how can you help when needed to do so?

In the movie "The Help," there is a moral about treating your fellow human. It is a story about a young aspiring writer who wants to do a story about the black maids in Jackson, Mississippi during the Civil Rights era. For her to do so is an extremely dangerous undertaking, as the rules against blacks doing anything with whites were strict. However, one woman, Abilene, consents, because she feels it is "the right thing to do." The writer, Skeeter, realizes there is a whole world of secrecy as well as emotional abuse leveled at these women who practically, in the words of Abilene, "raise the white kids themselves 'cause their mommas are too busy to do it themselves." She is a strong, positive person, telling her children in her care, "you is strong, you is smart and you is important! Don't ever forget that!"

What struck me was the similarities between the upper class of this movie and the blacks who served them was that it could be any one of us...today. How then, the rich looked down their nose at anyone who was just not like them. The backstabbing, the condemning, the judgment calls....the gossiping, rumor-mongering, thinking only of self. Skeeter finds out that Constantine, the black woman who had been a constant in her own family for 30 years was sent away simply because Skeeter's mother was having a tea party with the Daughters of the American Revolution...and had to put up that strong front when Constantine erred by taking time to want to see her daughter instead. 

After the movie (and the tears, you will cry when you see how it ends!) I thought of our own marginally placed people in society and how we tend to look down on them. Oh you don't, you say? Hmmm...you're in line at the store and you see the one ahead of you use an EBT card to pay for the food? Do you scan the purchases, looking for cookies and ice cream? You know you do! The bums downtown, the drunk that lives across the street, the relative with chronic depression that you never call, your own sibling who has fallen on hard times and you don't want to talk to for fear you'll be asked for a "loan".... I can go on, but you get the point. We ALL make those judgment calls! And we should ALL be ashamed of ourselves! 

In the movie, Constantine died of a broken heart. She was so grieved for the child she could no longer care for, she had no purpose anymore. Skeeter didn't realize the difference that one person can make, neither did Abilene--at first. Just to step forward and say, "this is wrong and needs to be changed. It needs to stop!" Her life was not made any easier for it and she was fired after it was found out that she instigated the whole thing by telling Skeeter her stories. But no one said it would be easy for any of us to step out of our comfort zone and do the right thing. Go back a few months to Joe Paterno from Penn State. He just passed away this weekend. The stigma of the scandal that he knew about but didn't do ENOUGH to help fix will now always be a mystery. Only he knows why he didn't...and the secret has now gone with him. Instead of condemning him for his failure--and it was a failure, football aside-- we should learn about what inactivity can do...and how it can hurt instead of help others. Just something for you to think about.....we all need to look after each other. We are all we have!