by
What is it about the phrase "Uncle Tom" that seems to send conservative commentators around here over the edge?
At least two local columnists have registered outrage, indignation and puzzlement recently over the fact that blacks been apply that phrase -- along with a few other harsh criticisms -- to a pair of high-profile black newsmakers.
At The Detroit News, Nolan Finley expresses deep and inconsolable dismay Thursday at black meanies in social media who blasted Dr. Ben Carson for using a National Prayer Breakfast speech in front of President Obama to air unsurprising right-wing views on taxes, social welfare, health care and some other hot-button issues.
Dr. Ben CarsonHe is held as an African-American hero.
But some are calling him a token, an Uncle Tom, a traitor to his race. Why?
Because he came out of the closet. As a conservative. Maybe even a Republican. And African Americans aren't allowed to be Republican and keep full membership in their race.
The furor over Carson's politics began in February, when he was invited to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast.
The doctor told an audience that included President Barack Obama that the president's policies are hindering economic growth and opportunity in America.
Liberals screamed that Carson was parroting right-wing talking points and disrespecting the president.
Social networks lit up with diatribes against Carson, calling him a "house Negro" and worse.
At MLive, Lansing attorney Matthew Davis – a former John Engler aide -- further amps up the pearl-clutching indignation. Blacks who call Detroit's new emergency manager an Uncle Tom are compared to the most notorious hate group in American history.
Mostly, though, and especially in terms of public policy, racial pathology appeals only to the most vile in humanity.
That pathology was on full-blown display Thursday when Gov. Rick Snyder named Kevyn Orr -- a highly respected bankruptcy attorney -- as the city's emergency financial manager.
Outside the press conference, deeply pathological racists like Rev. Charles Williams II (of Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network) called Orr, who is black, an "Uncle Tom." Tom Barrow, another protester, said the state's financial manager law is "Jim Crowesque." Said the Rev. Horrace Sheffield: "This is colonialism in its neo-Negro form."
There are only two possible explanations for such despicable behavior, the likes of which is every bit as contemptible as their contemporaries in the Ku Klux Klan.
Heh. And here I thought conservatives disdained "PC" speech. (Perhaps that only applies when they're defending their right-wing brethren's hateful attacks on liberals, people of color, women and gays.)
Brutally efficient shorthand
Here's my thing, though: Since when can't African-Americans criticize those they perceive as undermining their political interests? And since when does the right get to tell blacks what to say about other black people and how to say it? Seriously, this stuff is way out of control.
Of course, it's not nice to call someone an Uncle Tom. Nor is the term always fairly applied or, depending on your reading of Harriet Beecher Stowe, even etymologically accurate.
But as political shorthand goes, it's brutally efficient. And I think it takes a special kind of naiveté or disingenuousness to tell black folks that using the phrase is wrong because it's somehow "racist."
Those complaints just smack of an attempt to censor black political/cultural speech, particularly vehement and racially charged speech that makes some whites (and many conservatives) uncomfortable.
Blacks shouldn't be obligated to conform to that discomfort.
Truth is, there are blacks who consciously undermine the best interests of black people and communities specifically to further white racist agendas. White folks know they exist, same as black people do (which is why a Quentin Tarrantino can craft a "house Negro" archetype that resonates with such power and familiarity -- to blacks and whites alike -- in "Django Unchained").
Dangerous treachery
Just as not all whites hate black people, not all blacks love themselves or each other.
Just as you have self-hating Jews and Asians and people of just about any ethnic stripe, you have black people who work diligently to do the bidding of corporations, politicians and organizations that would like nothing more than to roll back African-American progress. (To say nothing of the gangsters, dope dealers, crooked elected officials and greedy ministers who prey on blacks, too)
Politically treacherous African Americans aren't just a figment of some paranoid black imagination. They are real, and they are dangerous.
If not "Uncle Tom," then what phrase does befit, say, a black Ohio secretary of state who -- in the name of the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign -- tries to game the electoral system in an attempt to diminish and disenfranchise black voters?
Black people aren't alone either. Numerous groups have catchphrases to describe those in their circles who they think actively work against internal best interests. Republicans have RINOs. Hispanics have "coconuts." Asians have "bananas." Blacks have Uncle Toms (and house Negroes and Oreos and just plain-old sellouts).
