tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/uncle-toms-cabin-26739/articlesUncle Tom's Cabin – The Conversation2023-05-29T12:29:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2052812023-05-29T12:29:09Z2023-05-29T12:29:09ZWhat really started the American Civil War?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527606/original/file-20230522-23-ijaoe1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C5770%2C4022&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More than 600,000 soldiers died during the American Civil War.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/battle-of-kennesaw-mountain-royalty-free-illustration/1152759368?adppopup=true">Keith Lance/Digital Vision Vectors via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">curiouskidsus@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
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<p><strong>What really started the Civil War? – Abbey, age 7, Stone Ridge, New York</strong></p>
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<p><a href="https://www.boundless.com/immigration-resources/citizenship-test-questions-and-answers/#american-history-">The U.S. citizenship test</a> – which immigrants must pass before becoming citizens of the United States – has this question: “Name one problem that led to the Civil War.” It lists three possible correct answers: “slavery,” “economic reasons” and “states’ rights.” </p>
<p>But as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=SsoLG_0AAAAJ&hl=en">a historian and professor</a> who studies slavery, Southern history and the American Civil War, I know there’s really only one correct answer: slavery. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="1862 photo of enslaved people and soldiers on a plantation, standing for the camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Enslaved people and soldiers on a South Carolina plantation in 1862.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-enslaved-people-and-soldiers-on-the-plantation-of-news-photo/1402910706">Henry P. Moore/LOC/Archive Photos via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>White Southerners left the Union to establish a slave-holding republic; they were <a href="https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/slavery-cause-civil-war.htm">dedicated to the preservation of slavery</a>. </p>
<p>What’s more, unlike slavery in the ancient world, slavery in the United States <a href="https://chssp.sf.ucdavis.edu/resources/curriculum/lessons/was-slavery-always-racial">was based on race</a>. By the time of the Civil War, Black people were the ones enslaved; white people were not. </p>
<p>Every American citizen, whether born in this country or naturalized, should understand that the conflict over slavery is what caused the Civil War. </p>
<h2>The history</h2>
<p>Slavery in the U.S. began at least as early as 1619, when a Portuguese ship brought about <a href="https://www.nps.gov/fomr/planyourvisit/first-african-landing.htm">20 enslaved African people to present-day Virginia</a>. It grew so quickly that by the time Colonists fought for their independence from England in 1775, slavery was <a href="https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2012/12/before-there-were-red-and-blue-states-there-were-free-states-and-slave-states/#:%7E">legal in all 13 Colonies</a>.</p>
<p>As the 19th century progressed, Northern states <a href="https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/experience/freedom/history.html#:%7E">slowly abolished slavery</a>; but Southern states made it central to their economy. By 1860, nearly 4 million enslaved people lived in the South. </p>
<p>Increasingly, the North and South were at odds over the future of slavery. White Southerners believed slavery had to expand into new territories or it would die. In 1845, they pressured the federal government <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/annexation">to annex Texas, where slavery was legal</a>. They also supported an effort to <a href="https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1854OstendManifesto.pdf">purchase Cuba and add it as a slave state</a>. </p>
<p>In the North, people generally opposed the expansion of slavery into new territories, and many favored the gradual emancipation of enslaved people. A smaller group, known as abolitionists, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/abolitionist-movement">wanted slavery to end immediately</a>. </p>
<p>But even though many Northerners opposed the expansion of slavery, they <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2957.html">did not favor equal rights for Black people</a>. In most Northern states, segregation was rampant, Blacks were barred from voting and violence against them was common.</p>
<p>By the 1850s, it became more difficult for the federal government to satisfy either side. <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/compromise-of-1850#:%7E">The Compromise of 1850</a>, a series of bills that tried to solve the problem, pleased almost no one.</p>
<p>The publication of the 1852 novel “<a href="https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/harriet-beecher-stowe/uncle-toms-cabin/">Uncle Tom’s Cabin</a>” – about the pain and injustice inflicted on an enslaved man – turned Northerners against slavery even more. In the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/dred-scott-v-sandford">1857 Dred Scott decision</a>, the Supreme Court ruled that enslaved people were not U.S. citizens, nor could Congress ban slavery in a federal territory. Two years later, the abolitionist John Brown <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/topics/john-browns-harpers-ferry-raid">attacked a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia</a>, in an unsuccessful attempt to supply weapons to enslaved people.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Dressed in a three-piece suit, Abraham Lincoln sits for a photograph." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A digitally restored photograph of President Abraham Lincoln, taken during the American Civil War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/portrait-of-president-abraham-lincoln-royalty-free-image/640971707">National Archives/Stocktrek Images via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Lincoln becomes president, secession follows</h2>
<p>Amid this swirl of troubles, the presidential election of 1860 took place. A new political party, the Republican Party, was opposed to the spread of slavery throughout the western territories. With four major candidates running for president, <a href="https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/abraham-lincoln">Abraham Lincoln</a> won the electoral vote – but only 40% of the popular vote. </p>
<p>The election of a president from a party that opposed slavery jolted white Southerners to action. Less than two months after Lincoln won, South Carolina delegates, meeting in Charleston, decided to secede from the Union – that is, to <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp">formally withdraw membership in the United States</a>. </p>
<p>Other Southern states followed and said slavery was the primary reason for secession. Texas delegates wrote the abolition of slavery “would bring <a href="https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secession/2feb1861.html">inevitable calamities upon both races and desolation</a>” in the slave states. The <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp">Mississippi secession document</a> said “our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest in the world.” </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The hundreds of brutal, bloody battles of the Civil War took a terrible toll on the country.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Confederate supporters made their position clear</h2>
<p>The vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, also said slavery was the reason for secession, and that Thomas Jefferson’s words in the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript">Declaration of Independence</a> – that all men are created equal – were wrong. </p>
<p>“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea,” <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech">Stephens told a crowd</a>. “Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” </p>
<p>Although the evidence shows slavery caused the Civil War, some Southerners created a myth – <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lost-Cause">the “Lost Cause</a>” – that transformed Confederate generals into heroes who were defending freedom. To some degree, that myth has, unfortunately, taken hold. Some schools are still <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/17/us/confederate-schools-trnd/index.html">named after Confederate generals</a>; <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/us-military-bases-honoring-confederate-figures-slated-to-get-new-names-/6641654.html">so are some military bases</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/symbols-of-the-confederacy-are-slowly-coming-down-from-us-military-bases-3-essential-reads-205729">although that is changing</a>. </p>
