interrogated Minaj about her own sexual orientation because of LGBT storylines that appear in her rhymes, but she does not allow herself to be boxed in and proudly rejects applying labels to her sexual identity.

At my age, I realize I'm a little detached from the pulse of popular culture, but I do find her music as good as, if not better than that of her peers. However, I must add that I think hip-hop could do better and the industry would benefit from a toppling of its upside-down reward structure that places the most positive and creative artists at the bottom while highlighting offensive artists with trite lyrics at the top. I'm happy to see Minaj paving the way for women in rap, but I can't help but feel nostalgic for the music of great pioneers like Mc Lyte, Queen Latifah, Lauryn Hill and even Lil Kim. (The only reason I mention the Queen Bee here is because she was unique for her time and created the "Black Barbie Multicolored Hair" image that Minaj prouldy promotes.)

Black America Shares Statistics with African Countries

The Black AIDS Institute has released a shocking new study comparing rates of HIV infection among African-Americans with those of the hardest hit nations in Africa. The study revealed that black Americans are just as likely to come down with the virus that causes AIDS as citizens of Uganda and South Africa. The Centers for Disease Control determined that black women are contracting HIV from heterosexual sex and injection drug use at 23 times the rate of white women and AIDS is the leading cause of death for black women between ages 25 and 34. The United States may be one of the wealthiest nations in the world, but this goes to show that money cannot buy good health and nor can it undo centuries of oppression against African people. There are many different theories as to why blacks are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS, but in my opinion, even all of them taken together cannot explain the dire nature of the statistics at hand.

Some people say that white people are just more responsible when it comes to sex than blacks, but somehow I'm just not buying that one. White people have plenty of unprotected sex. Others say that black men are contracting the disease in prison and spreading it to multiple women once they're released. I say that, yes, this may happen sometimes but there are not enough black ex-cons out there to account for a HIV rate among black women that's 23 times that of white women. Black men are only a few times more likely than white men to have a record. And others say that black men are more likely to be on the down low, but CDC research shows that closeted black men are no more likely to catch HIV than out gay black men.

I am no conspiracy theorist so I don't think the government is secretly infecting blacks with HIV. However, I do find some validity in new scientific research that points to a gene that makes people with sub-Saharan origins more likely to catch HIV when they are exposed. The gene in question is thought to have been developed as a natural evolutionary defense to malaria. It's just too bad that the same gene that results in an evolutionary advantage in the face of one disease can be a catalyst for infection in the case of another. As we all know, modern science is far from perfect and more research is needed to confirm these findings. Nonetheless I think this a very important and overlooked aspect of the worldwide black AIDS epidemic.

CNN's Black Women and Families

Last night, I had the opportunity to watch CNN's long anticipated Black Women and Families segment of the Black in America series. Disappointingly, the documentary was framed through an entirely heterosexist and patriarchial lens. Simply put, it assumed that every black woman should be married to a man. This is an outdated view of the black family structure. Not all black women need to or even want to be married to a man.

Having children out of wedlock is not the cause of the health, education, and income disparities facing the black community. While many single mothers would like to have a committed intimate partner, most of them will tell you that not having a man is the least of their problems. What they need most is more along the lines of reliable child care, health care, quality education, enrichment programs, job training, transportation and a network of family members and friends dedicated to helping in brining up the next generation.

Simply being married to a man does not necessarily improve a woman's quality of life, and in too many instances, such marriages can be oppressive to women.

It's true that studies show that two parent households, regardless of the parents' gender, are generally better for children than single parent households. But this does not mean that single parent households, equipped with necessary resources and support, cannot be equally as beneficial for children. For example, many single mothers rely on family members and friends to give additional emotional support and guidance to their children. And middle and upper class single moms can afford to provide for their children's needs on just one income.

CNN needs to realize that this is no longer 1950's America when all women were expected to live as subservient wives and forgo their career ambitions to cook and clean all day. Times are changing and women are feeling freer to live their lives as they choose. Marriage rates and out of wedlock births are not the best indicators of the overall well being of black America.