Ms Rachel calls out uncle tom
Ms Rachel calls out uncle tom
Comments
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"Uncle Tom" means something very specific, not "black man I dislike/disagree with". Using it like that is just racist.
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“Uncle Tom” means something very specific
I've never heard that phrase before (also not American, so probably never would have).
I'm guessing it's some sort of reference for a slave collaboration with slavery owners?
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Nailed it in one. It's a term derived from the book Uncle Tom's Cabin, which features a black slave of the same name. The character is widely criticized for diminishing the harm and threat of slavery to black people. In short, an "Uncle Tom" is a black person that takes the side of the oppressors against their own people, usually for little-to-no reward other than being "one of the good ones." To use the epithet so liberally just because the person is black is not ok.
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Yeah that caught me way off guard.
He may be too middle of the road but to call him a race traitor like that is absolutely wild.
Like this is a headline I expect to see from a hardcore rightwing publication.
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Hey, I get it. Obama wasn't a bad President on the scale of US Presidents, but there are a lot of left wing people who have genuine grievances with him.
I could see anyone who is an advocate for or Middle Eastern themselves be pretty damned pissed at him, considering he dropped twenty-six thousand bombs on seven countries. This was AFTER he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
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He is definitely a race traitor and his policies were racist.
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It is more of a pejorative nowadays. This is also not the first tme it has been done
https://usso.uk/research/deconstructing-uncle-tom-abroad-the-case-of-an-american-president/
The context here is Obama has already been criticized in the exact same way by a Palestinian activist. They are probably paying homage to this.
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I'm not clear what your point is here. That it's ok because other people did it? That is a poor excuse for casual racism.
If you're just pointing to the term's historical context, that's besides the point. I'm not saying that the term is universally racist, I'm saying that it's racist to use the term in this context.
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Pretty much. The moment I saw Uncle Tom in the title...
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Uncle Tom means racist black man in favor of white people and the usage is correct.
Obama is a racist and mass murderer of brown and black people. And now he's doing PR for Apartheid.
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That is a pretty brutal take.
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Personally I just think he's an equal opportunity asshole and sociopath.
He does what's best for him and everybody else, white, black or any other race, are only important when he can use them to further his own interests, otherwise screw them.
So yeah, such a person, even being black himself, would not at all care for blacks (unless they're rich blacks or he can use them for votes), just like he doesn't care for anybody else beyond their utility to further his own personal upsides.
(Anybody expecting a top US politician to be different just because they're from a race other than white, a gender other than cis-male or a sexual orientation other than heterosexual is seriously deluded).
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Incorrect.
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Here is what Obama wrote:
After two years of unimaginable loss and suffering for Israeli families and the people of Gaza, we should all be encouraged and relieved that an end to the conflict is within sight; that those hostages still being held will be reunited with their families; and that vital aid can start reaching those inside Gaza whose lives have been shattered. More than that, though, it now falls on Israelis and Palestinians, with the support of the U.S. and the entire world community, to begin the hard task of rebuilding Gaza — and to commit to a process that, by recognizing the common humanity and basic rights of both peoples, can achieve a lasting peace.
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He's doing the same as for example the BBC does when they say that Israelis are "killed" and Palestinians "die", that the IDF "says" whilst Hamas "claims" and mention the 7 October "massacre" whilst the mass bombing of Gaza is an "intervention" or at most "invasion".
In simple terms: subtly framing one side more positively than the other in order to subconsciously elicit a more positive response in the minds of the audience for one side, all the while claiming neutrality because the message seems neutral, it's the choice of words which is not.
This is an old trick from Propaganda.
So the OP rightly points that specific kind of Propaganda Spin in Obama's words.
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Damn what a cunt. He should shut the fuck up.
"In April 2022, there were 4,450 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli prisons – including 160 children, 32 women, and over 1,000 "administrative detainees" (indefinitely incarcerated without charge"
These people and their families also suffering.
Of course he doesn't gave a shit. If he cannot stand for oppressed kids and women's, it is clearly he doesn't care for oppressed black community in the US.
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Why are we mad at Obama again? He mind controlling Trump and Bibi?
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For humanizing the aggressors while dehumanizing the victims in a public statement about genocide
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Obama gave Israel 38 billion of taxpayer dollars. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37345444
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Because he’s shit? Dude loves drone bombing Middle Eastern kids and apparently promoting Zionist dehumanisation tactics.
