Black People : Josiah Henson: Uncle Tom syndrome

Bast Bastet · Aug 7, 2010

Bast Bastet said: ↑

The “uncle tom cabin” story can be found in the above link.

Josiah Henson and Harriet Beecher Stowe also can be found in the above link with clickable links inside with other related stories.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man can be found in above link.

James Weldon Johnson and others can be found in the above link

I am familiar with the above links and this was giving in the beginning of the threads.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
The older I grew the more thought I gave to the question of my and my mother's position, and what was our exact relation to the world in general. My idea of the whole matter was rather hazy. My study of United States history had been confined to those periods which were designated in my book as "Discovery," "Colonial," "Revolutionary," and "Constitutional." I now began to study about the Civil War, but the story was told in such a condensed and skipping style that I gained from it very little real information. It is a marvel how children ever learn any history out of books of that sort. And, too, I began now to read the newspapers; I often saw articles which aroused my curiosity, but did not enlighten me. But, one day, I drew from the circulating library a book that cleared the whole mystery, a book that I read with the same feverish intensity with which I had read the old Bible stories, a book that gave me my first perspective of the life I was entering; that book was "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

This work of Harriet Beecher Stowe has been the object of much unfavorable criticism. It has been assailed, not only as fiction of the most imaginative sort, but as being a direct misrepresentation. Several successful attempts have lately been made to displace the book from northern school libraries. Its critics would brush it aside with the remark that there never was a Negro as good as Uncle Tom, nor a slave-holder as bad as Lagree. For my part, I was never an admirer of Uncle Tom, nor of his type of goodness; but I believe that there were lots of old Negroes as foolishly good as he; the proof of which is that they knowingly stayed and worked the plantations that furnished sinews for the army which was fighting to keep them enslaved. But, in these later years, several cases have come to my personal knowledge in which old Negroes have died and left what was a considerable fortune to the descendants of their former masters.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson is the fictional telling of the story of a young biracial man, referred to only as the “Ex-Colored Man", living in post Reconstruction era America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The Ex-Colored Man was forced to choose between embracing his black heritage and culture by expressing himself through the African-American musical genre ragtime, or by “passing” and living obscurely as a mediocre middle-class white man.

Johnson originally wrote The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man anonymously in 1912, joining a small number of published African American writers of the time. Due to this concern, Johnson was not credited as the author when the book was first printed by the small New York publisher Sherman, French, and Company. The book's initial public reception was poor.[1] It was republished in 1927 by Alfred A. Knopf, an influential firm that published many Harlem Renaissance writers. This time Johnson was credited as the author. Though the title suggests otherwise, the book is not an autobiography but a novel. However, the book is based on the lives of people Johnson knew and from events in his own life. Weldon's text is an example of a roman a clef.

A roman à clef or roman à clé (French for "novel with a key"; French pronunciation: [ʁɔmɑ̃na kle]) is a novel describing real life, behind a façade of fiction.[1] "Key" in this context means a table one can use to swap out the names, see figure.

The reasons an author might choose the roman à clef format include:

Writing about controversial topics and/or reporting inside information on scandals without giving rise to charges of libel

The opportunity to turn the tale the way the author would like it to have gone

The opportunity to portray personal, autobiographical experiences without having to expose the author as the subject - Avoiding self-incrimination or incrimination of others that could be used as evidence in civil, criminal, or disciplinary proceedings

cherryblossom · Aug 7, 2010

Wikipedia is your BEST FRIEND, aint it.

But, you don't get a "Gold Star" for it, though.

Bast Bastet · Aug 11, 2010

MALCOLM X: THE HOUSE NEGRO AND THE FIELD NEGRO

Bast Bastet said: ↑

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson is the fictional telling of the story of a young biracial man, referred to only as the “Ex-Colored Man", living in post Reconstruction era America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The Ex-Colored Man was forced to choose between embracing his black heritage and culture by expressing himself through the African-American musical genre ragtime, or by “passing” and living obscurely as a mediocre middle-class white man.

Johnson originally wrote The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man anonymously in 1912, joining a small number of published African American writers of the time. Due to this concern, Johnson was not credited as the author when the book was first printed by the small New York publisher Sherman, French, and Company. The book's initial public reception was poor.[1] It was republished in 1927 by Alfred A. Knopf, an influential firm that published many Harlem Renaissance writers. This time Johnson was credited as the author. Though the title suggests otherwise, the book is not an autobiography but a novel. However, the book is based on the lives of people Johnson knew and from events in his own life. Weldon's text is an example of a roman a clef.

A roman à clef or roman à clé (French for "novel with a key"; French pronunciation: [ʁɔmɑ̃na kle]) is a novel describing real life, behind a façade of fiction.[1] "Key" in this context means a table one can use to swap out the names, see figure.

The reasons an author might choose the roman à clef format include:

Writing about controversial topics and/or reporting inside information on scandals without giving rise to charges of libel

The opportunity to turn the tale the way the author would like it to have gone

The opportunity to portray personal, autobiographical experiences without having to expose the author as the subject - Avoiding self-incrimination or incrimination of others that could be used as evidence in civil, criminal, or disciplinary proceedings

Bast Bastet said: ↑

Uncle Tom syndrome is a concept in psychology. It refers to a coping skill where individuals use passivity and submissiveness when confronted with a threat, leading to subservient behaviour and appeasement, while concealing their true thoughts and feelings. The term "Uncle Tom" comes from the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, where the African American slave Tom is beaten to death by a cruel white master for refusing to betray the whereabouts of two other slaves.

In the American racial context, Uncle Tom is a pejorative term for blacks that give up or hide their ethnic or gender outlooks, traits, and practices, in order to be accepted into the mainstream—a so-called race traitor. In African American parlance this is also derogatorily known as an Oreo cookie, black on the outside only, white on the inside
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom_syndrome

THE HOUSE NEGRO AND THE FIELD NEGRO
"There was two kind of slaves. There was the house negro and the field
negro. The house negro, they lived in the house, with master. They
dressed pretty good. They ate good, cause they ate his food, what he left.
They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near their
master, and they loved their master, more than their master loved
himself. They would give their life to save their masters house quicker
than their master would. The house negro, if the master said "we got a
good house here" the house negro say "yeah, we got a good house here".
Whenever the master would said we, he'd say we. That's how you can
tell a house negro. If the master's house caught on fire, the house negro
would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the
master got sick, the house negro would say "What's the matter, boss, we
sick?" We sick! He identified himself with his master, more than the
master identified with himself. And if you came to the house negro and
said "Let's run away, Let's escape, Let's separate" the house negro would
look at you and say "Man, you crazy. What you mean separate? Where
is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than
this? Where can I eat better food than this?" There was that house
negro.

cherryblossom · Aug 11, 2010

....And have you ever read any other speeches by Malcolm?

...or read his "autobiography?"

...or do you only know what you can find on WIKIPEDIA or YOUTUBE?