Posted on 07/30/2019 6:20:16 AM PDT by LavaDog
I recently reread one of my favorite books, Uncle Tom's Cabin. I'm fond of the book, partly because I spent my early 20s living on Forest Street in Hartford, Connecticut, and got to gaze at the beautiful Harriet Beecher Stowe house daily. Because of this pride I feel in Stowe's masterwork, I am deeply troubled by the increase in Democrats using the term "Uncle Tom" to degrade black people who lend their support to President Trump.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
bkmk
Uncle Tom was the most selfless, honorable, character in the
book.
ML/NJ
In the same way, I have an issue with the term “has-been,” when the intended meaning is “someone who formerly was great but no longer is great.” In fact, “has-been” is present perfect, meaning “true in the past an continues to this day.” “[X] has been the greatest at his position,” meaning he still is the greatest.
Instead of saying that someone is a “has-been,” better to say that that person is a “was.” lol.
Bookmark
I think what the blacks who use “Uncle Tom” as a pejorative to denigrate other blacks really mean is “quisling”. Quisling was a Norwegian army officer and the founder of its fascist party. He collaborated with the Nazis during the WWII and was executed as a traitor.
Any black that does’t conform to the orthodoxy of victimhood and race oppression and tries to work constructively with the white ruling class is a traitor to their race based ideology.
Far more people have opinions about Uncle Tom’s Cabin than have actually read it. Including, apparently, the author of this article.
Interesting, as he wrote he has read it more than once.
we used to call a nerdy anglo engineer here we called uncle-tom,, just because his name was to..
nothing racial.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom as a Christ figure who went unresistingly to martyrdom. His humility and acceptance are essential to the narrative structure of the book, which is a journey downward through the various faces of slavery from the most benign to the most vicious. The book is an expose and a moral indictment. But Uncle Tom is not Sojourner Truth.
I only mentioned what the author wrote.
From the article:
I recently reread one of my favorite books, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
So: it is true that Uncle Tom did not lead an armed insurrection. That would have aborted the entire narrative structure of the book, which involves a broad survey and criticism of the various excuses for slavery. That requires Uncle Tom to undertake a journey, which doesn't work if he dies on the barricades along the way. HBS instead made Uncle Tom a Christ figure and sent him to Calvary. It is always a giveaway to the sheer imbecility and ignorance of leftist critics of the book if they fail to understand and acknowledge the radicalism of this move. But they often don't.
That said, there are indeed instances of self emancipation (i.e. runaways) and armed resistance in the book. Just not by Uncle Tom. But the radical critics have never read the book, so they don't know that. Jesus didn't lead an armed revolt, so Uncle Tom doesn't either. But the theme is there.
HBS could have plotted the novel differently but she was writing in the early 1850's and hoped to have an impact on the great issue that was tearing the country apart. It would have been counterproductive to make Uncle Tom an armed revolutionary; the South lived in pathological fear of slave uprisings, thought another Haitian revolt was just around the corner, and would have used a novel calling for such a revolt as a justification for slavery extremism. (This was precisely the effect of John Brown's antics, both in Kansas and at Harpers Ferry.) The armed resistance in the book is on the part of runaways fighting off slave catchers, which puts it clearly into the realm of self-defense.
Making Uncle Tom a Christ figure allows him to stitch together a long string of incidents and characters encountered on his journey. It also sets up a redemption scene at the end, when the sons of Tom's original, kindly owner, appalled at Tom's forced sale, arrive just minutes too late to save him. They were decent and well meaning people, paternalistic towards their slaves. but were defeated in the end by the inherent viciousness of the slave system. The whole narrative was designed to shame the South. In which the book succeeded.
“...Uncle Tom as a Christ figure who went unresistingly to his martyrdom...”
No.
Tom, in a powerful act of passive resistance, refused Simon Legree’s order to take the whip and beat his fellow slave, and was martyred when Legree became enraged at Tom’s resistance.
People who have never read, or didn’t understand the book have since associated the name “Uncle Tom” with a negro who betrays blacks to save himself & curry favor with whites, when in fact, Tom’s actions were the opposite.
Tom’s Christlike ability to forgive has enraged the more militant blacks today, who feel that anything less than virulent hatred of slavers &/or payback to whites in general is “Uncle Tom-ism.”
Tom’s refusal to perform the whipping is insufficient for them; they feel he should have whipped Simon Legree.
Ah, please forgive.
In seizing on a single phrase in your post # 11, and attempting rather arrogantly to *correct* you, I failed to notice your #13, in which you said far better what I meant.
Oops.(blush!)
So sorry.
I should’ve read it a long time ago but I haven’t, so I just bought a copy. Thanks.
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