via Wikimedia
Throughout Harriet Beecher Stowe’s critically-acclaimed 1852 novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the title character is characterized as a victim of circumstance (slavery) and either perceived as incapable of fighting back by some readers or willingly enduring white oppression by others.
Though Uncle Tom dies a martyr’s death, many Black people don’t see his storyline that way.
As more aggressive freedom movements arose in the 20th century, especially Marcus Garvey’s Black nationalist movement, leaders shot down any suggestion that the submissive accommodation of white people’s emotional needs would result in our socioeconomic liberation.
In the Midwest especially, where coveted Pullman Porter railroad jobs were awarded to the most docile Black men, if you were happy to peacefully “stay in your place” as unquestioningly obedient to white supremacy, you would now be labeled an “Uncle Tom.”
Sure, Stowe’s writing helped persuade many white people that slavery was bad (duh) and the enslaved were innocent sufferers, but her writing oversimplified our ancestors’ humanity and equated it to a superhuman ability to endure brutality.
Today’s activists refuse to play along with the respectability politics of our oppressors.
And with centuries of proof that asking nicely won’t help us overthrow powerful systems of oppression any faster, why should they?