Of Toms and Sambos

This very thought-provoking and educational article is reprinted in its entirety with permission from the author. The original article appeared 8/26/09 on the blog of the black conservative thinker and writer Digital Publius.

Of Toms and Sambos
By Digital Publius

We have a new Mayor in the city of Detroit, prominent business man and Hall of Fame NBA star Dave Bing. “I wish Dave Bing would run for mayor”, “Now Dave Bing is the one that should run for mayor.” “If Dave Bing ran for mayor I’d vote for him in a second.” You could hear words like these echoing from the propped open doors of Detroit’s barber shops, over the sound of squeaky shopping cart wheels in the local grocer and across the fellowship halls of every church denomination extant in the city.

Dave Bing did finally rouse himself and has become Mayor and now that he has suggested some rather draconian measures to attack the problems facing what could be the most problematical city in the union; a new refrain has replaced the sanguine cries of “run Dave run!”, Now we hear the stentorian and ugly crowd calling Dave Bing a “straw hat negro” and an “Uncle Tom”.

I even heard Tom Barrow, a man who has sought the office of Mayor for decades without positive results and the likely main challenger to Bing in the upcoming elections refer to Mr Bing as the tool of the Republicans who are trying to take over the city. I am not one for repeating platitudes but, the definition of insanity is to do the same thing repeatedly and expect a different result. Detroit has elected the same kinds of liberal democratic politicians without exception for well over thirty years.

Detroit has not had a republican or even a conservative democrat in any position of authority for decades. In fact we have scarcely had any whites in government in Detroit, the few who have gained office in the city have been liberals of the highest order. What we have seen since we have chosen to elect a singular political point of view in our once great city, is a steady decline in services, safety, education, employment, morale, pride and outside esteem.

All this without benefit of blaming it on the “MAN”, in Detroit the “MAN” is manifestly black, (tongue planted firmly in cheek) and we, of course, cannot be blamed for anything that is going wrong within our own community.

I am not sure if I support the measures that Mr. Bing is proposing, frankly I haven’t yet looked closely at the issues, I do know that I will never support anyone who uses the term “Uncle Tom”. Anyone who uses the term Uncle Tom is profoundly ignorant and has never read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” or they would most assuredly never call someone an Uncle Tom in a derogatory manner, unless of course they have read the book and are also profoundly evil.

Lets look at this epithet Uncle Tom in hopes of divining how it could have come to represent a person who betrays the best interests of his people in favor of an oppressor. I became a born again believer in the Lord Jesus Christ some fifteen years ago after being a Muslim for the first thirty years of my life. The Bible says that when you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, you take on the mind of Christ, that He performs a spiritual circumcision of the heart, that He replaces your heart of stone with one of flesh. This was certainly true in my case.

I began to see the world in an entirely different light, it was as if scales literally fell from my eyes and I was seeing the world for the very first time. An unforeseen by-product of that new sight was a fundamental change in my politics, I voted for Bill Clinton the first time around, but after a couple of years of Biblical study I couldn’t vote for him the second time. It was at this point that I read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” on what I then thought a whim.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an astonishing book that remains relevant even to this day, every American should read it, as should every Christian in the entire world. By design it is filled with types and archetypes. Uncle Tom, the protagonist of this allegory is a type of Christ. Tom is the perfect Christian, in fact he is a super Christian, which sheds light on why the enemy of mankind has worked so devilishly hard to turn Uncle Tom into a pejorative.

Uncle Tom faces ignorance and the most bestial cruelty with supernatural Christlike compassion, patience and understanding, He acknowledges the seemingly overpowering evil of chattel slavery whilst recognizing the Christian mandate of allowing God to ultimately right the wrongs inflicted upon him. Tom had faith in the knowledge that what he suffered on earth was fleeting and nothing compared to an eternity of peace which God Himself prepares for those who believe in Him. Tom had forgiveness in his heart and a desire to see that all those who he encountered even if they had done him evil repent and come to faith in Christ.

