Tim Scott Is No Uncle Tom

PART 1 OF 3

I must warn you: I was very angry when I wrote this article. I took a few days to complete it and I hoped I would calm down but that hasn’t happened. So, this article comes with a warning. It is from a fuming Black man and has some very harsh words about Tim Scott, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden. It comes from a place of pain because I find I could not stop myself.

This anger comes from fear, concern, and pure exhaustion over the treatment of the Black and African-American communities in the United States, particularly by those who claim to be the standard-bearers of the Black and African-American communities.

After President Joe Biden gave his address to Congress following his first 100-days in office, the Republican response, from the only Black Republican Senator in Congress, is one of the most maddening and upsetting responses that I have ever heard. Senator Tim Scott said some things that were so insulting that he could have been a segregationist conservative white Senator.

A few days later, VP Harris gave a similarly ridiculous response. Her response proves that the Black and African-American communities can barely trust any politician, whether they are Democrat or Republican, whether they are Black or white. These politicians do not have a genuine concern for the community a population that has suffered generational pain and misery.

They both said that the United States was not at all a racist nation. They were both playing politics with the lives of Black and African-American people. They were both selling out the Black community.

Tim Scott said that he had been called an Uncle Tom. This is an insult to the real Uncle Tom.

Josiah Henson

Most people don’t understand that the common understanding about Uncle Tom is all a misperception perpetrated mainly by the Black community on the Black community and from movies like Song of the South.

Uncle Tom was a fictional character, from the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and loosely based on the great Josiah Henson, a real person — a self-educated freed slave who fought for the civil rights and the freedom of other black people.

Josiah Henson was so revered that he was greeted by the Queen of England and had dinner at the White House with a president. He was a regal, intelligent, and charismatic Black man who fought for the freedom of Black people from England to Canada to the United States.

Tim Scott was right. He implied that it is an insult to call him an Uncle Tom. I agree he is no Uncle Tom; Tim Scott is more like an Uncle Ruckus.

There is a legend that comes with how the name Uncle Tom became derogatory. Abraham Lincoln so enjoyed the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that he would use it as inspiration to start the Civil War. Before this time, Uncle Tom was considered a hero to both black and white people alike.

When Josiah Henson got old and was ready to retire, a group of young people came to him and asked him to continue to fight for civil rights. He told them he was too old. It was their turn to continue the fight. They told him he could not retire. There is still fighting to do. Josiah Henson said, “I’m tired. Now it’s up to your young people to carry on the struggle.”

They said that they were so upset that they were going to turn the name Uncle Tom from a dignified, fighting, compassionate term to a name meaning sellout of the Black community.

Tim Scott is partaking in what politicians called “meritorious manumission.”

The Meritorious Manumission Act was a law passed in the United States in 1710, which said any Black person who does “something good” for a white enslaver could win their freedom from their slave master.

Any Black or African-American who believes that the United States is not racist is either out for themselves or is playing politics with the lives of Black people and thus winning their freedom or power for their political party — and bows at the knees of their white master overlords.

Tim Scott is not Uncle Tom; Tim Scott puts the lives of Black people on the same level as a moderate and or conservative racist white person.

Racism doesn’t just exist in the past even Scott can point out examples of racism from the segregationist time. It’s much harder to recognize the racism of today.

Let me help him with that:

· How many African-American women die during childbirth because they have a white doctor?

· How many Black people go to jail for the same crimes that white people do when white people get out and go home to await trial?

· What is the income disparity between Black and white people in the United States?

· What is the mortality rate difference between Black people and white people?

These things are disparities between the Black and white community, which some people would call white privilege. I do not call it white privilege. It is just simply racism. (See my YouTube TEDx video on the Harvard Problem and white privilege).

The fact that so many Black people died during the coronavirus outbreak — the fact that that outbreak reduces the life expectancy of the Black community — the fact that some doctors believe that Black people have tougher nerve endings, are emotionally stronger and suffered less pain than white people proves the fact that America is a racist country.

No, Scott is not an Uncle Tom. He is not good enough to be Uncle Tom. Tim Scott is too much like Uncle Ruckus from the cartoon The Boondocks.

