Let's Talk About Uncle Tom's

From a previous essay of mine called "Save the Drama for Your Mama":

And let’s talk about Uncle Tom’s, the title character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel. Don’t we call Black people who seem to bow to the white folks and sellout to them "slap-happy, amos 'n' andyin', black-stooge, bootlickin', handkerchief-head Negro, pleaser-and-appeaser, chicken-eatin', knee-shakin', prefabricated, jiv'n, jivin', jiving, snow-black, butt-kissing, co-caucasian, howdy-doody, shoeshine boy, tree-top, white-bread, crumb-snatchin', backstabbin', behind-scratchin', zip-coon, foot-shuffln', hafrican, aunt jemima, thomasina, window dressin', homey-kinda, cotton-pickin', Rev. Pork Chop, buckdancin', Judas, lawn jockey, big-shot-coon, Kingfisher, homo Tomus americanus, wooly-head, black-anglo-saxon, black skunk, bought-and-sold, opporTOMist, thank-ya-boss, stooge, integratin', inauthentic, un-cola, uppity, tomfool, turn-the-other-cheek, shifty-eyed, bug-eyed, waterboy, whitewardly-mobile, zebra, Stepin Fetchit, low-belly-creepin', rent-a-Tom, self-hatin', sell-out, speak-when-spoken-to, house-boy, high yaller, turncoat, Uncle Remus, Sambo, jigaboo, feet-shufflin’, de-blacked, bourgie, caste flunky, cocktail-sippin', yassah yassah yassah, me-too-boss, darky Uncle Tom’s”? And we call them even worse things than that too. Unfortunately, there are many who really do fit this job description. However, many other African Americans all across the United States who refuse to bow to the "Party Line" and refuse to bow to the self-appointed "Keepers of the Blackness" and who dare to think independently are also pinned with that moniker. Because of fear of the "Thought Police S.W.A.T. Teams," many Black independent thinkers and those who start to think independently are forced to stay in the closet and keep their thoughts to themselves. Some of them even publicly feign digust of "Uncle Tom's" just to keep the heat off themselves. It is time for all of these Black independent thinkers to courageously come out of the closet and say "we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore!," just like Network. M.D. Currington, a former loyal Black Democratic attack dog, writes: “Black women were the first to use the term to describe Black men who left the Republican Party to join the Democratic Party (Ed. - historically the racist party of slavery and repression). The Honorable Marcus Garvey (was) the first public figure to call Black Democrats Uncle Tom’s. As a matter of fact, one of the best known figures that Garvey called an Uncle Tom was W.E.B. Dubois. Dubois was very critical of the ‘Back to Africa’ (movement) led by Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Garvey called Dubois an ‘Uncle Tom.’ Dubois responded by calling Garvey ‘the most dangerous Black man in America.’ Garvey followed with calling Dubois ‘purely and simply a white man’s nigger…’ (Ed.- Presumably Garvey slammed Dubois in that fashion because Dubois was the only Black officer of the NAACP at the time.) The most unusual phenomenon about the term ‘Uncle Tom’ is that it is currently directed to Black Republicans and not to Black Democrats, even though the ideas of these Black Republicans have not changed since the abolition of slavery.” (By the way, I call all Blacks who refuse to address the issue of Black genocide and refuse to oppose it in all its forms true “Uncle Tom sellouts.”)