I Made My Kid Watch "The Help"

I made my 14 year old watch The Help last weekend because I wanted to set the stage for a powerful lesson on racism and the cycle of poverty.  I wanted him to know first and foremost that racism hides behind cultural norms.

I have written and deleted this paragraph 5 times now because I have no desire to criticize the small Texas town that I grew up in.   What I want to say here and what I want my kids to see is that no one I knew woke up in the morning and set out to be a racist.  The people I shared life with are good God-fearing people but indeed the segregated practices of that small community were examples of how racism hides behind cultural norms.  I love my hometown and the people who still live there but we need to own our stories and mine includes cultural norms that I am not proud to have been a part of. 

Fast forward a generation and my kids are growing up in the most culturally diverse city in the country.  They would never dream of using a racial slur  (or at least the better not).   Their cultural norm is different from the one I grew up in but that does not mean that it is free from racism.  They are growing up in a culture where you question the legal status of someone who doesn’t look like you or wonder about the motivations of the Muslim kid 2 seats over.  Their cultural norms are different but racism still hides behind those cultural norms and they can get caught up in it if they are not careful.

The other lesson I wanted him to see in The Help is that the cycle of poverty is not easily broken.  I was trying to explain this to my kids a few weeks back after we drove through a poverty stricken small town.  I pointed out that the children growing up there would have a very hard time getting the education they needed to ever leave.  My middle child then said,  “yeah well what about Serena Williams?”   What he didn’t realize was that he was making my case for me.  “Yes, son if you can manage to become the #1 tennis player in the world then I guess you can break the cycle of poverty.  Do you think that was easy?”   I want my kids to appreciate that the cycle of poverty is not easily broken and sometimes we may have to sacrifice our own sense of entitlement to help make that happen for another child. 

When it comes to diversity, I want my kids to understand that the topic of racism is complicated, historical, and cultural.  I want them to see that the response has to be personal to become systemic and yet for many it needs to be systemic to become personal.  In other words, we can’t advance culturally if we don’t move forward personally but if racism truly hides behind cultural norms, we have to make progress culturally in order to influence the next generation personally.