The REAL definition of "Uncle Tom"

Back in the days of slavery, the Plantation Overseer usually had one or more lieutenants who were slaves but who got better treatment in exchange for being the enforcers among the slave population. Being non-persons, they were not given a title as such. In 1852, a novel, inspired by the true exploits of an escaped slave that made it to freedom in Canada, called Uncle Tom's Cabin was published by an abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe. The novel was very much anti-slavery and the title character was actually a Christian martyr killed when he refused an order to betray two slaves who had run away. Over the years, the pro-slavery minstrel shows altered the story and the term "Uncle Tom" and made the character out as an apologist for slavery and the term became a race traitor, who was servile and polite to the white man. This is how the term took on such a pejorative meaning, completely opposite of the true nature of the character in the novel. Over time those enforcers, the Overseer's lieutenants were renamed "Uncle Toms" with revisionist glee.

In the topsy-turvey world of race relations today, good becomes evil and right becomes wrong. In today's world a black man who works to try to get blacks to stand up on their own two feet and take responsibility for their own lives is shouted down and called an "Uncle Tom" with all the pejorative meaning in place, while a man who constantly reinforces victimhood and dependence on the federal government becomes a leader among black men. These people, the Quannel X's and the Louis Farrakahn's and the Al Sharpton's and the Jesse Jackson's and the Sheila Jackson-Lee's of the world are the modern day equivalents of the black lieutenants of the age of slavery. They derive their power from the perceived victimhood of their followers, so they must protect that victimhood and invoke it and reinforce it at every opportunity in order to maintain their power, because without that victimhood, they are nothing. So maintaining that hopelessness and despair among their followers becomes a priority for them, because without that sense of despair, they have no power.

Make no mistake, these men and women care nothing about the plight of their followers. They care only for their own personal power. What do they care if the schools in their follower's districts don't teach the kids anything? That makes their job easier because the kids have not been given the tools to think rationally so they are easier to manipulate and control. What do they care if 13 million black babies are killed while still in their mother's womb? or that illegitimacy is rampant in their neighborhoods? That just makes those mothers and their kids that much more dependent on them to "bring home the federal bacon".

Slavery has returned to the black man, but today's slave owners are the Democrat party and the overseers are the Al Sharpton's and the Quannel X's of the world. They are the ones that flog the slaves that run away from the plantation and attain personal enlightenment. And they have convinced the unthinking and unknowing horde behind them to take up the chains willingly and to flog any heretics themselves.

Martin Luther King Jr. is weeping for what has been done in his name. His dream has become a horror.