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Both sidesing a genocide is pretty contemptable. It's also pretty contemptable that liberals are pretending the mass genocide wasn't going on for over a year before Trump was elected
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Obama spent his entire career supporting israel, and his entire presidency bombing Israel's enemies on Israel's behalf.
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He was giving billions to israel to continue occupation and when he is out he pretend to care about Palestinians
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I did not forget US approves record $38bn Israel military aid deal (2016)
Hypocrites like Obama should shut the F up
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Obama's take really does smack of bothsides-itis, and is a very clearly diplomatic approach to what was undeniably a one sided massacre. Ms Rachel is not wrong here.
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And he doesn't need to be political. He is free of any obligation. But he chooses to make a statement while his own country is going through a fascist militant take over.
The only reason would be he must got paid for this.
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For the people who don't understand the post:
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Denying Palestinians a communal identity has always been a key approach to dehumanization within Western discourse.
The Western world has historically tied itself into knots justifying horrific atrocities like the Atlantic slave trade while trying to present itself as a champion of personal freedoms.
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Indeed. And also he is putting a few people who have a relative guarding the concentration camp on the same level of suffering as the people in the concentration camp undergoing a Holocaust. This is not a both sides moment.
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Removed by Moderator — Modlog
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Perfect is the enemy of good.
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It's weird how many major news briefs use the same language though, isn't it? I'm not sure where they're getting it, but NPR uses exactly the same lingo.
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Obama's just jealous that he isn't ordering the drone strikes on brown families anymore
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I think he meant just the Israeli families of the hostages suffered, not all of Israel, while all people of Gaza suffered.
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Instead of merely posting an image of text that
- challenges our ability to verify the message & review context, and
- breaks accessibility, searchability, & fault tolerance for no compelling reason while making the web less usable
could OP provide a link to source? We shouldn't have needed some other commenter to fill in missing context.
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People in Gaza might refer to themselves as "people of Gaza." And there's aid groups with the name. And plenty of other instances where it's used to humanize them (seems so to me at least). I've already done more work looking for this theory to line up than the ones proposing the theory.
Nobody spends their free time looking shit up anymore do they? Throw me a bone here. Give me a white paper study on just how, precisely, Obama is dehumanizing gazans through his speech patterns. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying I'd like to be right. But being right takes effort. Evidence.
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For me it is the equivocation more than anything else. And you just have to look at how the west treats single, child-free adults to see how they prioritize families as morally superior. There is something charged about the word family in that context.
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I've already done more work looking for this theory to line up than the ones proposing the theory.
Prove it. Show your work.
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"Might" doing a whole lot of work here lol, you're asking other people to provide you with academic sources but you can't even be bothered to find a single example to support your disingenuous speculation? Fuck a cactus
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Media critic Sana Saeed described Obama's phrasing as "a masterclass in seven words on how Palestinians are rendered faceless and nameless when slaughtered, while Israelis are granted empathy, especially when they are the butchers".
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I started reading the comments and it brought a question to mind: if Ms Rachel were to criticize the KKK, would she be a race traitor? Is that how it works?
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The KKK was fighting to oppress black people, not to liberate white people from oppression.
So no, that is not how it works whatsoever.
If you are looking for other examples similar to Uncle Tom, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gusano
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He's not a president anymore? Why do people still call him that?
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Interestingly, it’s a permanent title.
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I never use it for pedophile rapist cowards though.
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Seems kind of odd to me.
As far as I'm concerned, as soon as you're out of office, you are a civilian. You took on a temporary job, and now it's over. Like a group project or task force. You're now mostly irrelevant unless you happen to be running again. At best you might have some insight to give.
In the UK at least, once you stop being Prime Minister you are basically completely irrelevant. Everyone ignores you and you are spoken about in the past tense, if at all.
At least, that's my impression.
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Technically correct, but a lot of people will respectfully address others based on their highest rank, regardless of whether or not they still hold it. That goes double for academic and political positions.
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It also goes for kings if they choose to retire.
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Because your crimes don't go away after you are no longer the president. Any leaders who participate in war crimes should be persecuted . I am pretty sure you hypocrites will not forget all the terrible things Trump did one he is no longer the president
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This title and the doubling down on the nonsense is why afro-pessimism exists for the record.
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Denying that Obama is a racist and betrays people of color is why afro-pessimism exists for the record.
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This comment in particular is very revealing for the record. Continue though so I can have an anecdote to cite later when asked about the big tent approach.
