I have never denied they are racialised, what I merely did was try to give my reasoning as to why I felt Uncle Tom is generally less problematic than something like Coconut. That reasoning being that Uncle Tom essentially equates to a slave equivalent of "scab", someone who joins in on the oppression of "their own", who sides with the oppressor. Coconut on the other hand is simply a racialised concept of what people should behave like in a much wider cultural sense.
For me they are both problematic, there is no hierarchy as far as I concerned.
I haven't in any way tried to justify them being used in the manner you suggest, I have simply gave reasons why Uncle Tom is a less racist term, by looking at where it came from and even it's contemporary use where it is more often related to a critique of those with power. Having said that I also stated that I do think it problematic for exactly the reasons you've just laid out.
Less racist? Looking at where something came from doesn't for me make it less racist/racialised when it's used NOW. No one here has argued that these terms are divorced from history. To give these terms a hierarchy of less/more acceptable because of their historical origins is a problem IMO.
I'm not quoting Malcolm X at you, I am simply pointing out that terms like Uncle Tom and House Nigger have an origin in black people fighting back against racism despite the issues that arise from them and indeed the black power movements in general.
I am pretty sure that the term House Nigger was not first uttered/coined by a Black person, slave or otherwise. You do realise that the word
nigger at some point became synomymous with
slave don't you? The words were used interchangably.
How is what you are arguing different from being told that I should accept someone calling me a nigger because rappers use it?
Again I agree with that but on the otherhand you can't disregard the oppositional identities that do come out of that, that do base themselves around a shared experience of racism or discrimination, and the subsequent contempt these movements will have for those that they deem to have betrayed that shared experience by alligning with the oppressor.
Where have I disregarded oppositional identities? I don't disregard them at all and in a way that's why I have argued with you about your seeming denial of 'indiviualised experiences' and saying that race and class conflicts can't be experienced separately/intersectionally, class conflicts can be racialised too IME. To read on the other day Urban, Mehdi Hassan being called an uncle tom and no one batting an eyelid? Fuck that, it undermines the anti-racist/facist reputation of the boards imo. All the brow beating and batting around the head with academic research and class war literature that goes on around here, but fine, call Medhi an uncle tom, not a problem?
Basically to label the term Uncle Tom racist would involve labeling the likes of the Black Panthers or Revolutionary League of Black workers racist too and that for me is too close to a liberal notion of it being about "attitudes" divorced from history and power dynamics.
Again, context. No one has argued that the term is divorced of history and power dynamics. Why not use a more up to date/relevant to the people you are interacting with example of how this fits and is more acceptable/less racist in it's modern usage? It's pretty bloody 'liberal' for people to use the Black Panthers as a bench mark in conversations like this too IMO, for example. It assumes people all have the same experience in the same context and should think/feel a certain way. It doesn't ask what their feelings are, it prescribes them and undermines a part of what the 'Black power' movement, in whichever form was/is takes. You know, that being told, not being asked, that freedom to be/have a voice, in full awareness of and despite history!
Anyway I think we are talking largely at cross purposes cos I've never intended to defend any idiot on here using Uncle Tom as an insult for Mehdi Hasan, or for that matter to attack any other poster on here for not acting in a correct manner. Personally, I've been called a castle catholic and tame taig on urban for not supporting Irish republicanism so I'm quite alert to that kind of bullshit and have absolutely no intention of defending that kind of logic.
Yet you said it was okay/you would question someone to calling Condelesa Rice an Uncle Tom, did you mean it's only okay if it's a Black person?
).