Still, a Man on Fire because Kamala Harris was just wrong

PART 2 OF 3

A few days after Tim Scott’s insulting response, VP Harris gave a similarly ridiculous response. Her response proves that the Black and African American communities can barely trust any politician, whether they are Democrat or Republican, whether they are Black or white. These politicians do not have a genuine concern for a community that has suffered generational pain and misery.

They both said that the United States was not a racist nation. They were both playing politics with the lives of Black and African American people. They were both selling out the Black community.

Mike Pence was the vice president of Donald Trump. He often would justify anything and everything that Donald Trump did, no matter how immoral it was, like justifying putting immigrant babies in cages. When Mike Pence did this, he was criticized by some for being a lackey for Donald Trump. What is the difference between what Mike Pence did and what Kamala Harris did when she said the United States is not racist?

I criticized Barack Obama for many of his policies, and I now criticize this president and vice president for this policy. The fact is that, just like a tweet from Donald Trump, when Harris stated that the United States was not racist, she was setting the official policy of the Biden administration.

I was stunned and shocked by the Vice President when she said America is not a racist country. She was playing politics with the lives of Black people. As soon as Democrats get a chance, they sell out the Black community. This is what happened with Harris. She was playing politics. Yes, it’s essential to understand that you have to play politics to get bills passed in Congress, but why do they always sell out the Black community.

Bill Clinton did it (see Bill Clinton's betrayal of Sister soldier on YouTube), Barack Obama did it to immigrants (see how many immigrants Barack Obama deported), and now this administration is doing it as well. As soon as politicians get a chance, they sell out the Black community. Tell me, how much money did Barack Obama put in HBCUs?

Every time the Democrats want to negotiate with the Republicans, they sell out the Black community. It happened during reconstruction but in reverse. In those days, the Black community supported the Republicans, and the Republicans sold out the Black community to win the presidency.

During Roosevelt’s administration, they wanted to pass the tremendous New Deal and tried to pass a minimum wage. Roosevelt, in negotiation with Southern politicians, decided to change the bill to leave out domestic workers and those who work in restaurants because, in those days in the South, most of those workers were Black people, and southern white people didn’t want to give their housekeepers the minimum wage.

Every time the Democrats must negotiate with moderates Democrats, the Black community loses.

Martin Luther King Jr. knew this. As he wrote in the Letter from the Birmingham Jail: “I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years, I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

The Biden Administration needs to take this as a warning. Do not continue to sell out the Black community.

Playing politics with this issue is not worth it. There is another important election coming up next year, and Biden is going to need the Black community even more than before; if Biden continues to send Kamala Harris out there to say things like “America is not a racist country,” the democrats will lose the Black community, particularly the young Black activist community and if that happens the Republicans will win back the Congress and the presidency once again.

Ending Qualified Immunity is a matter of life and death for the Black community.

PART 3 OF 3

This is the third article in this series about Tim Scott. The first article was titled, “Tim Scott is No Uncle Tom.” The second article was titled, “A Man Still on Fire.”

This article was originally titled, “Tim Scott Simply Hates Black People, But He Is Not the Only One.” It is now called, “Ending Qualified Immunity is a Matter of Life and Death for the Black Community.”

That is an indisputable fact. Most Americans agree police reform needs to happen, but Tim Scott has ended any hope of that happening by stopping the negotiations over police reform.

Progressives in the Democratic Party want to limit or get rid of Qualified Immunity. Tim Scott and the Republicans simply walked away. Scott, some moderate, conservative Democrats, and the Republican Party want to keep Qualified Immunity for police officers. Qualified Immunity protects government officials from lawsuits.

Most people in the United States, organizations, individuals, and even the United States government do not have Qualified Immunity. Why should government officials have it?

That makes no sense, and it is killing members of the Black community.

There are those Black people and people of color who hate other Black people and other people of color so much that they would betray everything that the Black community needs and stands for.

Tim Scott is a Black politician with privilege, and his privilege will get more Black people killed. There are other Black people of privilege who hate the Black community.

These people experience social and financial gain from their positions — they have privilege even though they are not white.

