Annette John-Hall: Black actors often still find themselves in roles as domestics

The Associated Press predicts Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer are odds-on favorites to win Academy Awards for best actress and supporting actress, respectively, for their stellar performances in the 1960s ensemble melodrama The Help.

I'll tune in Sunday to see whether these two immensely talented, albeit underworked, actresses can pull off a one-two punch.

If they win, well, nothing could be finer.

Davis' portrayal of noble Aibileen and Spencer's of feisty Minny, friends and domestics who expose their white employers at great risk in the racist South, were certainly worthy of Oscar nods.

Still, am I the only one who cringes over the conventional notion that playing a maid is the surest way for a black actress to get some love in Hollywood?

Here we go again. It's been 72 years since Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Oscar with her depiction of Scarlett O'Hara's house slave in Gone With the Wind.

You would think that with a black president, we'd be able to get a promotion on the silver screen.

But no. When it comes to black actresses, Hollywood is always quick to reward a mammy.

Here's a black history fact: D.W. Griffith's controversial Birth of a Nation popularized the whole notion of the "Mammy" and "Tom" stereotypes. The 1915 Civil War epic depicted the "good" Negroes as staying loyal to their white masters while the brutal black "bucks" terrorized white citizens - on the screen and in the theaters.

Over the years, the images have softened a bit. If not slaves or maids, then certainly saintly archetypes. Male characters were wise, subservient sages who lived and died to elevate the white hero (see Freeman, Morgan) while female roles were reduced to those of benevolent, asexual nurturers (see Goldberg, Whoopi).

In an industry run by white male executives, African American actresses "are still the lowest ones on the totem pole," says Donald Bogle, the Philadelphia-born film historian and esteemed biographer. Meatier roles always include material "that mainstream audiences feel comfortable with," he says.

A film like The Help, told from a white perspective that takes a sanitized, even comedic view of race relations, helps assuage white guilt, Bogle says.

That's why oft-criticized filmmaker Tyler Perry deserves some credit. Sure, Madea's inner self contributes to the buffoonery of some of his movies, but at least Perry doesn't need white actors to tell a black story and keeps black actresses working by casting them in roles that don't require uniforms.

Spencer, 40, a veteran actress just now getting recognition, said she knew there would be a "blacklash" when she signed on to play Minny in The Help.

Indeed, there was. The Association of Black Women Historians came out with a searing critique of Kathryn Stockett's best-selling novel on which the movie was based. The association blasted Stockett for "allowing mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low-paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them."

(We could go on and on debating the merits of the novel, but that's a whole other chicken to fry.)

Truth is, based on entertainment value alone, the film succeeds. But for most African Americans, the history of domestics hits home; it is our own. So though we may place an unfair burden on a single film, we expect depictions that are textured and true. It seldom happens.

The one good thing is that all of the acclaim has resulted in more work for the 46-year-old Davis, who has been so good for so long. She has already landed two featured roles this year.

In Ender's Game, she plays a psychologist who looks after the emotional well-being of a military program.

And in Beautiful Creatures, she's a librarian and friend to a teenage boy's deceased mother - a loyal nurturer who "loves the boy like a son" and will protect him, according to Variety.

Feel-good characters that white moviegoers can surely relate to and take comfort in.

At least she won't be wearing an apron.