Comforting and Sustaining Whiteness in the ‘Post-Racial’ Era: The Help, Collective Nostalgia, and White Ignorance

ABSTRACT By the spring of 2022 there were nearly 200 bills making their way through 40 state legislatures that explicitly prevented public schools from teaching “divisive subjects” that could make some students feel “discomfort.” Nearly all included language that banned supposed concepts of critical race theory (CRT) or the 1619 Project. The attacks on and misrepresentations of CRT illustrate whiteness’s preferred memory of U.S. history as a rhetorical vehicle for sustaining political, economic, and social power. I offer here an argument for what a preferred memory looks like, how it is constructed, and why. I suggest that popular American movies have overwhelmingly created discourses of race that comfort and sustain whiteness. I use the 2011 film, The Help to show how narratives comfort whiteness and define racism through collective nostalgia and intentional ignorance. I then identify several key strategies whiteness employs to “insulate itself against refutation” while reaffirming racism as strictly an interpersonal phenomenon.