Problematic Representations of Strategic Whiteness and “Post-racial” Pedagogy: A Critical Intercultural Reading of The Help

Abstract

The Help is argued to influence understandings of racial histories, racial in/equality, and interracial coalitions from a pedagogical stance invested in the re/production of white dominance. This essay mobilizes strategic whiteness to map the representational strategies utilized to secure the superiority of whiteness and further the momentum of “post-racial” ideology. Facilitated via white female characters, The Help's cinematic centralization of whiteness and redemption of white racists are illuminated as manifestations of strategic whiteness that operate at the expense of black women.

Keywords:

• Strategic Whiteness
• Media
• Black Women
• Domestic Work
• Post-racialism

Acknowledgments

The author offers sincere thanks to the reviewers and editors for their thoughtful and wise insight.

Notes

[1] Public pedagogy “refers to the education provided by popular culture; popular culture teaches audiences and participants through the ways it represents people and issues and the kinds of discourses it creates and disseminates” (Sandlin, 2007, p. 76).

[2] I place “post-racial” and “post-racialism” in quotation marks to highlight their contentious falsity in accordance with critical intercultural scholarship (Ono, 2010; Squires et al., 2010).

[3] Please see CBS (2012) for a link to the photo. Also, DreamWorks Studios (2010) lists Tate Taylor as the Director and Brunson Green, Chris Columbus and Michael Barnathan as Producers. The Executive Producers listed are Mark Radcliffe, Tate Taylor, L. Dean Jones Jr., Nate Berkus, Jennifer Blum, John Norris, Jeff Skoll, and Mohamed Mubarak Al Mazrouei. Using online resources and images, at least eight of the above appear to be white; however, I was not able to access and/or verify pictures of Jones, Blum, and Al Mazrouei.

[4] Additionally significant is the use of Aibileen's voice-over to position Leroy, a black male, solely at fault for Sugar's entry into the workforce without mention of Hilly's racist decision to fire Minny or the larger system of white supremacy that severely limits the income of black workers and their employment options.

[5] There are several examples of the purposeful choices that Stockett and Taylor make to avoid (i.e., whitewash) the realness of white supremacy and racism. Had Stockett or Taylor been invested in a racially progressive project, they could have deeply problematized the irony of white women entrusting their children to the same black women they degraded and humiliated from the perspectives of black maids rather than the safety of Skeeter's character. They also problematically relegated white men (e.g., Stuart, Robert Phelan [Skeeter's father], and William Holbrook [Hilly's husband]) to the peripheral of Southern racism which undermines the historical era the narrative attempts to speak to. Likewise, via several parallels between Aibileen and Minny and Minny and Celia, their characters seem to genuinely speak to sisterhood, but Stockett and Taylor instead forefront the “sisterhood” between Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter. Their choice reeks of the profitability of “post-racialism” in that they cater to racially unconscious white women by fostering identification with Skeeter rather than the “colored” maids, “white trash” Celia (Taylor et al., 2011), or racist Hilly. Lastly, starkly absent is the sexual abuse that black maids endured in white households; representations of “the help” being threatened, beaten, and harassed; and discussions of what constitutes love between white children and their black female caretakers in a relationship always imbalanced by racialized power.