Feminism and Diversity

She probably 100% did not know that her book was going to be feeding into racist stereotypes. That, in itself, is a problem. Our education is controlled by a power structure that colludes to erase discussions of racism, and the racist history of this country.

However, her book went through several layers of people to get published. I'm guessing most of those layers were also white. Although, as you point out, there are details in the book that white people probably do not know about Jim Crow, there is a way to have that conversation without the rather (imo) self-congratulatory air the book has with the role of "well-meaning white people who save the black people" in it. This probably could have been avoided if the author had consulted some Black editors, but I'm sure there are very few in the mainstream publishing world, due to white bias in all areas of media. Or it could have been avoided if a Black woman could get a major contract with a mainstream publishing house to write a book on this topic and hit the #1 bestselling lists for weeks. This is still rare to nonexistent in this country too. And it's not from a lack of Black women authors who write kick-ass books.

There's been a wide array of reactions to The Help from Black writers, about the book and the movie. I'm white, and there were things in the book that I knew nothing about, but I felt that the subject could have been covered 100% better if the author had taken time to vet her book. (Its wild popularity means that it's going to be treated as "*the* book on the subject", which I think is sad. That said, I haven't seen the movie, and it sounds like efforts were made to bring balance that the book lacked.)

There are books and articles written on some of the tropes the author used in the book, that were published before she went to press. Lots of Black writers publish blogs and carry articles on their websites that cover these issues heavily. There are books by Black authors on the subject. As they say, Google was her friend. She may not have known when writing her book, but she could have educated herself. She felt comfortable enough to publish a book on the topic of racism, but not to read books or talk to more than a few Black people about the book (maybe she didn't even do that?) http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/i-just-made-this-shit-up-per-stockett/