<p>It’s important to know the real reason for the Civil War so the country no longer celebrates historical figures who fought to establish a slave-holding republic.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to clarify that the colonies became states in the United States of America.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Gudmestad does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There was one central reason the Civil War happened.Robert Gudmestad, Professor and Chair of History Department, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1573042021-03-31T12:17:03Z2021-03-31T12:17:03ZGermany’s strange nostalgia for the antebellum American South<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392674/original/file-20210330-15-1hxrckf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C125%2C4311%2C2946&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Onkel Toms Hütte' – or Uncle Tom's Cabin – is the name of a subway station in Berlin.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/U-Bahnhof_Onkel_Toms_H%C3%BCtte_20130705_8.jpg">DXR via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Swastikas may be banned in Berlin, but Confederate flags still fly. </p>
<p>Alongside MAGA hats and Trump 2020 banners, <a href="https://www.fr.de/politik/coronavirus-corona-demo-proteste-berlin-hygienedemos-querdenker-fahnen-reichsflagge-reichskriegsfahne-90036343.html">Reich flags</a> and Brandenburg eagles, the American South’s battle flag has been <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/23/germanys-lateral-thinkers-unite/">raised high</a> during Germany’s anti-lockdown demonstrations – the most recent of which took place in Dresden in early March. </p>
<p>It’s appeared in the window of <a href="https://twitter.com/JCNB1/status/1302739145450811394">an apartment complex</a> and in advertisements for <a href="https://twitter.com/Confederate_DE/status/951183000355647488">an annual Christmas carnival</a>. The flag has also reportedly been seen <a href="https://twitter.com/nthnashma/status/1270784520489439233">in Berlin’s bars</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps its presence in Germany simply represents how the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-confederate-battle-flag-which-rioters-flew-inside-the-us-capitol-has-long-been-a-symbol-of-white-insurrection-153071">Confederate battle flag</a> has become an international meme of the contemporary far right. The Stars and Bars could exist as just another image decontextualized and propagated through the internet’s airless corridors like, say, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc777md">Che Guevara</a>. German Neo-Nazi websites do sell “Südstaaten” – or Southern – gear, along with <a href="https://www.zeit.de/2018/49/nazi-mode-rechtsextremismus-christoph-schulze-interview">Ansgar Aryan</a> and <a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/neo-nazi-fashion-thor-steinar-and-the-changing-look-of-the-german-far-right-a-587746.html">Thor Steinar</a> merch.</p>
<p>However, <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/engl/student_display.cfm?Person_ID=1055827">as a cultural historian writing on transnational fascism</a>, I see the flag as part of a longer history of German nostalgia for the American antebellum South. Germans’ identification with the region stretches back, paradoxically, to <a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/Mightier_than_the_Sword_Uncle_Tom_s_Cabi/MZTFk9A1HaEC?hl=de&gbpv=0">the very book that helped bring an end</a> to that era of slavery: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Harriet_Beecher_Stowe.html?id=p1VbAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Uncle Tom’s Cabin</a>.”</p>
<h2>From Uncle Tom to … Nazism?</h2>
<p>On the U3 Line of Berlin’s mass transit system, there’s a stop called Onkel Toms Hütte, or Uncle Tom’s Cabin. </p>
<p>The stop bears the name of a neighborhood tavern and beer garden that stood for almost 100 years, from <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/is-the-street-name-uncle-tom-racist/a-54416596">1884 until 1978</a>. German restaurants, inns and beer gardens bore the title of the anti-slavery polemic, which became a shorthand for a type of Southern comfort – evidence of the novel’s complex, counterintuitive and, at times, disturbing reception.</p>
<p>When the novel was translated into German and published in 1852 – the same year as its American release – <a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/Uncle_Tom_s_Cabin_in_Germany/CYoluwEACAAJ?hl=de">it was immensely popular</a>. Though the melodrama about the cruelty of American slavery did much to stir German opinion against the practice, it also initiated a fascination with the seemingly simpler life of the slave depicted in Stowe’s domestic scenes. </p>
<p>A cottage industry sprouted up around it: plays, musical scores, <a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/Europ%C3%A4ische_Sklavenleben/-3c9AQAAMAAJ?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=europ%C3%A4ische+sklavenleben&pg=RA2-PA1&printsec=frontcover">even European-set reimaginings</a> in which slavery became an increasingly elastic concept. </p>
<p>The Berlin tavern, built in 1884, adopted the name Onkel Toms Hütte because its proprietor <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/is-the-street-name-uncle-tom-racist/a-54416596">liked the novel</a>. It was just one of many leisure establishments that drew on Stowe’s novel to promise a “good ol’ time.” <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110481327-016">Heike Paul</a>, a professor of American studies at FAU Erlängern-Nuremberg, characterizes this attitude as a “romanticization of slavery and a nostalgic, even remorseful view of its ‘pastness.’”</p>
<p>This hazy romanticization was undergirded by racial prejudice, which found in Stowe’s depiction of Tom as a “<a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1595m04.8">happy slave</a>” a justification for racial hierarchy. Though “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was originally cultivating sympathy for Black slaves, by the early 20th century it was invoked by both German progressives and conservatives as proof of Black inferiority and <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/zaa-2005-0404/html">as a justification for colonization</a>. An introduction to a 1911 German edition of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” describes how “the Negroes are undeniably an inferior race, and, now that they have been freed, are widely perceived to be a plague in the United States.”</p>
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<img alt="A smiling girl sits on the lap of a laughing Black man." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392834/original/file-20210331-19-1u0wfpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392834/original/file-20210331-19-1u0wfpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392834/original/file-20210331-19-1u0wfpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392834/original/file-20210331-19-1u0wfpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392834/original/file-20210331-19-1u0wfpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392834/original/file-20210331-19-1u0wfpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392834/original/file-20210331-19-1u0wfpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘The happy slave’ trope in ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ resonated in Germany.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://img.discogs.com/SdMh63czWYSmdL4DCKD8a_RHy3k=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2248014-1360515760-8251.jpeg.jpg">Discogs</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/zaa-2005-0404/html">Bettina Hofmann</a>, a professor of American studies at Bergische Universität Wuppertal, argues that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” introduced racial terms to the German language that foreshadow the Nazi race categories. However, as she qualifies, “it would be an anachronism to accuse Stowe of having paved the way for Hitler’s thoughts on race.” </p>
<p>Still, it remains a dim possibility that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had at least some influence. Stowe’s novel was, after all, one of Hitler’s <a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/Hitler_s_Private_Library/6KljrMYS3e4C?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=timothy+ryback+hitler%27s+private+library&printsec=frontcover">self-proclaimed favorite books</a>. </p>
<h2>‘The Lost Cause’ in the Thousand-Year Reich</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Amerika_im_Dritten_Reich/rK4aAQAAIAAJ?hl=de&gbpv=0&bsq=philipp%20gassert">Despite a general ambivalence toward the U.S.</a>, Nazi Germany did sympathize with the antebellum South. The pubs inspired by “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” fed – and fed off of – the desire for a simpler life that slaves were supposed to have enjoyed, and which Nazism, in its idea of “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Volksgemeinschaft">volksgemeinschaft</a>,” a people’s community, also promised. </p>