“Hulloa, There! Sambo! Quimbo! All hands!” called Legree, coming to the quarters, when the men and women were just returning from work. “There’s two runaways in the swamps. I’ll give five dollars to any nigger as catches ‘em. Turn out the dogs! Turn out Tiger, and Fury, and the rest!”

Simon Legree is the archetypical evil slave owner that Tom finds himself in the clutches of late in life. Sambo and Quimbo are Legree’s exceedingly cruel black overseers. Legree having purchased Tom because of his intelligence with the mind of putting him in charge, soon finds him incapable of the inhumanity necessary to fill the job and the sadistically bruitish Sambo and Quinbo become along with their master his constant tormentors.

Sambo and Quimbo are the true “straw hat negroes”, they have traded their souls for the few creature comforts their betrayals can purchase them. We have seen their kind in latter times as well in a post slavery America. Margaret Sanger the founder of planned parenthood recruited black pastors and leaders to sell her diabolical ideas of population control and eugenics and to this very day blacks, by Sanger’s intent, are the group accounting for the majority of the abortions being carried out across our nation. Black babies are being slaughtered wholesale with the compliance of liberal black leadership.

The Democratic party has a long history of recruiting black folks, to sell black folks, on ideas that their common sense initially reject. Democrats going back to Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt have always been marvelously adept at finding those pliable silver tongued blacks willing to take favors for their influence in the black community. Wilson and Roosevelt in the early days never failed to betray black folks after they procured their votes. betrayals I don’t have space to illustrate in this particular article but are outlined brilliantly in Wayne Perryman’s Unfounded Loyalty and Bruce Bartlett’s Wrong on Race. Sadly black folks have woefully short memories and after a time they forget that the democrats fail to deliver on promises and fall victim again and again to the same liberal sweet talk.

“Now, Quimbo,” said Legree, as he stretched himself down in the sitting-room. “you jest go and walk that Tom up here, right away! The old cuss is at the bottom of this yer whole matter; and I’ll have it out of his old black hide, or I’ll know the reason why!”

“Sambo and Quimbo, both, though hating each other, were joined in one mind by a no less cordial hatred of Tom. Legree had told them, at first, that he had bought him for a general overseer, in his absence; and this had begun an ill will, on their part, which had increased, in their debased and servile natures, as they saw him becoming obnoxious to their master’s displeasure. Quimbo, therefore, departed, with a will, to execute his orders.”

The modern day Sambos and Quimbos fall under two categories They are the poverty pimps like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who may have begun on the proper path but have since been co-opted by the racist liberal democrats into peddling programs to black folks that have the virtue of keeping them servile and in constant need of the reassuring hand of the government in their affairs, whilst playing up perceived indignities so they can remain the preeminent spokes persons for the black community.

And you have the just plain stupid black leaders who have been selectively bred to drink the Kool-Aid with an insatiable thirst despite the glaring evidence of the devastating toll that liberal policies have wreaked upon the black community. These are the people that are most responsible for the day to day promotion of the liberal mindset, they are the triumph of the changed southern democratic strategy adopted after they realized they couldn’t win with fire hoses, attack dogs and the hangmen’s noose.

If you can no longer lynch them and beat them with sticks, rot them from within, sap their will to overcome by their own energy, control them with entitlements so they live in constant fear of losing them. This way they stay ignorant and servile and they will thank their oppressors who now love them.

It is ironic that urban areas like Detroit, decaying, collapsing under the weight of it’s own corruption, rife with failed liberal ideologies, choking to death on the putrid fumes of decaying democratic politics are surrounded by suburban areas embracing sound principles that are flourishing. In fact many of the so called leaders are moving to these areas in search of what is not being delivered by liberal promises in the cities. It is my prayer that as those urban dwellers seek satisfaction in the suburbs they don’t bring the liberal politics of the city with them and seek public office.