You can principally call out Obama without resorting to an anti-black slur. Is Obama still a tool for white hegemony? OBVIOUSLY. No one is disputing that, it is your language that is the issue here. However, you and your buddies in this thread will continue proving why afro-pessimism and generally the Black Radical Tradition frameworks are so important when engaging with folks like yall.
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Obama wrote this on the anniversary of the Oct 7th attacks and was referring to the families of those specific attacks.
That’s why he started with two years and published it really close to two years after the Oct 7th attacks.
It’s obvious from context. “Uncle Tom,” indeed.
Ms. Rachel didn’t do a good job of reading this.
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“After two years of…” Clearly means all of the suffering occurring in the last two years.
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“Clearly” not.
If it were clear we wouldn’t be having this discussion, would we?
There are smarter discussions about this in this very thread but you came here to downvote instead of reading.
Every time I go on lemmy.world I get dumber. Oh damn what a surprise the non-readers are from there too
Let me just filter that out too…
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This is the dumbest post I have seen in ... hours.
Progressives impotently punching at black people because Progressive social media person is unhappy with purity language tests.
Hows about run for office, Ms Rachel ? Put your past through the ringer publicly to help more than rich children with fast internet, nice computers, and free time to be talked to by a stranger online. You know ... children of wealth.
Or make sure y'all stay as divided as possible. That is what wins the day!
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Lemmy has been pretty insane lately - like I definitely feel like i'm in the liberal equivalent of /r/TheDonald or /r/conservative. Just absolutely asinine takes, completely out of context, with no nuance whatsoever. The comments are even worse, with insane virtue signaling and justification for abhorrent behavior.
This isn't why we wanted to move off the big platforms, we weren't looking for an even more toxic mechanism to spread misinformation and shit opinions.
For the record I'm a liberal, but what is thriving here at Lemmy is something rotten and is bad for the community.
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This com isn’t about actual progressive politics but continuing to drive a wedge. Keep watching
This post is proof positive, this is the norm here.
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An important step on any path to unity is a requirement that we all believe that the inherent value of human life does not vary by national origin. Demanding that our politicians do better, and stop misusing language in this consistent pattern to minimize perceived suffering of The Other - that's unity. "Israeli families" vs. "the people of Gaza" - isn't it self-evident, that is the wedge? Once you know to look for it, you see it used everywhere.
I don't want unity with people who aren't willing to make the above commitment. When demanding just minimal lip service to such an ideal from a public figure is "driving a wedge", I think you have some serious soul searching to do.
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Do yourself a favor and stick to /politics.
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ITT white children upvoting racism so they can virtue signal as "progressive". LMAO.
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ITT liberals who won't admit Obama was a traitor to everything he pretended to stand for.
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Obama was a centrist who kowtowed to corporate interests. Obamacare was a gift to the insurance companies when we could have had M4A. That doesn't change the fact that calling him an "Uncle Tom" just because he's black is racist. Oh, also, fun fact, it's pretty hard to "dehumanize" a group when you're calling them "people".
Anyway, go "ree" into your navel, because I really don't care.
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Learn about the use of the term before making definitive statements.
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This led to the use of Uncle Tom — sometimes shortened to just a Tom— as a derogatory epithet for an exceedingly subservient person or house negro, particularly one accepting and uncritical of their own lower-class status.
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Yeah thanks for your link to edit the page on Wikipedia. I don't really care what you added, nor do I care for apologia, but this is racist bullshit. Sorry you don't see that. But that's more of a "you" problem.
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That’s a pretty disingenuous reading.
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What's insincere about it?
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Based on the down votes, maybe I’m missing something, but what is dehumanizing about referring to “the people of Gaza”?
Maybe I have a misunderstanding who that means and it some how excludes Palestinians?
ETA: It occurs to me that I haven’t seen the full context of Obama comments so that could change my perspective too…
Edit 2: Read it. Didn’t change my perspective at all.
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100% hard agree here.
Rachel's 'take' isn't my 'take', and I'd hazard to guess it wasn't anyone else's, until brought to attention.-
Definitely was mine
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Please, before reporting this post for racism, familiarize yourself with the history of the phrase “Uncle Tom.” The phrase has been used by the Black community against itself, recently in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled.
"black people say it why can't I"
and how am I supposed to know who is black or not?
I can't believe this is the response. I am seriously at a loss for words.
For the record, I did not report this post for racism. I do believe the rhetoric absolutely enables white hegemony and should not be seen as subversive or somehow post racial.
I am done with this thread. I literally just came to get screenshots for archival purposes. Cheers everyone ✌️