I have been reading The Help. Yesterday I came across a passage that seems very appropriate for today. This is the black maid Aibileen speaking to three year old Mae Mobley:
"Today I'm on tell you bout a man from outer space," She just loves hearing about peoples from outer space. Her favorite show on the tee-vee is My Favorite Martian. I pull out my antennae hats I shaped last night out a tinfoil. fasten em on our heads. One for her and one for me. We look like a couple a crazy people in them things.
"One day, a wise Martian came down to Earth to teach us people a thing or two," I say.
"Martian? How big?"
"Oh, about six-two."
"What's his name?"
"Martian Luther King."
She take a deep breath and lean her head down on my shoulder. I feel her three-year-old heart racing against mine, flapping like butterflies on my white uniform.
"He was a real nice Martian, Mister King. Looked just like us, nose, mouth, hair up on his head, but sometime people looked at him funny and sometime, well, I guess people was just downright mean."
i could get in a lot of trouble telling her these little stories, especially with Mister Leefolt. But Mae Mobley know these our "secret stories."
"Why Aibee? Why was they so mean to him?" she ask.
"Cause he was green."
Kathryn Stockett, The Help, pp. 349-50.
I realize that this is just fiction written in 2009 rather than an actual story about a maid teaching a child about prejudice. However, I think the image is very powerful. While a white child might not think anything about seeing black people treated poorly, she would instinctively know that it was wrong to be mean to a wise Martian just because he was green.
A Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to everyone.
Monday, January 16, 2012
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