The scene where Eliza lashes out at Rachel\u2019s newly motherless young daughter, Angerine, violently accusing her of plotting against her, is one of the most painful in the whole movie.<\/p>\n
As a mother, my heart twisted. As a white woman, I felt deeply ashamed.<\/p>\n
Many white women in feminist and activist circles seem to take it for granted that black women will be their natural allies. After all, both white women and black women have been oppressed at the hands of men, right? And both have faced oppression at the hands of white men in particular, right?\u00a0This ignores the utter complicity of white women in the oppression of black women for centuries.<\/p>\n
And this isn\u2019t just in some longtime past.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start with slavery. Were white women who lived in the south subject to the constraints of patriarchy? Absolutely. But owning enslaved people could give a white woman status and power. And many white women absolutely took out any frustrations they might have felt in their personal lives on their enslaved people, as Eliza does in Harriet. Having that kind of power over someone is corrosive.<\/p>\n
Facing the constraints of patriarchy did not make white women any more likely to identify with, ally with, or support black women. Not in the least.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s fast forward for a moment. For a century after the end of slavery, black women worked in domestic service in the homes of white women, often in conditions that differed mirrored those that had existed under slavery. Black women could now leave, or quit their job, but if they did, an employer might blackball them. And, once again, white women could take out frustrations in other parts of their lives on the people they employed\u2014people who earned low wages and frequently had few options.<\/p>\n
The Help<\/em> is a white savior movie, but it portrays many aspects of the constraints of domestic work well. White women were not the heroes of this story. They were the villains. In most cases, the best a black domestic worker could hope for was a white employer who left her more or less alone.\u00a0There was no solidarity between black domestic workers and their white female employers.<\/p>\n And then there were lynchings, and, once again, white women were front and center. Many lynchings began when a white woman accused a black man of rape\u2014or merely of looking at her the wrong way. Remember, Emmett Till\u2019s murder was precipitated by a white woman\u2019s claim that he whistled at her<\/em>. Do you think Emmett Till\u2019s mother felt solidarity<\/em> with the struggles of white women? Why would she?<\/p>\n White women were dangerous. White women presented a real and present threat to black people\u2014especially to black men and boys. But it\u2019s not over. It\u2019s not really were<\/em>.<\/p>\n Consider all of stories where white women have called the police on black people for frivolous reasons. Remember that white woman in Brooklyn who called the police, accusing a nine-year-old black boy of groping her, after his backpack brushed up against her in a tight deli?<\/p>\n If I had a black son, I\u2019d teach him to tread lightly around white women.<\/p>\n Have you ever looked at pictures of segregationists protesting against civil rights? I mean\u00a0really<\/em> looked? These aren\u2019t crowds of white men. White women are right there with them\u2014front and center<\/a>\u2014in droves.<\/p>\n Do you see the poster the man on the bottom left is holding? It\u2019s an anti-integrationist propaganda piece. I looked for it online, but was only able to find the top portion.<\/p>\n \u201cConquer and Breed,\u201d the caption reads. A black figure, styled as a brute, bears the label \u201cintegration.\u201d A white woman, posed as though fleeing, wears the label \u201csouthern womanhood.\u201d<\/p>\n To be sure, one could argue white men were using<\/em> the image of womanhood\u2014an image carefully created and curated to keep women from moving beyond the narrow domestic box men wanted them in\u2014as a tool to oppress black people. And this is absolutely true.\u00a0But<\/em> I don\u2019t exactly see the white women of the South objecting to this use<\/em>.<\/p>\n And of course, it wasn\u2019t just the South. It showed up in places like Boston, where white women came out en masse against school bussing<\/a> designed to end school segregation.<\/p>\n And, once again,\u00a0it\u2019s not over.\u00a0<\/em>53% of white women voted for Donald Trump. Not so, black women. Black women voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton. Black women still<\/em> can\u2019t trust white women to have their backs. White women have never<\/em> had their backs.<\/p>\n This past March, black novelist Kim McLarin wrote an\u00a0article titled Can black women and white women be true\u00a0friends?<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>for the Washington Post<\/em>.\u00a0In it, she wrote as follows:<\/p>\n Generally speaking, it\u2019s not that I dislike white women. Generally speaking, it\u2019s that I do not trust them. Generally speaking, most black women don\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u2026<\/p>\n This is what black women know: When push comes to shove, white women choose race over gender: Every. Single. Time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is so real it hurts.<\/p>\n And you know what else I\u2019ve seen myself, locally? White women are\u00a0fragile<\/em>. The smallest point of criticism and they get upset. How dare you say that of them! And yes, I say this as a white woman! But I\u2019ve learned that when criticism makes me uncomfortable, it\u2019s best to close my mouth and sit with it, because there\u2019s probably something there.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll end with this incredibly important story, from McLarin\u2019s article:<\/p>\n Every fall, I teach a survey class in African American literature, an undertaking I consider one of the chief honors of my life. One of my favorite books to teach in this class is Harriet Jacobs\u2019s seminal slave narrative, \u201cIncidents in the Life of a Slave Girl<\/a>.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Authenticated as the first book-length slave narrative written by a woman, \u201cIncidents\u201d is a powerful and compelling examination of slavery\u2019s impact on black women and the black family.<\/p>\n \u201cSlavery is terrible for men, but it is far more terrible for women,\u201d she writes in the narrative\u2019s most famous line. The students nod. They\u2019re with Jacobs as she details the physical, psychological and sexual terrorism of slavery. They\u2019re with her as she asserts the resilience and importance of black kinship. They\u2019re definitely with her as she critiques the hypocritical Christianity of the South.<\/p>\n But when Jacobs gets around to criticizing white women \u2014 both Southern white women who turn a blind eye to, or actively enable, their husbands\u2019 rape and debasement of enslaved women and their Northern counterparts who, enraptured by the romantic myth of the wealthy Southern gentleman, do the same \u2014 some students begin to balk. Without fail, at least one young white woman will raise her hand, eyes determined, chin quivering: \u201cYes, but all women were property back then.\u201d Or: \u201cGender discrimination has always been a bigger problem than racism.\u201d Or: \u201cWell, white women didn\u2019t have it much better than slaves.\u201d Which is simply untrue.<\/p>\n I find these moments revealing, the student\u2019s face both intense and needy as she mounts her defense of white women past.<\/p>\n If this student, who is young but neither thoughtless nor ill-informed, insists on believing that white women in 1850 were as oppressed as enslaved people, if she cannot and will not acknowledge the power differentials that existed within a system of legal, racialized slavery, how can she grapple honestly with the power imbalances of today?<\/p>\n And if she won\u2019t, how can she and her black classmate possibly be friends?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![](\"https:\/\/southernspaces.org\/app\/uploads\/2019\/07\/egerton-010-communists.jpg\")
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