Martha Southgate has a pretty articulate takedown detailing what’s wrong with The Help, whether in movie or book form (via Alexander):
[T]hese stories are more likely to get the green light and have more popular appeal (and often acclaim) if they have white characters up front. That’s a shame. The continued impulse to reduce the black women and men of the civil rights movement to bit players in the most extraordinary step towards justice that this nation has ever known is infuriating, to say the least.