Racism: A Constant Pattern

Uncle Tom's Cabin is a novel that explores the idea of anti-slavery and approaches the topic through a touching story about compassionate non-racist white people. This novel was very influential during the civil war, however it doesn't mean it changed what people believed. In the book one finds different characters who are noble and treat african americans as equals. However,  in the movie The Help, (which takes place 80 years later) one also finds characters who treat african americans as equals or as inferiors, questioning america's unchanging society.

The book exhibits how good people existed in the time, but it also reveals the reality behind slavery during its worse point. To connect the movie The Help to this book is a way to demonstrate how good and bad people have always existed. The civil war ended more than twenty years before the events of the movie, however racism is still evident. People in the 1850s such as Mr. Haley who would refer to african americans like "an old rack o' bones,-not worth her salt" which wouldn't even "take her for a present..." (Pg. 135) reveal that sense of superiority white people had. In the movie, simply to fit in with the rest of the community, one of the characters unjustly treats her black maid like trash when usually she wouldn't have done it. The bad treatment towards african americas was was widely supported in the in the 1850s, however some people still didn't do it.  When Mr. Shelby is talking about selling Harry he portrays himself as "a humane man, and I hate to take the boy from his mother" as he "would rather not sell him.." This reveals that good people existed even before the civil war, and that is what the book is trying to demonstrate to its readers. That it is not bad to be good. Both novels, at their times tried to push people into stopping slavery. The fact that two novels exist with eighty years of different exhibit how unchanging racism ideals were. 

This novel, as many others such want to convey to their viewers/readers that it is good to treat african americans like equals and not inferiors. They try to show slavery or segregation as cruel and unfair, by providing contrasting characters that exhibit that equal treatment. I wanted to compare this movie because it reveals how people hadn't changed, even eighty years later. That even though slavery was didn't exist legally  segregation and discrimination were still there. African americans were still emotional slaves for the whites because they felt they still owned them.