People like Clarence Thomas and Daniel Cameron, to name a few.

Clarence Thomas has never voted once in favor of the Black community, and virtually every single vote he has made has harmed the Black community.

Daniel Cameron chose not to present evidence against the police in the Breanna Taylor case. He should be in jail.

Tim Scott blamed the Democrats for the failure to come up with an agreement about police reform. This is one of the most significant examples of gaslighting that has ever been attempted.

Blaming the Democrats for the failure to agree over Qualified Immunity is completely ridiculous.

Tim Scott removed Donald Trump’s policies from the negotiations, and he still tried to blame the Democrats for the breakdown. That’s gaslighting.

These people are hazardous to the Black community. Scott and people like him are in the position to help mitigate some of the most horrible crimes against the Black community, and they do nothing to stop it. They perpetuate the violence within the community and upon the community. These men are accessories to murder before and after the fact.

Here is the proof — the names of some of those who got no protection because of Qualified Immunity, since October 2009:

Victor Steen, October 3, 2009
Pensacola, Florida
Tasered/Run over: Pensacola Police Officer

Kiwane Carrington, October 9, 2009
Champaign, Illinois
Shot: Champaign Police Officer

This Country is Headed into a New Jim Crow Era

Recent social and political activities and events have convinced me that this country is headed into a new Jim Crow era. All of the signs are there.

Let me first explain where the phrase “Jim Crow” may have come from. In the 1700s, southern farmers wanted to protect their corn from flying crows so they would dip the corn in alcohol. Then the crows, upon eating it, would become drunk. The drunk crows would stagger around. Then the framer would take a Jimmy crowbar, (a term that came from England and was something that was used to force open a locked door) and beat the crows to death with it.

Some Southern white people believed that Black men behaved like staggering drunken crows who could not stay on their feet all the time. That is why they became known as Jim-Crow laws.

The evidence cannot be ignored: the US is heading into a second Jim-Crow segregation era.

The Jim Crow era started with four main events. The very first event happened in 1857 with Dred Scott, an enslaved man who wanted his freedom. His enslaver took him to the Midwest, where enslavement was illegal. Dred Scott sued for freedom and took it to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court made a decision that has impacted the Black community ever since. The Dred Scott decision stated that no Black man has any rights that a white man has to respect.

The court said that the Constitution was never meant for Black people, that Black people are not US citizens, and do not have rights and privileges that the Constitution affords white men.

The second event that impacted and created the Jim Crow era was the election of 1876, with the Republicans wanting the White House and the Democrats wanting the South. A group of white men, in a backroom of Congress, smoking cigars — decided that the Republicans would remove troops from the South permitting laws that allowed discriminatory and oppressive practices, and in exchange, the Democrats would get the presidency. The Republicans betrayed its Black constituency (who were mostly Republican at the time because of Abraham Lincoln) and turned the South over to the racist white clan which was the Democratic party at the time. This is where, when Republicans say it was a Republican that freed the enslaved, I often reply, it was Republicans that threw the Black community into the Jim Crow era.

On January 6, 2021, when Republicans attempted to overturn and not certify the election results, they were basically trying to repeat that backroom deal. Ted Cruz even mentioned that election as a solution.

The third event that took place during the Jim Crow era was the lie that the slave amendments would help the Black community. The first part of the 13th amendment was devastating to Black women as it left Black women out as full citizens in the Constitution. The second half of the 13th amendment allowed for de facto slavery as Southern white democrats wanted to be able to re-enslave Black men by imprisoning them. They wrote, as part of the amendment, that if you lost your freedom due to a crime you have lost your right to be paid for your own labor. This practice remains today.

The fourth event was the Supreme Court decision Plessy V Ferguson in 1896 — a decision that solidified the constitutionality of segregation by allowing states to ignore the equal protection laws for Black people.

Those four main events, happening over decades, devastated the Black community.

Those four events are reoccurring right now. The Supreme Court over the last 10 years has made two devastating decisions that are destroying the Black community and basically has said that no Black person has any rights that a white person has to respect.

