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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Uncle Tom is a racist term that was used by the KKK to describe black people who wanted to "act white" by selling out other black people.

But it's wildly inaccurate. It has nothing to do with the actual book Uncle Toms Cabin, one of the most popular books ever written (it outsold the Bible in the 1850's). Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote the book was an abolitionist, she was very very anti-slavery like Mark Twain. Uncle Tom in the book is based on an actual former slave, and Uncle Tom in the book, if you actually read the book, SPOILER ALERT, is beaten to death at the end for refusing to give up the whereabouts of 2 other slaves. That's Uncle Tom, a martyr.

Calling someone an Uncle Tom means you're calling them a hero, not a sellout. The whole phrase you're referring to comes from the play that was written afterwards which turned Uncle Tom into a meek character because the play writers didn't think people would've liked the ending of having a man beaten to death.

Here's a wonderful article about it

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93059468

Quoting from the article:

MARTIN: What is it that African-Americans hate about this story?

Prof. TURNER: Many African-Americans don't hate the real story that Stowe wrote. The Uncle Tom character that she gives us is extraordinarily Christian. The climax of the story really comes when Uncle Tom is asked to reveal where two slave women are hiding, who had been sexually abused by their master. And he refuses. Knowing that he is going to be beaten to death, he refused to say where they are. And African-Americans who have read the novel can appreciate what kind of heroism that took for a black man to sign away his life to save two black women.

Unfortunately, the stage depictions don't include that part of the story. They grossly distort Uncle Tom into an older man than he is in the novel, a man whose English is poor, a man who will do quite the opposite, who will sell out any black man if it will curry the favor of a white employer, a white master, a white mistress. It's that distorted character that is so objectionable to African-Americans.

Prof. TURNER: The producers of the early stage shows didn't think that they could attract an audience for the Uncle Tom as he was depicted by Stowe. They couldn't sell tickets to a theatrical production, the climax which would have been this man dying, rather than the revealing the whereabouts of these women.

They could sell tickets, as they had been successful by showing blacks in minstrel depictions, showing them liking to dance more than they liked to work, showing their insensitivity to each other, showing their willingness to tell the master or mistress what he or she wanted to hear. That sold tickets, and so those were the shows that they produced, staged and circulated throughout the world.

I highly recommend everyone actually read Uncle Toms Cabin

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Because Christianity played a major part in helping black people overcome slavery and united them together?

Also all Civil Rights movements in America started in the Protestant Church

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

But one person in the Democratic party still screwed over the environment because Joe Manchin gets the most kickbacks from Oil companies, so it's a blow to all of us Democrats regardless and does nothing to help the party or this country

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Theocratic countries are seriously the worst places in the world

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

This is discriminatory and it shouldn't even need to exist, I mean, heck, you can literally buy legal weed over the internet now and get it delivered to your door, you can purchase seeds too because in 2018 selling hemp was decriminalized federally

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Same with us Black people, we're not a monolith either. I know many right-wing black people. 80% of us Black Americans self-identify as Christian for instance, so criticism of Christianity really doesn't sit well at all within black communities

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My point was simply Germany is far more racist of a country than the US could ever hope to be. When 1/4 of Germans are ok with lynching black people in the streets, then I think one has to look inwards at their own personal gripes instead of demeaning others simply for being born black like myself.

And yes, 25% of Germans are far-right wing nationalists, this is not the same type of nationalism as here in America, this is real Nazism we're talking about, not the phony American kind

Also I suggest everyone read this article:

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/teachers-called-activities-german-school-leave-town-101624602

Please do not defend Nazis, the EU has a very serious Right-wing problem that's growing more and more each year and I would appreciate people addressing these issues instead of brushing them under the rug because that just tells me you're ok with it

"Many think AfD could emerge as the strongest party when Brandenburg and the fellow eastern states of Saxony and Thuringia hold elections next year. In Thuringia, the AfD candidate last month won the county administrator's post in Sonneberg, the first time since the Nazi era that a far-right party placed first at the county level."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not trying to "get you" or anything, but simply stating a fact, most black people in America live in the Southern part of the country.

"Regionally, the highest concentration of Black people in the U.S. in 2021 is in the South; more than half (56%) live there. Following the South, 17% live in each the Midwest and the Northeast and 10% live in the West.

When it comes to states of residence, Texas is home to the largest Black population, at about 4.0 million. Florida comes in a close second with 3.8 million, and Georgia comes in third, with 3.6 million."

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/fact-sheet/facts-about-the-us-black-population/

If we do urban vs. rural, then the highest concentration of Black Americans would be in New York City, followed by Atlanta

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (20 children)

So why is Texas a red state?

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