GailForce: How the Movie The Help Relates to National Security Policy

Yesterday, at the suggestion of my older brother I went to see the movie The Help. Since he’s Gulf War Vet and a real man’s man and wouldn’t normally go see what many had said would be a “Chick Flick”; that got my attention. I had been a little reluctant to read the book or see the movie primarily for fear the movie would open old wounds. I grew up in New Jersey but spent summers in the segregated south visiting relatives on my Mother’s side of the family. My Mother was the youngest of 12 and had 6 sisters all of whom worked as “Help”, one of the few jobs available to them during that time. My Mother moved north when she married my Father but while growing up had worked for families first as a playmate for their kids starting when she was around 9 years old, then as she got older, moved up to baby sitter status. I called last night to check and she said at her last job she not only baby sat but had to wash dishes and received the grand sum of $2.50 a week. Sounds like a small sum but it was a help to her family and $2.50 actually went a long way in the 1940’s.

Some have criticized the movie because it’s told from the point of view of a young white woman. I have no problem with that. We all view the world through a filter. If you talk to law enforcement officials they will tell you there may be 10 eyewitnesses to a crime and you get 10 different versions of what happened. In my opinion both the author and the movie’s director grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, the setting for the both the book and the movie, and have the background and credentials to tell the story.

That said by only focusing on the author’s point of view there was one key part of the story that was missed. What motivated the women to continue working in an environment where many of the families they served considered them a sub human species and didn’t even allow them to use the rest rooms in the homes they were tasked to keep clean? As famed radio commentator Paul Harvey used to say, I was fortunate enough to observe first hand “the rest of the story”.

The answer is simple. They did it to ensure their children had a chance at living the American dream that was denied to them. Most of the children and grand children of all of my Aunts were able to attend college. They went on to become Mayors, City Council Men, Lawyers, Nurses, School Teachers, corporate executives and even an Engineer at NASA.

One other thing worth mentioning is the movie gave the impression that the lives of these woman revolved around the families they worked for. I can’t speak for every African American woman who worked as a domestic in the south but I can speak for my Aunts. Their attitude towards work had a lot in common with the attitude I observed while living in Spain. They worked to live, not lived to work. Most of their world revolved around their family and close relatives. I don’t know how they did it but before going to work they made breakfast for their family and I’m talking about meals like biscuits, ham and eggs. I’m challenged every morning just by toasting a bagel and pouring a glass of orange juice. They usually came home at what I called lunch time but they called “dinner” and made a meal consisting of two vegetables and some kind of meat. In the evening they returned in time to cook “supper” also consisting two vegetables, meat, and a dessert (my favorite part!).

They were happy women and made no mention at all of their work day. I never got the impression they were unhappy with their lives or situation. They just said everyone in life would go through trials and tribulations but with faith and hard work it would be overcome. They were preparing their children for a better life and that was that. The author and director of the movie wouldn’t know that because they knew very little about the actual workings of the lives of “the Help”. In the movie the author and lead character focused on stuff like the bathrooms when the real issues revolved around issues like jobs, education and changing the “Jim Crow” laws that were essentially in many instances a legal way to continue the horrors of slavery. It took a civil rights movement led by African Americans to focus on removing obstacles they felt were preventing them from living the American dream. The change would have been impossible if the majority of Americans did not agree there was a problem and it was time to make the changes. The civil rights movement help to educate the American public.

How does this relate to National Security? One of the major challenges in the war on terrorism and dealing with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan is lack of understanding of the culture, religion, and motivations of people in that region. One of the major focuses of the COIN strategy as I understand it is the focus on understanding not just the military capability of a region but as stated in the COIN manual: “understanding foreign, political, cultural, social, and other experiences…”. This focus is one of the major reasons for current progress made in both Afghanistan and Iraq. True this progress is tenuous and in danger of being reversed but considering the state of the conflict in both regions before this emphasis was added…well you get my drift.

If you don’t understand a region then the assumptions upon which foreign and national security is based may be flawed. If your assumptions are flawed, the chances are so will any policy based on them. On August 20th, FPA blogger Oliver Barret wrote a great article called: Listening to a Dead Hawk. In it he talks about former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara talked about mistakes made in our Vietnam policy. Barret says:
“ I have embedded above a short video interview of McNamara, taped just before his death in 2009. In it he shares with us how a misunderstanding of the socio-political dynamics, coupled with flawed operational decision-making, cost over 57,000 American and countless Vietnamese lives.’”
In the video the former secretary said the Vietnam policy was based on three false assumptions:
– Misjudged the Soviet/Communist Threat
– Viewed the actions of activities in Vietnam as a war of aggression communists vs non-communists when it was really a civil war.
– Used military tactics and strategy that were more appropriate against a conventional threat like the Soviet Union threat in Europe.
McNamara went on to state there was a reason for the aggressive reaction to communism. Many of the leaders had fought in World War II and felt if they had taken an earlier stand against Hitler the war might have been averted. Since 55 million died in that conflict, it’s easy to understand the aggressive stance against a then new perceived world wide threat from communism.
If we are to succeed against the threats we are facing today, it is imperative that our decision makers make sure they are not making decisions on based faulty assumptions caused by a lack of understanding of the threat or potential threat. That means we need to spend a whole lot more time understanding the history, culture, economy, etc. of the parts of the world we’re now engaged in. Think I’ll end here. As always my views are my own.