The first decision was in 2010 when the Supreme Court decided that businesses are people too. “Corporate personhood” allowed businesses to pour money into Republican parties to defeat any and every Black candidate they could. It allowed them to not have to admit that they put money into these political races, and it allowed them to create state legislatures and laws that benefit their business over the bodies of Black people. They created laws through an organization called American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — a legislative organization that passed laws like concealed carry and stand your ground.

The second recent decision of the Supreme Court took the life out of the Voting Rights Act when it gutted Section 4b from the Act. This was equivalent to the election of 1876. The Supreme Court turned the Voting Rights Act over to the Southern states and the Southern states are now doing, once again, what they did in the 1800s by creating laws that disenfranchise Black people.

Once they changed or destroyed the Voting Rights Act, Southern states started putting in draconian laws that will suck the lifeblood out of the Black community. The Republican Party has once again betrayed the Black community. Moderate Democrats have once again betrayed the Black community. Individuals like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin who continue to support their white Republican friends versus supporting the Democrats are setting up the second Jim Crow. They can be directly blamed for this new Jim Crow.

While Southern states are enacting voting rights laws that are absolutely similar to and even sound like the laws from the 1800s that prevented Black people from voting — even calling it the “purity of the ballot box” which comes right out of the 1800s.

The Black community is in great danger.

All the signs are there. We are headed into a deeper, more racist segregated country. Black people are already second-class citizens in areas like income inequality, heath care, and housing inequality, to mention just a few.

The patterns have repeated themselves. In the 1800s, there were some Black people who supported these segregation laws. There were Black people who supported eugenics laws and who supported the efforts to keep other Black people enslaved.

In the 1800s, there was a Black man who would dig up the graves of the enslaved and send the bones to white medical students. In 2021, in Philadelphia, they literally dug up the bones of Black babies from the 1980 Philadelphia MOVE bombing. The police department in Philadelphia literally bombed a Black separatist group’s apartment building, killing Black babies just like they did in Tulsa 100 years ago. Only recently has the media begun to talk about those things.

Medical students, this year alone, in Philadelphia were experimenting and learning their craft on these dead Black babies, just like in the 1800s.

We are headed into a new Jim Crow era. All the signs are there — except this time we can do something about it. Here are a few steps that can be taken:

Moderate white people need to stop supporting Elizabeth Chaney. She is no different than Donald Trump. A white person and a moderate Republican who still believes and supports these new laws that are sweeping the country. I do not care if it is Donald Trump or Liz Chaney — it’s the laws that are wrong, not the fight between Republicans.

The media needs to stop reporting on this stupid fight over the Republican party and start reporting more on the policies of all the Republicans. That’s the real problem.

This new Jim Crow era can be stopped if conservative Black men in the South stop supporting a racist Republican party. I am sick of seeing Black republicans on television talking about saving the Republican party. Yes, I am talking to the Black Michael Steele (I say the Black Michael Steele because there is a white Michael Steele) who talks about a racist Republican party with concern. Michael Steele that makes you a racist; that makes you hating Black people when you know the Republican party is moving forward and trying to destroy the voting rights of the Black community across the country. The only way to stop them is to stop voting for them and to leave that party and its policies altogether. The longer you stay, the more you resemble Clarence Thomas. Right now, there is no difference between you and him.

These laws can be stopped if moderate and independent people, great people, Republican people vote Democrat and vote these other people out of office.

The only way to stop this new Jim Crow era is to:

· End the filibuster now.

· Keep the democrats in the White House.

· Give the Senate and the House of Representatives to the Democrats.

That is the only way. There is no middle ground. You cannot be Republican and say you respect voting rights. The line has been drawn.

The Supreme Court simply has allowed this racism and new segregation era to re-ignite, but it can be stopped.

These new voting laws are trying to stop the Black vote, every law that has been passed basically states that no Black person has any voting rights that a white person has to respect. Some of these states have even passed laws that say judges can overturn legitimate elections. That’s why the Senate passes so many conservative judges — not just Roe V Wade. They can now steal elections. Mitch McConnell ended the filibuster for approving all the judges. They can do it to end the new Jim Crow Laws. It is time for good people of all races, creeds, and colors to truly stand up and vote these racist people out of office.

