The Help: Call to Action

Hilly Holbrook introduces the Home Help Sanitation Initiative. A disease preventative
measure bias against African- American help in the 1960s reflects the acts off the present
inequality of African American and another issue involving separate bathrooms. Readers and
witnesses of injustice of race and sexuality should use any platform and voice they posses
because the tables could turn on them eventually.
Aibileen has never done wrong or spoken rudely to her boss Miss Leefolt. When Miss
Leefolt decides to install a separate bathroom to prevent any diseases may be carrying with her
colored blood, Aibileen choices to use the only platform she has to free her mind. Not many
people enjoy taking risk especially if your life is on the line. What if the risk is worth changing
the minds of others and bringing peace to a group/family? Aibileen like any other human
hesitates to jump forward If I do this with you, I might as well burn my own house down.
Eventually she changes her mind and agrees to the interview allowing her to truly express her
thoughts of being a help. The Novel portrays the belief that African Americans were disease
carrying people and need a different bathroom to protect non-colored people. Similar issue
facing today with the mistreatment of African Americans but the argument of which bathroom
a transgender person should use. Today in the U.S, transgender people are being put on the
spot on which restroom they should use, the one of their sex at birth or their new gender they
become? The reason behind this issue is the concerns of sex offenders dressing up as the
opposite sex and going into the restroom and assaulting people (especially women or children).
In the novel, African Americans have a separate bathroom because they all carry incurable
diseases and transgender people are really just sex offenders waiting to strike. Negative
stereotypes have always been fixed on African Americans in the past and now theyre pointing
toward the LGBT community. In 1961, groups of white and African American civil rights
activists who participated in bus trips through American south to protest segregated bus
terminals the Freedom Riders didnt know at the time they were making history. All seven
African Americans and six whites had a clear understanding of the chaos they were about to get
into but that didnt stop them from getting on that bus and face white protestors. A
Transgender teenager took measures to his own hands to sue the school board local school
board stepped in to complicate my ability to be myself. Of course after this case many took the
opportunity to speak out even with the consequences in line for them. Peaceful protest isnt a
crime its a right that was given to the people of the united states to rightfully express their
opinions. Dont let fear get you from doing whats right, or keep you from being a witness of
mass destruction.
From a small bathroom shed for the maids in a novel to a school bathroom issue for
transgender student their will always be an issue that the country needs to confront.
Sometimes, yes the consequences are brutal, but if it wasnt for the brave faces that stood up
to segregation in the 60s America or the new faces of transgender youth today the world
wouldnt be so beautifully diverse. A person doesnt need to get on a bus going towards a mob
ready to attack or march block after block keeping your voice hidden away is practically giving
up on your beliefs.