Uncle Tom had his issues, but he was the opposite of hateful.
Showerthoughts
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
Swap Uncle Tom for Uncle Ruckus from Boondocks and it would be more accurate.
No relation.
Everyone assumes that Uncle Tom was a character like Sam Jackson's Stephen from "Django Unchained" or Uncle Ruckus from "Boondocks". The character in the book is nothing like this. In fact, Uncle Tom is an admirable character. How this man's name became a slur is more complicated than it first appears.
The weird part about reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is that its advocacy literature, and most of us don't need much convincing that slavery is bad. But we need this context to understand that Uncle Tom was created by a white woman to appeal to a white audience because it's his tragedy that is supposed to persuade the reader. Uncle Tom didn't fashion himself to please some master like Calvin Candy, he was created whole-cloth as a device to awaken empathy of white audience. It's not his character, it's his raison d'être.
This guy reads.
Why use that description of race? It’s the word used back then, but not today.
I believe its being used in the same contextual format as it would the time period of Uncle Tom, similarly to how quotes work.
You shouldn't censor history.
No, but it’s a shower thought. If it were a quote, I wouldn’t have said anything.
Most Americans are apparently oblivious to the state of affairs. The problem is the lack of accountability across the board. There are stupid policies of both parties. Taking away people's rights is no joke, though.
Oof Ouch my both sides