An important social structural factor that contributes to the problem of racial discrimination is institutional racism.
Minorities are kept clustered in the lower levels of the stratification system and are exploited by the normal policies and practices of institutions, including social issue, economy
and government. Social psychological factors of attitudes, values, and ideologies of both the white majority and the minorities compound the structural discrimination. While the social
structural factors lead to devaluation of minorities, the social psychological factors can lead to self defeating behavior on the part of minorities.
Here is some kinds of discrimination that found in The Help:
4.3.1 Discrimination in Economy
In Kathryn Stockett’ The Help, the black people are identical as the members of the lower class who are in critical poverty, and the white is identical with the upper class who are
in the top of richness. This two race difference in economy is the indication of the discrimination happened.
The United States is often referred to the land of opportunity. It is the place where many foreigners come for the chance to make their lives better. They openly speak about the ease
of obtaining a quality education, a well-paying job, a home and overall economic stability.
However, African Americans, who are long-time inhabitants, are still struggling to acquire a fraction of these benefits. Many whites quickly agree that blacks are not working
hard enough to change their situation; asserting that their plight of poverty is chosen. Yet, with careful examination one quickly realizes that these foreigners, although minorities,
represent something a little different.
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Massey and Denton 1993, demonstrated that even affluent minorities have been found to live in communities with higher poverty rates, lower educational attainment, and higher
shares of single-parent families. The general actions to discriminate people economically based on the race are the
discrimination on the rights to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work, to protection against unemployment, and to equal pay for equal work.
In The Help, Aibileen as a maid of Miss Leefot works in a whole day. But she is paid with minimum salary.
Take a whole day just to clean toilets. Miss Leefot don’t pay but ninety-five cents an hour less than I been paid in years. But after Treelore died, I took what I
could.
Stockett, 2009:4 Aibileen has a son named Treelore who past away at the age of twenty-four years old.
He has a little apartment over on foley street and working in Scanlon-Taylor, Treelore is to small for that kind of work and too skinny but he needed the job. The quotation above
explains that black people lag in their ability to get and keep good jobs because of racial discrimination
But one night he working late at the Scanlon-Taylor mill, lugging two-by-fours to the truck, splinters slicing all the way through the glove. He too small for that kind a
work, too skinny, but he needed the job. Stockett, 2009: 2
While the white workers can get good works with good facilities for their own selves, the black in the other hand cannot get it. It makes the black people condition worse day by
day, but they have no effort to change it for helping their own selves.
4.3.2 Discrimination in Politic