<p>The South after the Civil War and Germany after World War I had suffered humiliating defeats, and each revised its identity and history in the face of those losses. As both had prided themselves on their military prowess, they sought to fashion narratives that would explain their losses without admitting their shortcomings. Recognizing the similarities, the German historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch brings them together in his 2000 book “<a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/The_Culture_of_Defeat/TSkwAAAAQBAJ?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=schivelbusch+culture+of+defeat&printsec=frontcover">The Culture of Defeat</a>.” </p>
<p>However, Schivelbusch emphasizes the differences in the stories they told. The South crafted the narrative of the “<a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/lost-cause-the/">Lost Cause</a>,” in which the experience of defeat became a Christlike sacrifice. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Nazis trumpeted the “<a href="https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brills-digital-library-of-world-war-i/stab-in-the-back-legend-dolchstosslegende-beww1_en_0563">Dolchstoßlegend</a>,” the myth of the stab in the back. The German Army had been undefeated in the field, they claimed, but lost the war because of sabotage from within. This myth focused attention on internal enemies who needed to be eliminated.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman looks at a movie poster of 'Gone with the Wind.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Depictions of the South – found in films like ‘Gone with the Wind’ – found an eager audience in Germany.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/germany-movie-posters-and-movie-announcements-woman-looking-news-photo/542393517?adppopup=true">ullstein bild via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the “Lost Cause” nonetheless resonated in Nazi Germany. The success of Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gone-with-the-Wind-novel">Gone with the Wind</a>” and David O. Selznick’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031381/">subsequent 1939 film adaptation</a> points to a desire in Nazi Germany for the melodrama of sacrifice that Schivelbusch suggests the German narrative of defeat lacked. The sentimental novel went through 16 printings in Germany, selling <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40581977">nearly 300,000 copies</a>. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels watched the film repeatedly, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40581977">even as they eventually banned</a> it for general viewership. Praising the film in his diary, Goebbels declared, “<a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/The_Goebbels_Diaries_1939_1941/LZ5SPwAACAAJ?hl=de">We will follow this example</a>.” </p>
<p>The onetime Nazi functionary <a href="https://books.google.de/books?id=htfLPlvxVzIC&lpg=PA5&redir_esc=y">Hermann Rauschning</a> writes that Hitler felt the Confederacy had been the real America. </p>
<p>“Since the Civil War, in which the Southern States were conquered, against all historical logic and sound sense, the Americans have been in a condition of political and popular decay,” he recalled Hitler telling him. Though perhaps apocryphal, <a href="https://books.google.de/books?id=htfLPlvxVzIC&lpg=PA5&redir_esc=y">Rauschning’s memory of the Führer’s words</a> squares with Hitler’s enthusiasm for “Gone with the Wind”: “In that war, it was not the Southern States, but the American people themselves who were conquered.” </p>
<h2>Danger of Stars and Bars sentimentality</h2>
<p>It is not only the self-declared far-right that flies the Confederate flag in Germany. Civil War reenactors do mock battle under <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/06/confederates-on-the-rhine/239724/">its banner</a>, an East Berlin country music scene gathers with it <a href="https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2020-05/country-musik-szene-konfoederiertenflagge-suedstaaten-usa-cowboys/komplettansicht">hung aloft</a>, and even some enthusiasts of German author Karl May, who set his novels in the American West, <a href="https://www.saechsische.de/suedstaatenflagge-flagge-beim-karl-may-fest-erlaubt-3835976.html">wave it proudly</a>. These groups insist their use of the flag “has no racist meaning.” When pressed, <a href="https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2020-05/country-musik-szene-konfoederiertenflagge-suedstaaten-usa-cowboys/komplettansicht">they appeal to tradition</a>. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Distrust of nostalgia has been a vital part of Germany’s post-World War II national project of “<a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/Learning_from_the_Germans/PrZuDwAAQBAJ?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=susan+neiman+learning+from+the+germans&printsec=frontcover">working through the past</a>.” One would expect Germans, of all people, to be wary of such justifications. </p>
<p>For sale at an online German neo-Nazi merchandiser is an image of the Confederate flag bearing a “Totenkopf” – a skull and crossbones. It is an embellishment of the flag. And yet it reveals what has been there, hiding behind nostalgia, all along.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct the date of the release of the film “Gone with the Wind.” It was in 1939, not 1941.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157304/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanders Isaac Bernstein is a fellow of the Studienstiftung des Abgeordnetenhauses von Berlin and a Manning Endowed Fellow at the University of Southern California.</span></em></p>Why did Confederate flags start appearing in the country’s anti-lockdown protests?Sanders Isaac Bernstein, Provost’s PhD Fellow in English Literature, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1522012021-02-03T15:51:46Z2021-02-03T15:51:46ZHow ‘Uncle Tom’ still impacts racial politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381189/original/file-20210128-13-f8xgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C32%2C534%2C405&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bill Robinson dancing with Shirley Temple in 'The Little Colonel.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Colonel_(1935_film)#/media/File:Bill_Robinson_and_Shirley_Temple_stair_dance_(cropped).jpg">(20th Century Fox)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Published nearly 170 years ago, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/322385/uncle-toms-cabin-by-harriet-beecher-stowe/9780140390032"><em>Uncle Tom’s Cabin</em> by Harriet Beecher Stowe</a> had a profound impact on American slavery. But Uncle Tom is not a relic from the 19th century: this complex figure still has a hold over Black politics. In fact, the Uncle Tom stereotype is quite possibly the most resilient figure in American history. He has survived pandemics, lived through 33 presidents (including President Joe Biden), and remains the most recognizable Black character in history.</p>
<p>While most people know that Uncle Tom is the titular character of <em>Uncle Tom’s Cabin</em>, few people know how and why this literary character has transformed since his initial appearance. <a href="https://chbooks.com/Books/U/Uncle">Why is Uncle Tom still alive in the 21st century?</a> </p>
<h2>Stowe’s Uncle Tom</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381816/original/file-20210201-21-13bolt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381816/original/file-20210201-21-13bolt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381816/original/file-20210201-21-13bolt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381816/original/file-20210201-21-13bolt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381816/original/file-20210201-21-13bolt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381816/original/file-20210201-21-13bolt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381816/original/file-20210201-21-13bolt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381816/original/file-20210201-21-13bolt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The book cover for ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Penguin)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The bestselling novel of the 19th century, and the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-nineteenthcentury-american-womens-writing/69C42A21FFA8CF5ED3A004D2EE87620E">second bestselling book of that century (after the Bible)</a>, <em>Uncle Tom’s Cabin</em> first appeared in the United States in 1851 as a serialized work of fiction published one chapter at a time, in the <em>National Era</em>, a weekly abolitionist newspaper edited by Gamaliel Bailey. </p>
