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The most popular negative public criticism is Stockett's protrayal of the black community, specifically the characters of Minny and Aibileen. The criticism emerges from her portrayal as these characters as inferior in intelligence to the white community as their language and tone appears to be less accepted grammatically and contains several usage errors. Critiques argue that Stockett is a racist herself and is as low as the racist characters mentioned in her book because of her automatic association of lack of intelligence and the black community. They argue that Aibileen is an educated character with dreams of being a writer and even publishes many articles in the newspaper, therefore her tone and grammar would be that of a higher standard. Criticism also arises from the fact that there is not a single fictional character portrayed in her novel that is of higher intelligence than a white counterpart. Many protested the novel because they found it as counter intuitive against her ideals of ending racial discrimination and the call for integration justice.
Many critiques fail to realize the actual context of the novel and the distinct characteristics that would contribute to such tone and portrayal of characters. In the era of racial discrimination there was a clear line between black and white education, forcing black into schools in which the standard of education was lowered to a level of much less achievement. These characteristics clearly contribute to their tone and explain why the characters would carry this tone throughout the majority of the novel. Also since the novel is set in Jacksonville blacks would be even at a more discriminated level forcing the general black population into the same linguistic abilities and parameters.
Many critiques fail to realize the actual context of the novel and the distinct characteristics that would contribute to such tone and portrayal of characters. In the era of racial discrimination there was a clear line between black and white education, forcing black into schools in which the standard of education was lowered to a level of much less achievement. These characteristics clearly contribute to their tone and explain why the characters would carry this tone throughout the majority of the novel. Also since the novel is set in Jacksonville blacks would be even at a more discriminated level forcing the general black population into the same linguistic abilities and parameters.