The Wrong Use Of “Uncle Tom”

by John Glover on November 18, 2011 · 0 comments

In my readings I come across so many insightful things and information that I would love to share with the world, escpecially my people, namely my brothers. Because of this desire to share information I will place a passage from a book I completed reading about a week ago. Seeing we are in the mist of the political machine getting up and running and the Republican party having a Black man positing himself to be their next Presidential candidate, I felt this was fitting.

Taken from:

“Black Labor, White Wealth: The Search for Power and Economic Justice”

By: Claud Anderson, Ed.D.

The term “Uncle Tom” is not an appropriate label for an individual who is “white on the inside and black on the outside” and sells out his race by placing his personal gains ahead of the rights and gains of his people. Contrary to popular usage of the label, the character Uncle Tom was not the culprit in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Uncle Tom was a brave man with dignity who cared about his family and race. The real villain was another black slave named Sambo. He was totally committed to the white master and used every opportunity to undermine the other slaves.

Sambo, in many respects, was like today’s black conservatives. Sambo always followed the white slave master, Simon Legree, and offered to show him how to “tree the coons.” It was Sambo who beat Uncle Tom to death both for refusing to whip a black female slave or sell out his people. Uncle Tom tried to empower his people by understanding and beating the social and political structure wherever he could. Uncle Tom felt it was important to get his people across the river to freedom. He risked his life to do so.

The Sambo character personified a very successful social control created by conservatives. He was such a successful phenomenon that the concept he personified became a greater danger to blacks than Uncle Tom. As blacks move toward structuring policies of racial accountability, it will be very important to know who helps and who hurts the race.

Sambo was the black slave character in numerous novels and movies, known by different names, who was willing to pick up a weapon and defend his white master against the approaching Union army or hide the master’s silver from Northern carpetbaggers. What is the difference between the fictional Sambo character and today’s real-life blacks who join the conservative movement to argue against affirmative action, black reparations, and set-asides? They declare that the world is now color blind and are opposed to any policies requiring whites to share the socioeconomic burden that centuries of slavery and second-class citizenship have imposed on blacks.

Isn’t espousing a color-blind, race neutral, melting pot society, a modern way of hiding the master’s silver? What are black conservatives conserving when Black America is burdened by poverty, crime, unemployment, homelessness and other social pathologies?

Based upon historical treatment alone there should be a general antagonism between blacks and conservatives. Though conservatives claim that they are not racist, for centuries they have opposed programs and policies to help blacks. Andrew Hacker, a white writer, provided insight on this in his book, Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal. Hacker asserted that: “There persists the belief that members of the black race represent an inferior strain of the human species….. Of course, the belief is seldom voiced in public. Most whites who call themselves conservatives hold this view about blacks and proclaim it when they are sure of their company” Since white conservatives share their true feelings only in the privacy of other whites, there is a strong possibility that black conservatives do not know how white conservatives truly feel about them.

From this point on use the term Sambo for a sellout.