Anti-racist White Hero, the Sequel: Intersections of Race(ism), Gender, and Social Justice

In 1999, Kelly Madison identified and assessed the "anti-racist-white-hero" (ARWH) film genre, describing how it sustains systemic racism even as it purports to expose and eradicate it. In this paper, I examine the film The Help in order to assess whether and how it evinces rhetorical strategies similar to or different from those identified by Madison. I argue that although the film accomplishes the same ends as the ARWH genre, it does so in notably distinctive ways, especially to the extent that representations of race and racism intersect with those of gender.