Inspired by "The Help" Movie

As I stood in line for popcorn and drinks a lady [customer from work] and I engaged in conversation.
"I'm here to see 'The Help'."  She said.
"Oh?" I responded, "So am I."
"Well you know," she continued, "I lived through that."

I think that the most powerful aspect of the movie "The Help" is that, while it's based on a novel, it is based on things that really happened no so long ago.  For someone young [by comparison to people who actually lived during those times] like me, this movie was a real eye opener.  Working with quite a few elderly white people here, in Memphis TN, and the experiences that I've had with those people, really helped me connect that much more with the cast of "The Help."

This kind of thing is scary, though, because you then realize that the people that you work with, the very same people who once had the term "nigger" in their regular vocabulary and that had state laws enforcing segregation [separate bathrooms and books] are still alive and well.  And then you start to wonder:  Have they changed their minds, or have they just realized that the times in which their beliefs once thrived are not at their peak?

I once happened upon my coworker's iPhone.  She had just purchased it and hadn't set everything that she wanted, or perhaps she was just being careless.  In any case, her mother had texted her and the text preview was on the screen.  It read: "Mom: Gotta ttyl stranger looking nigger walking toward me."  Quite honestly I was shocked.  Of course, I've never met her mother, but the girl herself was just as sweet as apple pie.  I digress.

Anyway, I definitely recommend the movie.  It is, indeed, another one of those "black people movies" but it is very touching and not full of the typical coonery, niggatry, and buffoonery that we've been seeing with everything Tyler Perry in the last decade #NoShadeTyler.  It was definitely worth the seven dollars and fifty cents that I paid during matinee hours [old people in a movie theater still smell like old people.  I swear I thought I was in a nursing home or a church].

Super Happy Joy

blasian