i'm reading this book called The Help by Kathryn Stockett. i'm not sure how i feel about it. the book takes place in jackson, missippi in the 1960s. it's about an upper class white girl nick-named skeeter, and her distaste for the way african american workers (domestic workers in particular) were treated, and in a broader sense, racial inequality in general. the other two narrators of the book are maids who skeeter interviews for a book she's trying to write.
i'm about half-way through. normally, i would have consumed a book of this length in a couple of days, but so far it's been a week. it's not a bad story, kind of depressing just because of the subject matter, but there are some light-hearted moments too, so it's not a continuous sob fest.
the narrators take turns, and when either of the maids is "speaking", the story is written in a heavy southern, poor, "black" dialect. not that it's something i particularly mind, except that, when the "speaker" is white, there is no dialect..even when the character has been said to "sound like she from so deep in the country she got corn growin in her shoes."
that kind of stereo type is rampant and hints of racism that goes deeper than that in the book. not that i'm necessarily calling the author racist...maybe just uneducated on not sounding like she is. or something.
soo, it's got me thinking that i'm thankful to have not been alive during the periods of slavery and racial segregation in this country. i'm not naive enough to think that there aren't still problems with this, we have definitely come a long way, though probably not far enough. i am sure that the majority of decent folk out there feel bad about our country's racially lopsided tendencies, and believe that if they had been alive during those times they would have done "the right thing." i like to believe that i would not have tolerated slavery...i got blasted in 11th grade AP US History, by my teacher, who said, "OF COURSE you would say that!" the rest of the embarrassing verbal spanking went something like this..who wants to admit that they would have just gone with the flow of what everyone was doing at the time? it's not acceptable now, but you would have believed differently 100 years ago. otherwise there wouldn't have been such widespread acceptance and practice slavery. my meek-ish reply was to tell him that i doubted Jesus would have approved of slavery in any time period, and since it is my goal to be like Him, i am sure i would not have either. AND ....if everyone just went with the flow, we would still have widespread slavery. (then i think i went to the bathroom and cried, heheh.)
why is it that people are so unaccepting of others who are different than "the majority"? i think about the settlers who came to this continent and took it over, disrespecting and mistreating the native peoples who were here long before "we" were...(and even THOSE peoples likely over took others who were here before THEY were), then how the irish immigrants were treated, and the swedes, and jewish people, and italians, and chinese, japanese, etc., etc., etc. and now with people flocking here from mexico being treated much the same way (only with less physical violence), low wages, lack of respect, hatred. :/ it just seems like a terrible cycle that repeats, and repeats, and only gets slightly less abhorrent each time it recurs.
Zechariah 7:9-109 “This is what the LORD Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. 10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’
Leviticus (19:33-4):"And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself."
well...this got a little deeper than i intended.
