Uncle Tom

I have never read Uncle Tom's Cabin. I guess it was not on any approved reading lists when I was growing up. The phrase has been in the sports news recently, that is, one group calling another group "Uncle Tom's". Here is an interesting post from Potluck blog about what it means to be an Uncle Tom.

The Real Uncle Tom

Conservatives who happen to be people of color hear the words “Uncle Tom” on a regular basis. I have heard that term ever since I can remember. The term has always been to me, a put down. During an interview of Alveda King, the niece of Martin, she said she viewed it as a compliment and viewed Uncle Tom as a hero.

I have no memory of reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I was sure that I read it in school and just didn’t remember it, that is until I started doing some research on the book.  The NAACP has made a very strong effort to remove this book from school reading lists.  A few months back I picked up the book and started reading it on a very irregular basis. I went into reading this not believing that I would view Uncle Tom in this way. I was mostly wrong. 

I found the book to be sad. Harriet Beecher Stowe wasn’t above racism herself. The narrative that she gave in the book makes that very clear. Although one must remember the time that this was written in. Racism was the acceptable view-point. It was never questioned, not even by the northerners. While they felt that slavery should end, they certainly didn’t want to embrace the black community. Many whites wanted to round them up and send them all back to Africa. If you read deeply into the history books it seems that this was the view-point that President Lincoln held as well. He was killed so shortly after the civil war ended that we will never know if this was his plan, but there is historical evidence to back up that view.

Black conservatives are called Uncle Tom’s all the time. They are also called Oreo’s, race traitors and many more derogatory names. Allen West recently said this during his tax day tea party speech. Many believe that he is turning his back on his race by embracing conservative views. I have never quite understood why it is that some believe that all blacks must walk in lockstep to a certain political ideology. How exactly is that equality if everyone must think alike?

But upon reading the book I can see why some would want to remove the book from reading lists. I was totally blown away by the book, and realized I read the second half of the book much more quickly than I did the first half. I finished the book with a much greater understanding of what Ms. King was trying to say. The way that Tom lived his life is admirable.  If you take away the actual book, you ruin the narrative that has been built up around it. 

Tom was a man who lived by his convictions. Tom was before anything else a Christian. He viewed his life through this prism. He loved his family and he lived his life in an honorable and decent way. At the beginning of the book Tom is sold to cover some debts of his original owner. His wife encourages him to run away with Eliza, another slave that was about to have her son sold away from her. Eliza couldn’t bear the thought of living without her son, so she grabbed her boy and ran. Tom told his wife that he couldn’t do that. His original master, Shelby, treated him fairly, as far as Tom was concerned. He felt that Shelby wouldn’t be doing this if it were not necessary. Tom read his bible and said his goodbye’s to his family. He left with the belief that he would be back to his family when the money was there. 

Tom was sold to yet another “master” who treated him as well as one could expect during the time of slavery. Time went by and many things happen over the course of  Tom living in Louisiana under his new circumstances, including the death of  St. Clare’s young daughter who loved Tom like an uncle. Tom was set to be freed by St. Clare but he died suddenly and that didn’t happen. Tom was eventually sold to one more Master. This one was a brutal and mean-spirited man. Legree asks Tom to beat an older woman who is in poor health; he is beaten when he refuses. Legree ends up killing Uncle Tom when he refuses to rat out his fellow slaves who have runaway to escape the brutality. Sadly it was just before the Shelby family raised enough money to bring him back to his family, where he would have been a free man with his family.

The point being that Tom never walked away from his own convictions. His belief system sustained him throughout his life. A life that was never easy and almost always sad. Tom was a man who used passive resistance to his existence. He certainly wasn’t one to be called a “sell out” or “race traitor”. There is nothing in the book that should make one jump to that conclusion.  Matter of fact Tom died because he wouldn’t sell out other slaves. 

When St Clare asks him if he would not be better off a slave than a free man, Tom responds with a straight: “No.” “Why Tom, you couldn’t possibly have earned, by your work, such clothes and such living as I have given you,” says St Clare. “Know’s all that Mas’r,” says Tom. “But I’d rather have poor clothes, poor house, poor everything and have ‘em mine, than have the best, and have ‘em any man else’s.”

Legree looked stupefied and confounded; but at last burst forth, “What! ye blasted black beast! tell me ye don’t think it right to do what I tell ye! What have any of you cussed cattle to do with thinking what’s right? I’ll put a stop to it! Why, what do ye think ye are? May be ye think yer a gentleman master, Tom, to be a telling your master what’s right, and what ain’t! So you pretend it’s wrong to flog the gal!”

“I think so, Mas’r,” said Tom; “‘the poor crittur’s sick and feeble; ‘t would be downright cruel, and it’s what I never will do, nor begin to. Mas’r, if you mean to kill me, kill me; but, as to my raising my hand agin any one here, I never shall, I’ll die first!”

Tom spoke in a mild voice, but with a decision that could not be mistaken. Legree shook with anger …

“Well, here’s a pious dog, at last, let down among us sinners! — a saint, a gentleman, and no less, to talk to us sinners about our sins! Powerful holy critter, he must be! Here, you rascal, you make believe to be so pious, — didn’t you never hear, out of yer Bible, ‘Servants, obey yer masters’? An’t I yer master? Didn’t I pay down twelve hundred dollars, cash, for all there is inside yer old cussed black shell? An’t yer mine, now, body and soul?” he said, giving Tom a violent kick with his heavy boot; “tell me!”

In the very depth of physical suffering, bowed by brutal oppression, this question shot a gleam of joy and triumph through Tom’s soul. He suddenly stretched himself up, and, looking earnestly to heaven, while the tears and blood that flowed down his face mingled, he exclaimed: “No! no! no! my soul an’t yours, Mas’r! You haven’t bought it, ye can’t buy it! It’s been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it; no matter, no matter, you can’t harm me!”

“I can’t!” said Legree, with a sneer; “we’ll see, we’ll see!”

The narrative of the sell out actually began several decades after the books release. It started around the turn of the century. While slavery had ended decades earlier the institutionalized racism certainly had not ended. The traveling minstrel shows were very popular during the times of the First World War, and “Uncle Tom” type shows were the rage. This is where much of the narrative started.

While I may not necessarily call Uncle Tom a hero in the same way that Ms. King has referred to him as, what I will say if a politician is being called an Uncle Tom; they may just be someone worth voting for. Uncle Tom was man who lived by his convictions, loved his God, loved his family, and never wavered from what he believed in and what was important in his life. He did what was right, instead of what was easy. Wouldn’t it be nice if more of our politicians were like that?