The Help
Servants, collectively named
The Help is a dated, now offensive term for domestic servants, especially Black women employed as housekeepers, cooks, or nannies in white households: The help enters through the back door.
The phrase reduces workers to their function and carries the condescension of the Jim Crow–era South.
It also refers to the 2009 novel and 2011 film depicting Black domestic workers in 1960s Mississippi.
- cookHeat food for eating
- housekeeperDomestic cleaning professional
- maidHousehold cleaning worker
- domestic workerHired help at residence
- civil rightsGuaranteed individual legal protections
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