<p>Today, we do not necessarily think of novels as shaping national identity. However, in 19th-century America, Stowe’s vision of Uncle Tom constructed a form of Black manhood that deeply impacted the nation. Despite being ripped from his wife and children, chained and sent off in a coffle with other enslaved men and women, let down by even a “good master,” and beaten, finally to death, Uncle Tom does not ever speak ill of anyone. He is loyal, passive in the midst of white violence and dies as a martyr. </p>
<p>Since then, various Black men have been called “Uncle Toms.” From Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to former president Barack Obama, at some point, they were accused of being <a href="https://face2faceafrica.com/article/do-you-know-why-malcolm-x-called-mlk-an-uncle-tom">too passive</a> or a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/nov/30/obama-white-house-barackobama">sell-out</a> to the race. </p>
<h2>Legalized rights did not translate to reality</h2>
<p>In the 1896 landmark case, <em><a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson">Plessy vs. Ferguson</a></em>, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that African Americans had access to the legal system, equal to that of whites, but they had to maintain separate institutions to facilitate these rights. The ruling institutionalized a racial hierarchy that placed whites at the top and Black people at the bottom in nearly every facet of public life. </p>
<p>To live in North America meant that one had to choose not only between racial loyalty and disloyalty, but also between life and death. Survival meant performing servile roles as Uncles and Mammies, in public or on the job. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381814/original/file-20210201-13-1m01lx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381814/original/file-20210201-13-1m01lx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381814/original/file-20210201-13-1m01lx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381814/original/file-20210201-13-1m01lx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381814/original/file-20210201-13-1m01lx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381814/original/file-20210201-13-1m01lx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381814/original/file-20210201-13-1m01lx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chicago, Illinois. Pullman porter at the Union Station.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/fsa.8d24965/">(Jack Delano/Library of Congress/FSA/OWI Collection)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this environment, Black people were forced to acquiesce to the white public’s desire to perpetuate the servile relations of slavery. Black men and women who violated these <a href="https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htm">Jim Crow</a> norms risked their homes, jobs and lives. </p>
<p>For survival in a racially segregated environment, <a href="http://www.paulwagnerfilms.com/miles-of-smiles-about-porters/">the Pullman sleeping car porters</a>, for instance, Black men who were employed on the railways of North America, had to perform the role of, and were measured against the image of, a servile Uncle Tom.</p>
<p>In Canada, the only reference for Uncle Tom is at <a href="https://www.heritagetrust.on.ca/en/properties/uncle-toms-cabin">Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site</a>. The former home of <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/story-josiah-henson-real-inspiration-uncle-toms-cabin-180969094/">Rev. Josiah Henson, who lived from 1789–1883,</a> has been turned into a museum to showcase Henson’s life, as founder of the Dawn Settlement in Dresden, Ont., for fugitive African Americans. Stowe’s novel was loosely based on Henson’s biography, <em><a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/henson49/henson49.html">The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada</a></em> published in 1849. The museum documents Henson’s life but also reaffirms his connection to Stowe’s Uncle Tom. </p>
<p>The insatiable appetite of the white North American public for a docile, symbolically emasculated Black male archetype and the Uncle Tom controversies that follows them, speaks profoundly to how monumentally resistant to change this character has been. </p>
<h2>From servant to sellout</h2>
<p>In the decades following the novel, Uncle Tom transformed into a stereotype of Black masculinity characterized by docility, castrated sexuality, a happy-to-please-whites attitude with a safe, child-like essence, at the same time. Shirley Temple’s blond ringlets paired with <a href="https://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/02/prweb11548760.htm">Bill “Bojangles” Robinson’s</a> soft-shoe routine in their “buddy” films of the 1930s is one example of the cinematic repackaging of Stowe’s Uncle Tom and his child-patron, <a href="http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/childrn/knowleshp.html">Little Eva</a>.</p>
<p>The servile Uncle Tom has been reproduced in Joel Chandler Harris’ <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/uncle-remus-tales">Uncle Remus</a> tales published in the 1880s, later adapted by Disney for <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/song-of-the-south-disney-you-must-remember-this/"><em>Song of the South</em></a>. Uncle Tom also became a feature at blackface minstrel shows known as “<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/story-josiah-henson-real-inspiration-uncle-toms-cabin-180969094/">Tom shows</a>.” Later, he mutated into commodity spokespersons such as Rastus the Cream of Wheat trademark and Uncle Ben. </p>
<p>The concept of the sellout Uncle Tom, however, is characterized by the idea of a Black man who appears only interested in serving whites, the government, corporations or “the system” generally. The insult is meant to connote that these men, these “Uncle Toms” will ensure that white needs come before the needs of both the Black community and themselves. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381817/original/file-20210201-19-19dfora.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381817/original/file-20210201-19-19dfora.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381817/original/file-20210201-19-19dfora.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381817/original/file-20210201-19-19dfora.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381817/original/file-20210201-19-19dfora.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381817/original/file-20210201-19-19dfora.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381817/original/file-20210201-19-19dfora.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381817/original/file-20210201-19-19dfora.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The author’s new book, ‘Uncle: Race, Nostalgia and the Politics of Loyalty.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Coach House)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Men (or the fictionalized characters of men) who have faced accusations of being a sellout Uncle Tom include the film roles of actors like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/oct/08/features.burhanwazir">Sidney Poitier</a> and, later, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1984/11/05/cosby-show-black-or-white/4ad8e415-b493-4970-b888-c35811288515/">Bill Cosby</a> during the height of his fame in the ‘70s and '80s, as well as <a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/was-chris-darden-a-race-traitor/">Christopher Darden</a> during the O.J. Simpson trial (not to mention O.J. himself), and even athletes like Tiger Woods. </p>
<p>Black people hate him, but it also seems we cannot live without him. The trope is especially brought up when it comes to political figures. Some political careers have been marred by Uncle Tom accusations. This includes people like <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/joy-reid-msnbc-racist-clarence-thomas-uncle-clarence-b1595058.html">Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas</a>, and more recently Kentucky’s Attorney General <a href="https://thepostmillennial.com/cnn-contributor-calls-kentucky-ag-uncle-tom-and-step-fetch-negro">Daniel Cameron</a>. </p>
<h2>Foils for Black social progress</h2>
<p>The challenges that are brought to contemporary Black men in positions of authority, power and prestige who are either in service to white institutions or become the public spokespersons for white companies are very real. </p>
