Racial Discrimination and Segregation of African American in Kathryn Stockett's The Help

The Help is the first novel by American author Kathryn Stockett. This novel is the one of interesting novels to analyze. It tells about the story of African American maids working in white Southern houses in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi. This study is aimed to analyze African American as the group of minorities in America who is always badly treated by Whites. This study focuses on discrimination and segregation of African American which is caused by the Whites.
This study use qualitative method because in line with the features of qualitative design that the data collection was done simultaneously with the data analysis. The source of data was taken from a novel by African American author entitled The Help. The data were in the form of utterances of the characters and explanation of the narrator. There are three processes in method of analyzing data; data reduction, data display and drawing the conclusion.
After analyzing the novel, the results of the study are (1) Discrimination is occurred in working sector and in a region of African American. (2) Segregation is occurred in household facility, in residence, and in sector of public. (3) Racial discrimination and segregation give big impacts to the economic condition of African American at that time especially in education, occupation, income and wealth. Therefore African American undergo hard life because they do not have an opportunity to have equal life with the Whites.