I watched the movie “The Help” with my family last night. The movie depicts what life was like for African American maids working in the Southern states (particularly Mississippi) in the 1960s. Racism still runs deep at that point in time. (so deep I was annoyed) The Whites still honestly thought they were a better race then the Blacks. Let me let you in on a secret. There is only one race and we’re all part of it as human beings. It doesn’t matter what “colour” your skin…we’re all really just different shades of the same sort of “colour” In the movie the maid “owners” were afraid to let their maids use their washrooms for fear of getting diseases from the toilets. You have just as much a chance catching diseases off of anyone from a toilet. Obviously they weren’t thinking . Just because you’re “White” doesn’t make you any more clean than anyone else. These maids do all the house work that others just don’t seem to get around to, and they get paid very little.
Near the end of the movie some of the maids are more accepted after writing their stories in a book while others are fired and are forced to move on. Others were framed so that they could be fired for no real reason.
For years and years this was tolerated. Crazy stuff.