<p>The reason these Black men are accused of Uncle Tomism is that communities suspect them of thwarting Black social progress. It is a reliable trope called upon during moments when a Black individual is perceived by the Black community as maligning the race in order to win favour with white authority and institutions. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381806/original/file-20210201-13-cnjs92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381806/original/file-20210201-13-cnjs92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381806/original/file-20210201-13-cnjs92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381806/original/file-20210201-13-cnjs92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381806/original/file-20210201-13-cnjs92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381806/original/file-20210201-13-cnjs92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381806/original/file-20210201-13-cnjs92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An image of an old box of Uncle Ben’s rice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Mars)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beyond politics, we are surrounded with imagery of Black men who serve one purpose: to make the public (imagined as white) feel safe. They are useful only if they are clearly committed to the American way of life, which is to say consumer culture. From Uncle Remus there to sell white childhood innocence, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/business/media/30adco.html">Uncle Ben</a> to sell rice, and even Michael Jordan’s squeaky-clean image, this image of Black masculinity has had a firm grip on what it means to be a Black man in North American society. </p>
<p>Why can Uncle Tom not just fade from memory, as have so many other characters from other mid-19th-century novels?</p>
<p>Stowe may have created this character to support the abolition of slavery. However, through constant reinvention and reproduction, Uncle Tom will continue to exist if the Black community remains divided on how to live within a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2017/05/03/the-clear-connection-between-slavery-and-american-capitalism/?sh=63aba3ee7bd3">capitalist system built on slave labour</a>. </p>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://theconversation.com/ca/podcasts">Click here to listen to Don’t Call Me Resilient</a></span>
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<p>Yet this figure also reminds us to look deeper and to ask difficult questions about how we choose to relate to white society and its institutions. Uncle Tom will persist as long as anti-Blackness persists.</p>
<p><em>This article is adapted from Cheryl Thompson’s forthcoming book, 'Uncle: Race, Nostalgia and the Politics of Loyalty’ (Coach House Books).</em></p>
<p>Listen to Cheryl Thompson on Episode 1 of <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-in-a-word-how-to-confront-150-years-of-racial-stereotypes-podcast-episode-1-show-notes-153790"><em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em></a>, a new podcast from The Conversation.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cheryl Thompson receives funding from the Social Sciences Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ the best seller of the 19th century, is not a relic from the past. The complex Uncle Tom figure still has a hold over Black politics.Cheryl Thompson, Assistant Professor, Creative Industries, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1408922020-07-22T11:57:21Z2020-07-22T11:57:21ZHow popular culture hobbles protest movements<p>In response to the anti-racism protests that have erupted across the U.S., many Americans are saying they <a href="https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/06/12/amid-protests-majorities-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups-express-support-for-the-black-lives-matter-movement/psdt_06-12-20_protests-00-1/">agree with the goals</a> of the demonstrators, but <a href="https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/06/12/amid-protests-majorities-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups-express-support-for-the-black-lives-matter-movement/psdt_06-12-20_protests-00-7/">not their methods</a>. In a recent Pew survey, 67% of Americans say they support the Black Lives Matter movement, but only 19% think protests and rallies – with their demands to defund the police and exact justice for George Floyd’s death – are an effective way to bring about change. </p>
<p>I’ve seen this refrain before. In fact, <a href="https://www.dickinson.edu/site/custom_scripts/dc_faculty_profile_index.php?fac=maherc">it’s inspired me to write a book</a> that explores the attitudes white people hold towards racial and economic justice. Often, when Americans express support for a particular issue – whether it’s about ending slavery or protecting civil rights – they’ll couch their advocacy with the caveat that the change must be gradual. Big, immediate changes are thought to be dangerous or otherwise impractical.</p>
<p>In learning more about why these attitudes are so resilient, I found that popular entertainment has played a role. For decades, books, movies and records that seem to challenge racism also subtly advance the idea that while progress is a worthy goal, it shouldn’t happen too quickly. There are many examples of this, but let me offer you three that illustrate some main themes.</p>
<h2>Is patience really a virtue?</h2>
<p>While “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/203/203-h/203-h.htm">Uncle Tom’s Cabin</a>” famously opened many Americans’ eyes to the horrors of slavery, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel also encourages Black people to tolerate these horrors, wait for change and eventually forgive their oppressors.</p>
<p>Published in 1852, “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/203/203-h/203-h.htm">Uncle Tom’s Cabin</a>” opens with Mr. Shelby planning to sell his slaves to a slave trader. Some run away, but not Tom. He’s sold to Augustine St. Clare and then again to Simon Legree. Told to whip another slave, Tom refuses. Legree tells two other slaves, Sambo and Quimbo, to beat Tom. They do, but Tom forgives them, quoting the Bible: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” When some slaves escape, Legree asks Tom where they are, but Tom won’t tell. Legree beats him and orders Sambo and Quimbo to kill him. As Tom lays dying, he says again that he forgives them.</p>
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<span class="caption">An illustration from the 1897 edition of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/image-from-1897-showing-the-character-uncle-royalty-free-illustration/1148429875?adppopup=true">DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Stowe <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Cambridge_Companion_to_Harriet_Beech.html?id=pqDCQgAACAAJ">wanted her novel to advance the abolitionist cause</a>, and it sold 300,000 copies in its first year. But by making Tom a martyr, she inadvertently valorized patience as a response to slavery.</p>
<p>In 1949, novelist James Baldwin criticized the character Uncle Tom, writing that he is “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=wmnVhmw3zVoC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PT29&dq=phenomenally+forbearing&hl=en#v=onepage&q=phenomenally%20forbearing&f=false">phenomenally forbearing</a>.” The result is someone who dies enslaved. </p>
<p>According to Baldwin, books like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” gave “liberal” Americans the impression that “everything will be all right” – as if simply opposing injustice were enough to end it.</p>
<h2>Does time always heal?</h2>
<p>A similar theme can be heard in popular music.</p>
<p>Released in 1964, Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” is <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17267529">widely regarded as his best</a> song, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Dream_Boogie.html?id=YfB6_9eL24UC">one of the greatest of the 1960s</a> and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-unlikely-story-of-a-change-is-gonna-come">an anthem of the civil rights movement</a>. In the refrain, Cooke sings, “It’s been a long, a long time coming, but I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.”</p>
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<p>If you’ve been waiting for needed change for a very long time, but it hasn’t come, you’d be disappointed, tired and angry. For this reason, Cooke’s refusal to give up has been a source of strength to many people.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/1602993/a-change-is-gonna-come-takes-on-new-meaning-at-inaugural-concert/">But many others hear</a> Cooke saying that change – or progress – will inevitably come. Martin Luther King Jr. called this a “<a href="https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html">mythical concept of time</a>,” according to which “there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills.” Heard that way, Cooke’s song cultivates the idea that change doesn’t necessarily require substantial effort; the passage of time will suffice.</p>
<p>If you’re not struggling with oppression, Cooke’s song can instead soothe a guilty conscience.</p>
<h2>One big happy family</h2>
<p>Movies have also served to temper radical change.</p>
<p>Released in 1989 and <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1008415_glory/reviews">adored</a> by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/14/movies/review-film-black-combat-bravery-in-the-civil-war.html">critics</a> and audiences, the film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097441/">Glory</a>” tells <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/91210/tnr-film-classics-glory-january-15-1990">the story of the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts</a>, one of the first all-Black regiments of the Union Army during the Civil War. </p>
