As a long time reader and past reporter for the Recorder, I have read the column from the pen of Abdul-Hakim Shabazz last week. Oftentimes I have read his allusions to Amos Brown’s articles in his condescending, misleading rebuttals. I have seen how adept Shabazz can be at shifting blame and twisting facts. I, along with most of you, am well aware of the term, Uncle Tom. We even witnessed the insertion of pathetical self-hate, Uncle Clarence Thomas, to the Thurgood Marshall seat on the Supreme Court.
I don’t have the time nor the space to list the instances in which Thomas has openly displayed the disdain he has for his race. It would be difficult to find a Catholic so disparaging to the pope, a Native American so abhorrent to Crazy Horse, a Jew so disrespectful of Moses, or a Klansman so disgustful of Albert Pike. Yet we must remember that Judge Thomas, and others like him, justify their actions through many mental machinations. Remember in Roots, Fiddler warned Toby that he didn’t want to lose his wood floor. In the end, he did help Kente, but he didn’t change his feathers and he kept his wood cabin floor.
What Shabazz fails to comprehend is that Fiddler was still the consummate Uncle Tom. Clarence Thomas is a justice who may sit in the court’s Black seat, but he is still an Uncle Tom. The view of the hero of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was Harriet Stowe and her statement. It went far toward the ignition of the fight against this nation’s history of a curious situation. For a slave to be beaten to death was not an aberration in those days. It was a normal, regular event. It happens still. In places like Sanford, Fla.
I used to wonder where our oppressors managed to come up with so many Blacks willing to sacrifice fellow Blacks to satisfy their avarice. I saw them in school as teachers, in the service as brown-nosers, on the job as obsequious toadies. Jim Cummings, venerable writer for the Recorder and an esteemed peer, might have had vastly different political views from mine, but he never attacked any Democrat personally or publicly. As a respected Republican, he would never have postulated policies so detrimental to the inner city community. What could Mr. Shabazz possibly know about public schools? Was he ever forced to walk three miles, past a school only a block away, to a segregated school? I don’t think he is qualified to speak on public schools. Give him about another 40 years.
Mr. Shabazz never knew the Richardsons, the Ransoms, the Crowes, A. Ramsay, Flanner, Blackburn, Doris Brown, Emma Lou Thornbrough, DeFrantz. The list goes on and will go on in spite of each new generation of Trojan horses placed in our path.
So away with the inane gibberish spouted so glibly by Mr. Shabazz. Leave it to the Gannett papers with the deep pockets. We have heard all of it before. In truth, whites are the beneficiaries of government largess by far. Big banks gained more in one year than all the poor people of all time. Corporations can now outvote you, but you can “pull yourself up.” No thank you Mr. Booker T. It didn’t work then and it won’t now. A government “for the people” sounds like a better deal to me. And, odds are, like Uncle Thomas, Mr. Shabazz obtained his degree with some government help.
So, I can agree with the self drawn parallel espoused by Mr. Shabazz. And also his definition: a Black man who will do anything to stay in good standing with the white man, including betraying his own people.
F. Earl Kennedy