As the Sambos and Quimbos of the antebellum south took offense to the uppity Tom with his Christian ideas that compelled him to displease their master and were quick to punish him for not performing tasks that they have profited from carrying out; so too the modern day versions are quick to pounce upon any who do not toe the line of black liberal orthodoxy. The Sharptons, Jacksons, Congressman John Conyers of the world are never so ferocious as when they are denouncing the Steeles, Sowells, or J.C. Watts who would dare oppose their lock step thinking and are outspoken critics of their liberal white masters who’ve been so good to them.

“Quimbo seized him... ‘and no mistake! See how ye’ll look, now, helpin’ Mas’r’s niggers to run away! See what ye’ll get’”

Indeed! see what you get when you try to express a competing idea?

“Well, Tom!” said Legree. walking up, and seizing him by the collar of his coat, and speaking through his teeth, in a paroxysm of determined rage, “do you know I’ve made up my mind to KILL you?”

“It’s very likely Mas’r,” said Tom, calmly.

“I have,” said Legree, with grim terrible calmness, “done – just – that – thing, Tom, unless you’ll tell me what you know about these yer gals!”

Tom stood silent.

“D’ye hear?” said Legree, stamping with a roar like that of an incensed lion. “Speak!”

“I haven’t got nothing to tell, Mas’r,” said Tom, with a slow, firm, deliberate utterance.

“Do you dare to tell me, ye old black Christian, ye don’t know?” said Legree.

Tom was silent.

“Speak!” thundered Legree, striking him furiously. “Do you know anything?”

“I know, Mas’r; but I can’t tell anything. I can die!”

After one more appeal to Simon Legree to repent, where Tom declares that he would happily give every ounce of his blood to save Legree’s precious soul, Tom is beaten to death carrying to his grave the hiding place of the escaped slaves. Before he dies Sambo and Quimbo, upon seeing Tom’s bravery facing death and the perplexing mercy he showed them and Legree during his murder in forgiving them, show genuine regret for the parts they played in his death, and they implore Tom to share his faith in Christ with them and Tom prays with them and leads them both to Christ just before he breaths his last.

This all begs the question, how did Uncle Tom become the symbol of race betrayal when he died to protect his fellow slaves? It begins with Malcolm X, not as a castigation of Tom as one who was an unctuous betrayer, but rather denouncing his Christian sacrifice. Malcolm was declaring that he would not give up his life with docility as Tom did, but that he would resist and fight by “any means necessary” This was an attack on the concept of Christ’s self sacrifice and the Christian ethic of love for ones enemies.

For those of us who believe in the super natural we recognize that this is the way that the devil works, he very subtly twists things so that people reject that which is good in favor of what best serves the selfish nature of man. He did it in the Garden when he twisted the very words of God to entice Adam and Eve to rebel.

Because Malcolm X was accepted as the strong black leader that most personified resistance to the oppressive ideas of the slave master, the term Uncle Tom became the parabolic opposite. This idea was bolstered by the popular depictions of Tom in truncated versions of Uncle Tom’s cabin going back almost a hundred years, which played up his relationship with the Eva character and omitted his Christian fueled defiances and an undeserved relation to Uncle Remus.

The result is that a book and character that played an instrumental part in the abolition of slavery in this country, and are illustrative of what is essentially greatest in human nature have fallen out of favor. It shows how ignorance is perpetuated and how false information can spread like an unabated pox with the same withering effect on society. Liberalism feeds on such misinformation, like the way that the Three-fifths compromise is twisted to appear as if white folks in the government thought blacks were only Three-fifths human.

"So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." – Abraham Lincoln, upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe for the first time.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written to destroy the institution of chattel slavery in the United States. It burned through the Union like wildfire, at the time of the Civil War the majority of the nation opposed slavery. People forget that the south was a minority and because of the machinations of the founders, most of the country never knew the stain of our “peculiar institution”.

The left which controls our schools and much of our media have a stake in eternalizing the negative aspects of our past while burying our glories. Many of the destructive ideas prevalent in modern society were birthed in the minds of those still harboring a resentment towards the nation for winning the war between the states. What we need today is a boat load of Harriet Beecher Stowes to write books with the express purpose of destroying liberalism our contemporary peculiar institution and black peoples slavish devotion to bad ideas.

Digital Publius