<p>One of the main characters is Trip, played by Denzel Washington, who won an Oscar for his performance.</p>
<p>In the first two-thirds of the film, Trip seems mean, tough and angry. He insults his tentmates. He stoically endures a whipping in front of his regiment for going absent without leave. He leads the charge among his comrades to protest unequal pay. He heckles white Union soldiers, and, when his white colonel offers him the privilege of carrying the regiment’s flag, he says he’s not fighting this war for the colonel.</p>
<p>But then viewers start to see a change in Trip. During the regiment’s ill-fated charge on Fort Wagner, a white regiment looks on. Trip catches the eye of a white soldier he had previously scuffled with. Trip looks away, and the white solider shouts, “Give ‘em hell 54th!” Trip grins, and all the white soldiers cheer on the 54th. In the final sequence of the film, with the regiment hunkered down at the parapet, the white colonel decides to lead them onward and is shot down immediately. First to rise, hoisting the regimental flag, Trip shouts to his comrades, “Come on!” He, too, is shot down. “Glory” ends with the colonel’s and Trip’s bodies being tossed into a trench grave, side-by-side.</p>
<p>What’s the significance of these changes in Trip?</p>
<p>For many viewers of the film, they can serve as a form of reassurance.</p>
<p>Trip’s grin signals he embraces the bigoted white soldier’s apparent change of heart. Hoisting the flag shows he now believes the white colonel shares his cause. And for audiences who worry Black people hate them or that Black people don’t realize they’re good people, these actions signal that all can be forgiven.</p>
<p>Black characters like Trip are an archetype in TV and film.</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=XOCj6e_1SRUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">In a 1967 profile of Black actor Sidney Poitier</a> for Look magazine, Baldwin drew attention to it. In the article, he noted that Poitier’s roles “are designed not to trouble, but to reassure; they do not reflect reality, they merely rearrange its elements into something we can bear. They also weaken our ability to deal with the world as it is, ourselves as we are.”</p>
<h2>Change isn’t comfortable</h2>
<p>Popular culture – even that which advances worthy ideas – can foster a complacency that has frustrated generations of Black activists.</p>
<p>In June, CNN commentator Van Jones said that Black Americans should worry less about the Ku Klux Klan and more about “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/05/29/van-jones-george-floyd-white-liberal-hillary-clinton-supporter-sot-newday.cnn">the white, liberal Hillary Clinton supporter</a>.” Jones was echoing Martin Luther King Jr.’s “<a href="https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html">Letter From a Birmingham Jail</a>,” in which King wrote that “the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”</p>
<p>In other words, when push comes to shove, many people don’t want to sacrifice anything or experience discomfort.</p>
<p>Popular culture might serve as a salve for the conscience of many viewers, readers and listeners, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/three-times-when-impractical-movements-led-to-real-change/">but real progress only happens when people push for it</a>, whether it was the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, that ended segregation on the city’s buses or the recent protests to curb police brutality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140892/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chauncey Maher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Books, movies and records that seem to challenge racism also subtly advance the idea that progress shouldn’t happen too quickly.Chauncey Maher, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Dickinson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1110282019-02-19T22:10:33Z2019-02-19T22:10:33ZI am not your nice ‘Mammy’: How racist stereotypes still impact women<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259814/original/file-20190219-43270-goswo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=66%2C8%2C1120%2C758&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The historical depiction of 'the mammy' is a racist stereotype, with an enduring impact. Hattie McDaniel (right) won an Oscar for her role in 'Gone with the Wind' with Vivien Leigh (left). </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Selznick International Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How does a 100-year-old racist stereotype still impact Black women in North American institutions? </p>
<p>When I was a PhD student, a white woman professor was interested in my research, even though I was not her student. After I voiced concern about the similarities between her work and mine, the professor reprimanded me over email. Like “the mammy” who was often punished if she did not appear warm and nurturing, I was told to stay in my lane and to remember my PhD status.</p>
<p>When Black women are treated like this, we can sometimes feel disempowered to do anything about it. Instead, through the act of what one scholar has called “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00957984980242009">Mammy-ism</a>,” we might feel the need to accommodate white people by acquiescing to their needs and assuming an inferior position. </p>
<p>In my opinion, Mammy-ism is often a response to the problem of niceness. </p>
<p>In a recent article for <em>The Guardian</em>, critical whiteness expert Robin diAngelo says that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/16/racial-inequality-niceness-white-people">white people assume that niceness is the answer to racial inequality.</a> She explains that niceness is conveyed through a light tone of voice, eye contact accompanied by over-smiling and pointing out some similarity or affinity between a Black person and white person.</p>
<p>But this creates a racial dynamic where people of colour are required to maintain white comfort to survive. </p>
<p><a href="https://drhyman.com/blog/2015/12/17/stop-being-nice-and-do-this-instead/">Therefore, niceness can be a form of manipulation</a>. According to wellness experts, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/marcia-sirota/too-nice_b_946956.html">there is a difference between kindness and niceness</a>. Where kindness emerges from someone who is compassionate and comfortable in their own skin, niceness is often about feelings of inadequacy, a tactic used to get something from the other person — be it approval, acceptance or <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/5ea9f140-f722-4214-bb57-8b84f9418a7e">emotional labour</a>. </p>
<p>Being a nice white person helps to reinforce <a href="https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/ten-myths-white-people-believe-about-racism">one of the myths about racism — that racism is only perpetrated by mean self-proclaimed white supremacists</a>. A nice person cannot be racist because they don’t have bad intentions, or so the argument goes.</p>
<h2>‘Controlling images’</h2>
<p>In the 2011 film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454029/"><em>The Help</em>,</a> when Cicley Tyson as Constantine Jefferson, the mammy to Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone), is abruptly fired by her “nice” white family despite decades of loyalty, and at the expense of her own family, many Black women likely said “hmmhmm” out loud because we have either seen, heard or experienced similar abrupt dismissals.</p>
<p>In 1991, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/800672?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Black feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins coined the term “controlling images”</a> to describe how the dominant ideology of slavery created socially constructed depictions of Black womanhood. In addition to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10875540903489447">“the welfare mother,”</a> and <a href="https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/jezebel/index.htm">“the Jezebel,”</a> “the mammy” has had a tight grip on how Black women are viewed and treated in western institutions. </p>
