I've only seen the movie but it's curious how people think that racist immediately means that you believe slavery is right, for example, or that racist people are only the people who act like Hilly. At least as portrayed in the movie, Skeeter is implicated in practices that perpetuate racist ideas. For example, the fact that we see her going out with her "real racist" friends and talking about boys even after she has made such a fuzz about how she believes in civil rights is really problematic. The movie never bothers to portray Skeeter as someone who's concerned about the fact she's hanging out with those girls, she just does it and we're supposed to be excited that they are introducing her to a new boy.
Then there's the larger issue of how Skeeter gets to leave Jackson, become a successful writer after basically using the maids' stories to get *her* dreams but meanwhile Minny and Aibileen are stuck in Jackson. Aibileen especially is out of a job by the time the film ends, yes she has her dreams and whatnot, but hers are just dreams whereas Skeeter's dreams are actually a reality by the end of the movie thanks to all the maids who provided their stories.
It's a white woman's story at the end of the day. I know people will say I'm being radical and reading "too much into it" but that's my perspective on what I think is an incredibly problematic story. We already have a brilliant musical about black maids that escapes a lot of the traps THE HELP buys into, and that is CAROLINE, OR CHANGE.
"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"
