Uncle

Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics of Loyalty

Cheryl Thompson, Cheryl Thompson

• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781552454107
• eBook ISBN: 9781770566316
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

From martyr to insult, how “Uncle Tom” has influenced two centuries of racial politics.

Jackie Robinson, President Barack Obama, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, O.J. Simpson and Christopher Darden have all been accused of being an Uncle Tom during their careers. How, why, and with what consequences for our society did Uncle Tom morph first into a servile old man and then to a racial epithet hurled at African American men deemed, by other Black people, to have betrayed their race?

Uncle Tom, the eponymous figure in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sentimental anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was a loyal Christian who died a martyr’s death. But soon after the best-selling novel appeared, theatre troupes across North America and Europe transformed Stowe’s story into minstrel shows featuring white men in blackface. In Uncle, Cheryl Thompson traces Tom’s journey from literary character to racial trope. She explores how Uncle Tom came to be and exposes the relentless reworking of Uncle Tom into a nostalgic, racial metaphor with the power to shape how we see Black men, a distortion visible in everything from Uncle Ben and Rastus The Cream of Wheat chef to Shirley Temple and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson to Bill Cosby.

In Donald Trump’s post-truth America, where nostalgia is used as a political tool to rewrite history, Uncle makes the case for why understanding the production of racial stereotypes matters more than ever before.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1: Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• 2: Uncle Tom and Eva
• 3: Minstrel Show Tom
• 4: Vaudeville Tom
• 5: Aunt Jemima in Chicago
• 6: Rastus
• 7: The Reconstruction of Uncle Tom
• 8: Sambo and Uncle Remus
• 9: Sleeping Car Porters and Uncle Ben
• 10: Topsy-Turvy Dolls and Shirley Temple
• 11: Uncle Tom on the Big Screen
• 12: Amos ’n’ Andy
• 13: Song of the South and Uncle Remus’s Return
• 14: Uncle Tom’s 1960s Transformation
• 15: Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier
• 16: The Anti-Tom
• 17: Good Times’ Coonfoolery
• 18: Uncle Tom and Black Capitalism
• 19: The 1980s, Bill Cosby, and Smokescreen Toms
• 20: A Politically Correct Uncle Tom and an In-Your-Face Topsy
• 21: Advertising Black Buddies
• 22: Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima 2.0
• 23: O.J. Simpson, A Passing Uncle
• 24: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Black Political Power
• Conclusion: The Immortal Uncle Tom
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Image Credits
• About the Author