<p>The names <em>mammy</em> and <em>aunt</em> were both used in southern antebellum fiction to describe both a person and a role within the plantation home. Real mammies did exist, but they did not look or act like the fictional mammies created on stage, in novels, advertising, film and television who were rotund, dark-skinned and always happy to please with a smile. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259339/original/file-20190215-56212-1j9rhfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259339/original/file-20190215-56212-1j9rhfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259339/original/file-20190215-56212-1j9rhfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259339/original/file-20190215-56212-1j9rhfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259339/original/file-20190215-56212-1j9rhfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259339/original/file-20190215-56212-1j9rhfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259339/original/file-20190215-56212-1j9rhfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Hattie McDaniel, left, is given the Academy Award for the best performance in a supporting role in 1939 by actress Fay Bainter for her work as ‘Mammy’ in ‘Gone With the Wind.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>One of the first fictional mammies appears in the novel <em>Uncle Tom’s Cabin</em> (1852) as the character Aunt Chloe. Mammy lives on through the advertising trademark <a href="https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/jcs.49.1.205">Aunt Jemima</a>, which
has graced store shelves since her debut in 1893. <a href="https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/sheetmusic/886/">U.S. songs like “Mammy’s Little Coal Black Rose”</a> (1916) were <a href="http://spacing.ca/toronto/2018/10/29/the-complicated-history-of-canadian-blackface/">played in local communities across North America</a>, and served as a reminder that the dominant culture considered Black women to be their caregivers. When <a href="https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/04/05/hattie-mcdaniel-oscars/">Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar for her role as Mammy in <em>Gone With the Wind</em> (1939)</a>, it also naturalized the role of the mammy in Hollywood. </p>
<p>Mammy was so enduring that in 1923, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) almost succeeded in their campaign to get <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/the-mammy-washington-almost-had/276431/">the U.S. government to approve a monument “in memory of the faithful slave mammies of the South.”</a></p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259334/original/file-20190215-56220-18ymxd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C7%2C1014%2C536&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259334/original/file-20190215-56220-18ymxd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259334/original/file-20190215-56220-18ymxd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259334/original/file-20190215-56220-18ymxd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259334/original/file-20190215-56220-18ymxd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259334/original/file-20190215-56220-18ymxd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259334/original/file-20190215-56220-18ymxd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scene from the movie, ‘The Help,’ with Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Disney Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many have written about <a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/appview/news/toronto/hadiya-roderique-black-on-bay-street/article36823806/">institutional racism</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-hadiyas-black-bay-street-story-have-us-saying-me-too-percil/">racial microaggressions</a> and <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/the-equity-myth">the lack of equity/diversity, especially at Canadian universities</a>, and therefore, many may understand that these depictions of the mammy are racist. </p>
<p>However, in the 21st century, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/between-the-lines/201204/studies-unconscious-bias-racism-not-always-racists">racism is not necessarily so overt. It is often perpetrated by people who feel threatened by Black people who are self-assured</a>. </p>
<p>When a Black woman resists playing a subordinate role, some white people in institutional settings find issue with it.</p>
<h2>How to end this centuries-long racial dynamic</h2>
<p>I believe <a href="https://au.reachout.com/articles/how-to-become-self-aware">self-awareness</a> is the starting point of any transformation. Unless we take active steps to do something about it, we can remain in the dark about <a href="https://www.devex.com/news/opinion-here-s-how-to-combat-unconscious-racial-bias-at-work-92099">unconscious racial bias</a>. Once we become self-aware, we might become one step closer to laying the mammy to rest once and for all. </p>
<p>Ryerson University Prof. Beverly-Jean Daniel argues that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13613324.2018.1468745">many white women in the Canadian academy lack awareness of their role in reproducing racial dynamics</a>. Daniel explains that many white women have the power to reproduce patriarchy, marginalize and exclude Black women, but they are seldom called out as racist because, as a gender minority, they fit into marginalized categories created under multiculturalism and inclusion policies. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DlrqeWrczs">In a speech at the Stanford Graduate School of Business years ago</a>, Oprah Winfrey said that all relationships are rooted in three questions: Did you hear me? Did you see me? And did what I say mean anything to you? Instead of putting on a veil of niceness, creating genuine connections by asking questions such as the ones Oprah Winfrey suggests would improve white-Black woman racial dynamics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111028/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cheryl Thompson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Stereotypes of Black women continue to impact how they are treated in institutions.Cheryl Thompson, Assistant Professor, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/568762016-04-19T10:08:08Z2016-04-19T10:08:08ZSyrian refugees: will American hearts and minds change?<p><em>Editor’s note: This article is part of our collaboration with <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/point-taken/">Point Taken</a>, a new program from WGBH that will next air on Tuesday, April 19 on PBS and online at pbs.org. The show features fact-based debate on major issues of the day, without the shouting.</em></p>
<p>How do we change our minds about a person or group we consider a threat?</p>
<p>As the first Syrian families <a href="http://nypost.com/2016/04/07/first-syrian-refugees-arrive-in-america/">arrive</a> in the United States from refugee camps in Jordan, it is important to consider public attitudes about this group.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On April 19 PBS’ Point Taken debates whether the U.S. should take in more or fewer Syrian refugees.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/point-taken/">WGBH</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Governors of 31 states have declared their <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/16/world/paris-attacks-syrian-refugees-backlash/">unwillingness</a> to accept any Syrian refugees despite having no authority to turn them away. The two leading Republican candidates for president have openly asserted their suspicion of and hostility toward these refugees.</p>
<p>Syrians fleeing the devastating war within their country are not the first group to face such a response. </p>
<p>Many groups have been labeled as “the enemy” in the past – including Native Americans, rebellious slaves, people of Japanese descent, communists and, most recently, Arab-Americans and Muslims. </p>
<p>As a literary scholar, I am interested in how we tell stories about unfamiliar persons and, over time, how we open ourselves to their complexity and humanity. <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2118_reg.html">My recent research</a> has looked specifically at the fate of Japanese Americans interned during the Second World War and the lawyers working in defense of detainees at Guantánamo Bay to explore the conditions under which empathy for an unfamiliar “other” emerges. </p>
<p>Let’s examine some of these conditions.</p>
<h2>The ‘magnificent enemy’</h2>
<p>The first perceived threat – from the perspective of the 17th-century European settlers whose vision shaped the American nation we know today – came from the Native Americans these settlers encountered. </p>
<p>Two 19th-century women writers – Lydia Maria Child and Catharine Maria Sedgwick – in their novels “Hobomok” (1824) and “Hope Leslie” (1827), respectively, both set in 17th-century Massachusetts, countered the prevailing hostile view by portraying two unforgettable Native American characters. </p>
<p>Child’s protagonist Hobomok is impressive for his courage and selflessness, which earn him the love of the daughter of an early Puritan settler. </p>
<p>In Sedgwick’s novel, the Native American woman Magawisca is equally impressive. She speaks about the dignity of her people and defends their attacks against the white settlers. With the force of her personality, she secures the admiration of the white male and female protagonists. </p>
