The New Uncle Tom Comes from a Two Parent Home

I am a huge basketball fan and I am really looking forward to attending the first round of NCAA championships tomorrow in DC. I was lucky enough to get some tickets and I will be enjoying some great basketball and good company with friends. I can't get enough basketball and most men are not only impressed with my knowledge of the game, many are blown away by it.


I came across an article today through a Facebook friend today. It wasn't really an article but an OP-ED by Grant Hill in response to the documentary The Fab Five. The Fab Five refers to the Michigan Basketball teams of 91-93. The were considered to be the best of the best and virtually unbeatable. That is until the big game came along. They couldn't win the big one, two years in a row they made it to the finals of the championships and fell short. The team had a mystique even though they didn't win. The press that they received and the promise of the careers that would be coming once they made it to the NBA were talked about constantly.

The producer of the documentary was Jalen Rose, also a member of the fab five. The first championship they lost was to Duke. Duke is one of those teams that most people have very strong feelings about, you love them or hate them in most cases. Rose of course is a hater. The problem is that he got personal about his feelings, very personal.

For me Duke was person,” Rose said. “I hated Duke and I hated everything Duke stood for. Schools like Duke didn’t recruit players like me. I felt like they only recruited black players that were Uncle Toms.”

Rose is giving a whole new meaning to the term Uncle Tom. At least this is a meaning I have never heard before. He was feeling that the black players on Duke came from a more middle class background and more importantly came from a two parent home. Grant Hill's parents got a very good education and had parents who are still married. Hill's answer is really a thing of beauty:

It was a sad and somewhat pathetic turn of events, therefore, to see friends narrating this interesting documentary about their moment in time and calling me a bitch and worse, calling all black players at Duke “Uncle Toms” and, to some degree, disparaging my parents for their education, work ethic and commitment to each other and to me. I should have guessed there was something regrettable in the documentary when I received a Twitter apology from Jalen before its premiere. I am aware Jalen has gone to some length to explain his remarks about my family in numerous interviews, so I believe he has some admiration for them.


In his garbled but sweeping comment that Duke recruits only “black players that were ‘Uncle Toms,’ ” Jalen seems to change the usual meaning of those very vitriolic words into his own meaning, i.e., blacks from two-parent, middle-class families. He leaves us all guessing exactly what he believes today.

This is the second such story that I have heard about in just a few days. I have a Facebook friend who also lives in the DC area. She is a conservative black woman who is involved in the tea party movement. She also is very involved in the community to help the inner city youth in The District by tutoring them. She got into a conversation with the mother of the young boy she is currently working with. She brought up the fact that DC may be getting the voucher program back and she would be willing to help her fill out the paperwork to get him into a better school. Her response was something along the lines of why would she want her son to go to some private school with geeky white kids. How would he learn to fight then?


But since I am a republican and support the tea party I am the racist right?

Is Jesse Jackson Jr. A Race Traitor Too?

Apparently Jesse Jr. had an affair with a restaurant hostess.  Congressmen having affairs is nothing new, and not all that shocking really.  But, this woman happens to be white and Jesse Jr., as you may know, is not.  Apparently, his wife is aware of the situation and ultimately it is between the two of them. 

I am not one to say one word about these types of relationships.  Love is love, if you skin tones happen to differ, so what.  It isn't anyone else's business as far as I am concerned.  But, sadly, I do know that there are plenty of people who don't agree with that. 

Many months back I did post on some comments that I read on a blog about a statement made by Eleanor Norton Holmes about Justice Thomas.  Her implication was that he was not "black" enough for her tastes. The comments made by liberals went off about Justice Thomas' wife Ginni, who happens to be white.  They were none to thrilled about this.  The usual slurs were used.  "Oreo", "Uncle Tom", "Traitor" and on it went. 

So is this true as well for Jesse Jr.?  Because logically it should be, right?  Just Askin'. 

Shirley, Shirley Where For Art Thou Shirley? Sherrod's Uncle Tom

I think that we, as conservatives, need to encourage the media to keep talking to Shirley Sherrod.  Let's put a bug in the ear of Larry King to get her and husband for the full hour.  The more this woman and her husband talk the more they prove the point that Breitbart was making.  Because after all, the white man is stealing the vote. 

I really have to wonder if these people have read Uncle Tom.  Because Uncle Tom was no race traitor. 





H/T to The Other McCain

Uncle Tom - A Profile in Conviction

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 am sure that I read it in school, but I don’t remember the book at all. 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?


I just finished the book today. 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.


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 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. 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 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. Sadly it was just before 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.

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."


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?