The Help

This touching and uplifting movie brought up a lot of valid points that reflect our yesterday and our today. My mind has been racing in the last 24 hours and I am stuck with questions I am unable to answer.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a milestone that marked the beginning of equality for blacks and women in the United States of America. Surely, the US has been a leading example of freedom and human rights to the world.  Let us be grateful for the advancements we have made in the last 50 years but let us not forget the cruelties in the rest of the world. I say this specifically because it feels like the global social issues of the non-western world are becoming a diminished priority.

Since we have overcome such big hurdles in human rights in the west, how come our brothers and sisters across the pond are still not entitled to basic rights? Why do they not have the same chances or opportunities? How come we have surrendered to the government’s demands and requests, leaving ourselves powerless and hopeless? How come we allow these regimes and these made up rules and laws infringe basic human rights?

It is 2011 and women still have to cover their hair and body? How have we become so relaxed about international law and human rights violations? We know it exists, yet we turn our heads away. At what point is enough, ENOUGH? At what point do we come together and form an action? Looking back at history, we can understand how all of this happened, but we cannot allow this to continue. Human rights are not a Western entitlement. Human rights are an international standard that every human being should be entitled to.

“Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills — against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the  World, and 32 year old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. These men moved the world, and so can we all.”

Robert F. Kennedy