<p>These novels contributed an empathetic perspective to the national conversation about Native Americans. In the end, however, they had little impact on the aggressive policy of Native American removals, and may have even unwittingly <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-134910558/land-and-the-narrative-site-in-sedgwick-s-hope-leslie">advocated</a> it. </p>
<p>By contrast, within abolitionist circles at least, Frederick Douglass’ 1853 novella <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass1853/douglass1853.html">“The Heroic Slave”</a> had a strong impact. </p>
<p>A white traveler from the North overhears the eloquent monologue of the nobly named runaway slave Madison Washington:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This living under the constant dread and apprehension of being sold and transferred, like a mere brute, is too much for me. I will stand it no longer… These trusty legs, or these sinewy arms shall place me among the free.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frederick Douglass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederick_Douglass_portrait.jpg">George Kendall Warren, National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The traveler is so impressed by Washington’s “triumphant” demeanor that he determines that he will not turn him in as a fugitive, despite the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fugitive-slave-acts">law</a> of the time requiring him to capture and return runaway slaves. </p>
<p>Douglass’ book, coming soon after the publication of the influential anti-slavery novel Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” helped present the slave as a person of strength and complexity and not an abject human being. </p>
<p>These all are examples of how a magnificent enemy, a near-perfect specimen of humanity, jolts us out of our assumptions about the threatening “other.” </p>
<p>Literature provides us a space in which to encounter the “ideal” other and “practice” our ability to shed our fears.</p>
<p>In the real world of laws and social rules, however, the perceived enemy rarely comes in such a noble cast. </p>
<p>The laws and structures that organize our societies are crafted to serve the most ordinary and least remarkable individuals, not just those with celebrated qualities. </p>
<h2>What makes a just society?</h2>
<p>People who come to the defense of groups and individuals considered to be threats do so not because they are swayed by a particular remarkable individual. What motivates them is commitment to an ideal.</p>
<p>Members of the organization <a href="http://forms.nomoredeaths.org/about-no-more-deaths/">No More Deaths</a>, for instance, aid undocumented border crosses in Arizona by setting up water stations in the severely inhospitable desert through which the migrants travel.</p>
<p>Though the volunteers break no immigration law, they profess loyalty to a higher law, a <a href="http://reflections.yale.edu/article/who-my-neighbor-facing-immigration/no-more-deaths-interview-john-rife">Christian</a> law that enjoins them to treat their fellow human beings as their neighbor.</p>
<p>Likewise, it is fierce allegiance to the values enshrined in the United States Constitution – such as <a href="http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/amendments/14/essays/170/due-process-clause">due process</a> – that has motivated many lawyers to defend the detainees at Guantánamo Bay.</p>
<p>The seven lawyers I interviewed may have come to empathize with their clients over time, but initially it was their faith in the Constitution and their refusal to see it tarnished that took them to Guantánamo Bay. </p>
<p>A just society, philosopher John Rawls argued, is one that formulates its laws and policies through a “veil of ignorance,” that is, with no knowledge of the “<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/">original position</a>” in which anyone is placed (i.e., race, sex, socioeconomic class or other attribute affecting life prospects). </p>
<p>Political scientist <a href="http://openborders.info/rawlsian/">Joseph Carens</a> takes this veil of ignorance condition and applies it to the global stage. </p>
<p>We likely, he concludes, would organize global society and its institutions so that regardless of where we are born, we would all have the same freedoms, and the least advantaged would be able to improve their conditions. </p>
<p>My question, therefore, is this: What laws do you wished existed if you were in the position of Syrian refugees? </p>
<h2>Empathy is hard work</h2>
<p>At an April 11, 2016 panel held at UMass Boston on what the U.S. response to the Syrian refugee crisis should be, a Syrian woman, displaced by the war and now living in the Greater Boston area, spoke about the need to make connections to those whom we don’t understand.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How many of you know a Muslim person? How many of you have asked us to tell you the story of what we have been through? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her reprimand and plea exhort us to make the effort to break free from our own emotional barriers. </p>
<p>Literature is one vehicle through which to make this outward journey. It allows us to prepare for the actual connections we must seek to forge with the perceived enemy. </p>
<p>But this outward journey toward empathy requires labor and commitment. </p>
<p>It was only in 1988, 40 years after the closing of the camps and 10 years after the Japanese American community started its <a href="https://jacl.org/redress/">redress effort</a> – that the U.S. government officially apologized for the internment and promised compensation. </p>
<p>At the time, Japanese Americans represented only <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/asianamericans-graphics/japanese/">0.7</a> percent of the total population. Their campaign could not have succeeded without the support of the wider national community. </p>
<p>That the country was not at war with Japan certainly helped. But there is no doubt that the admission by several individuals, including one of the architects of the internment policy, Supreme Court Chief Justice <a href="http://www.vqronline.org/essay/unacknowledged-lesson-earl-warren-and-japanese-relocation-controversy">Earl Warren</a>, that the internment had been morally and constitutionally flawed was crucial in changing public sentiment. </p>
<p>By contrast, the U.S. is still actively engaged in the global “war on terror.” And, arguably, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Arabs-Muslims-Media-Representation-Communication/dp/0814707327/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460737330&sr=1-1&keywords=Evelyn+Alsultany">media</a> coverage of terrorism and Muslims continues to be sensationalized. </p>
<p>At least two of the Guantánamo lawyers I interviewed explicitly attributed the public’s indifference or hostility to the detainees as a key reason for Congress’ unwillingness to close the prison facility at Guantánamo Bay. </p>
<p>In this political and social context, it requires commitment at the individual and governmental level to hold to constitutional and ethical ideals.</p>
<p>What would happen, for example, if leaders at the neighborhood, state and national levels initiated town hall conversations about the fears that keep us from empathizing with the dire predicament of Syrian refugees? </p>
<p>Would this affect our willingness to create spaces of refuge for them within our towns? </p>
<p>As a human rights scholar, I believe that people have a
responsibility to remind their leaders of what we value as a society. For their part, leaders have a responsibility to evoke in the public the best attributes of our collective humanity.</p>
<p>This is not an easy process. Nor is it quick. But we owe it to ourselves not to succumb to exaggerated fears that make enemies of those who, in reality, share our dreams and hopes. </p>
<p>Nobel laureate <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/books/nadine-gordimer-novelist-and-apartheid-foe-dies-at-90.html?_r=0">Nadine Gordimer</a>’s powerful short story <a href="http://www.napavalley.edu/people/LYanover/Documents/English%20123/Nadine_Gordimer_Once_Upon_a_Time.pdf">“Once Upon a Time”</a> is a cautionary tale about the siege mentality of white South Africans during the racist <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/apartheid">apartheid</a> era. </p>
<p>Focused on one family that surrounds itself with a foolproof security system against the threat of black South Africans, the story shows how the family is itself destroyed by the security apparatus. </p>
<p>We would do well to heed that warning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56876/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rajini Srikanth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many groups have been labeled ‘enemy’ in the American past. A literary scholar looks at the role literature and philosophy have played in dispelling fears and shifting public attitudes.Rajini Srikanth, Professor of English, College of Liberal Arts Dean, Honors College, UMass BostonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.