In the film, The Help, the plot is set in the 1960s where a black waitress and a white college-educated woman work together to expose the poor treatment suffered by black waitresses. This film focuses on the modern stereotype of a white family's home in the 1960s. The women were extremely careless, which is represented by Elizabeth Leefolt as the black maid picked up on their relaxation, which in this film was Aibileen Clark, a loving black mother figure. Throughout this film, The Help portrays the ideas of the late 1900s, through the superiority of white rule in the Southern United States, black segregation, and denied opportunities. In this film blacks are treated extremely poorly, this includes blacks being barred from using white facilities, doing repetitive jobs for white families, and restricting speech because they want to avoid conflict. These are all things that were a reality in the 1960s and are now portrayed through modern film. The Help explores the ways in which racism and gender roles manifested themselves in the lives of women in the 1960s and the effects that occurred due to an insensitive and segregated society. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay “Colored” Social Problems Highlighted in the Movie “The Help” One of the key elements of this film focuses on the poor working conditions the colored women were facing. During the 1960s black women were mostly designated as maids for white families if they wanted to be employed. This type of work has been carried on for generations, as Aibileen says she knew she would become a housekeeper because her mother and grandmother were also one. In The Help the maids were unappreciated and exploited by their white employers. For example, throughout the film the maids never received a simple "thank you" from their employers. Instead they expected more and more from their hard-working maids. This is seen when Aibileen is trying to get Mae Mobley to use the bathroom. Elizabeth Leefolt enters and asks for the table to be set while Aibileen is clearly busy. The pay they received was deplorable compared to the work they were assigned. Specifically, in this movie the waitresses made 95 cents an hour. The black maids were basically the mothers of the white children, they had an extremely strong bond with them and even at one point during the film Mae Mobley states: “You are my real mother Abi. " This close relationship is also represented through Constantine, a beloved and tragic figure who cared for Skeeter when she was a child. Mothers relied on maids to raise their children, this despite the fact that blacks were considered dirty, sick and endowed with less intelligence than the average white person during this time period, being a black waitress was in no way a privileged job and left no room for a job promotion or pay raise due to the superior status of the whites who thought they didn't deserve their “hard-worked” money to have a colored face during this time is racism. Throughout the film, segregation is a consistently present theme Jim Crow, which enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. Colored services were extremely poor compared to white services. In The Help this is represented through the character of Hilly, a white woman.