Problematic Representations of Strategic Whiteness and “Post-racial” Pedagogy: A Critical Intercultural Reading ofThe Help

Abstract

The Help is argued to influence understandings of racial histories, racial in/equality, and interracial coalitions from a pedagogical stance invested in the re/production of white dominance. This essay mobilizes strategic whiteness to map the representational strategies utilized to secure the superiority of whiteness and further the momentum of “post-racial” ideology. Facilitated via white female characters, The Help's cinematic centralization of whiteness and redemption of white racists are illuminated as manifestations of strategic whiteness that operate at the expense of black women.

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