Inspiring personal story
So does his Feb. 7 speech automatically make Dr. Carson a Tom? I don't believe so, no.
After all, social conservatism runs deep in African America, where the church still holds an undue amount of sway. So it's not unusual to hear a black person rail against gay marriage or in favor of Christianism. And as the most prominent black surgeon in the country, Carson's up-from-poverty story has long been one that blacks embrace as inspirational. (Contrary to what some believe, even barefooted black people have been pulling themselves up by their bootstraps for centuries.)
But Dr. Carson's speech also seemed to intimate that black social ills are the fault of the black community alone. That's not fair and certainly not true. And such a lopsided rendition of American racial history only further encourages the ass-backwards belief that black America is stocked with the "deserving poor," people mired in poverty solely because of personal failings and irresponsibility rather than larger social forces.
Carson's critics, even those who don't call him an Uncle Tom, argue that having such a prominent black man promote such a wrong-headed viewpoint hurts antipoverty efforts and gives comfort to those who would stereotype and denigrate low-income African-Americans.
The fact that conservatives flocked to Carson afterward -- donating money, giving him an opportunity to speak at CPAC, urging him to run for political office -- only made his black critics warier. After all, how are black Americans supposed to perceive a man so willing to be coddled by the same people who spit on black congressmen, who regularly disrespect and slur the nation's first black president, who think Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh are smart and who spend millions of dollars and countless hours configuring new ways to suppress the black vote?
(Oh, and as much as Finley may dream of a Carson senatorial run, I can promise you that his grizzled right-wing views will not, as Nolan hopes, "help a party addicted to white suburban candidates intrigue young and urban voters, black and white." There's nothing bold or refreshing about Carson's take. Black conservatives have been popping similar crap for hundreds of years now, and it's only white conservatives who always act as if they're hearing it all for the first time.)
Kevyn Orr: Not MLK reincarnated
Kevyn Orr, emergency financial manager of Detroit
And what of Kevyn Orr, the city's new EM?
Orr's issue isn't anything he said. It's the job he accepted.
How well does the Uncle Tom label fit him? Well, if you believe that the emergency manager law is being unfairly applied to heavily black municipalities -- that is to say, in a racist manner -- then it stands to reason that you believe that anyone who accepts the EM position is OK with that practice. So what are black protestors supposed to say about a black man whom they think is happily following a blueprint for their political disempowerment? That's he's MLK reincarnated?
Whatever they say, they aren't "racist" for it, as Mlive's Davis contends in a March 15 column that drew more than 940 comments. They aren't the KKK.
And really, what kind of pretzel logic do you need in order to go from disagreeing with charged political insults to equating blacks who fight for local control with a terrorist group with a long, ugly history of lynchings, shootings, rapes and castration? Davis, who suggests that he has some special insight into "the true evil of racism" because he's of mixed-race parentage, leaves you wondering if he has even common sense or a grasp of basic history.
If you know the "true evil of racism" then you should know that you don't find it in a small crowd of angry black preachers and professionals holding protest signs on an I-75 overpass and calling other blacks names from a distance.
And if "the true evil of racism" really can be reduced to labeling someone an Uncle Tom, then we need a new word to describe the phenomenon that blacks have been enduring since we got here because it sure isn't anything as mild as a few pejoratives.
Chris Rock's instructive distinction
(Chris Rock brilliantly distinguishes between real power and mouthing off when he talks about some whites feeling discriminated against because they "can't" say "nigger." "Tell you what," Rock says. "You say 'nigger' and I'll raise interest rates.")
You can argue for diversity of political thought. You can argue for a deeper and more mature parsing of Carson's speech or Orr's new job. But this garbage where these neocons selectively play the "PC card" whenever they want blacks to forego any kind of race analysis -- no matter how harsh, ineloquent or discomforting it may be -- really needs to stop.
Name-calling isn't nice, as I said earlier. And calling someone an Uncle Tom certainly isn't the most effective tool for social change, although I don't think insults are ever meant to be. But sometimes, it's deserved. Sometimes, it's the shoe that fits.
And sometimes, it's one of the few tools that a powerless people feel they have left
.
