Yesterday I finished reading "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. As I said in an earlier posting, it brought back some painful memories.
In the 70s I was living with my husband and children in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A beautiful city then and now.
But it was segregated. I was part of a team of people helping to get the real estate issues changed so that anybody who could afford to buy a house could buy that house anywhere they wanted.
One day a lady from my very own church called me to tell me how wrong I was to be doing this. She said things like "...I asked my maid and she told me that Nigras want to live in their own neighborhoods...Why don't you and your family go live with them if that's what you want..."
It was a very painful conversation for me.
About three years later I was teaching at the United Methodist Women's School of Christian Mission at Florida Southern College. The course I was teaching was called "Racism." The women in the class, black and white, were great but after most sessions there was a little group of other very white women waiting for me outside the classroom.
They needed to tell me "in Christian love" why this class was not needed. These were very painful conversations. Ones in which I mostly listened.
But in the last few days, as I've thought about the women described above and most of the women depicted in the book "The Help" my thoughts haven't been altogether negative.
Most of them weren't bad people. They were living in a time when, for several generations, they had been told a lie. They believed it. When this lie was challenged they were frightened.
I'm so happy that "The Help" has been number one on the best seller list for several weeks. It says good things about who we are and how far we've become as a people.
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