We can and must stop the new Jim Crow now before it gets worse.

In Loving Memory of My Hero

Originally published August 18, 2021.

I am a hospital chaplain. I have seen a lot of death in my job. Covid brought an unimaginable level of horror and death. I saw people as young as eight to over eighty suffer and die. There are times when I think that I will never recover from the toll of all those deaths. In 2019, right before Covid, I was visiting a patient in the ICU, and this patient looked at me and said, “I know you from somewhere.” I said, “I’m sorry. You don’t know me.” I thought he was hallucinating. He said again, “I know you. You are a good guy. We had a lot of laughs together. How is the factory?” I said, “I’m sorry I’ve never worked in a factory my entire life.” A couple of days later, he became coherent. He was sitting up, and he looked at me again, and he said, “You look really familiar to me.” I said, “What do you do for a living?” He said, “For years, I worked at Halls Book Company.” A light went off in my head, “I’m sorry, I might owe you an apology. You might be confusing me with one of my brothers. My brother Clarence worked at Halls Book Company.” “No,” he said, “I don’t know a Clarence.” I said, “My father worked at Halls Book Company, but you’re probably too young to have known my father.” I said, “My brother Robert.” He said, “Ah, Robert, yeah. Robert is a great guy. He was the life of the party. We had some great times together.” I called my brother Robert, put him on the phone as the patient asked me to, and they had a wonderful conversation remembering their good times at Halls Book Company.

He was right; my brother was always the joy of the party everywhere we went. He truly is my hero and the joy and light for others. Robert taught me that heroes come in all shapes and sizes; they come from all walks of life, races, colors, and creeds. Heroes are important. They help us to understand our direction in life. They make us feel good about ourselves, about the world around us, about what we think and how we think. They help us to set goals and objectives, and they allow us to find our way in a world filled with discomfort, pain, suffering, and sorrow. That’s why having a hero is so essential.

One of my earliest memories is that, believe it or not, as a two years old, my oldest brother took me to visit our mother’s aunt. She lived in a project building on State Street on the south side of Chicago. In those days, the elevators were not sophisticated. They did not have sensors in them; they did not open and close if you stood in front of the door. I was standing in this elevator with my oldest brother, Robert. An alarm went off. A light started flashing. I was frightened. Robert had enormous hands. You can imagine, if he were to slap you five, your hands would hurt for weeks. Robert had to hold the door open so we would not be stuck in there for hours. With his left hand holding the door open, he reached down with his right hand, grabbed me, and threw me out of the elevator. I thought he was God. Robert will always be the strongest, kindest, most compassionate person I have ever met.

You know how you go to a funeral, and people stand around and talk about how wonderful the person was, and everybody’s crying and upset. And then, later on, you meet somebody that says these people didn’t even like her or these people didn’t know him, or why are these people so upset? Or you go to a funeral, and there are deep dark secrets that everybody’s holding. The tension can be cut with a knife. Or there are unresolved issues that the family has never really dealt with. None of this is the case for my brother Robert.

If you have not gotten it by this point, you should know that my hero, Superman, the person I admired more than anybody else on the planet, recently passed away. I am not sad, but I will miss him. I will always love him, and I know he will always love me.

Robert is the kind of guy who took care of other people. Once a month for the last two years, he would call me to go and pick up supplies for another friend in their senior living building. That friend was feeding the building, so my brother paid for those supplies. On one trip, a young woman came up to me and said, “Hey, Robert is like my dad,” and Robert hugged her and smiled. He turned to this young woman and pointed to me, and said, “I want you to meet my baby. This is my child.”

Robert always saw me like his baby. Even though I’m approaching 60, he still viewed me as his child, despite having two children of his own. I cry for them. I feel sad for them. I weep for them and my other siblings. I know that I was not unique in my family, but Robert made me feel like I was.

Everybody was Robert’s best friend. There is not one single person I have ever known or ever met who had anything bad to say about Robert. He indeed was one of the happiest, kindest, most excellent individuals I will ever have the pleasure of knowing and having as a part of my life.

I’m sorry if you did not get to meet my brother. I’m sorry if you did not get to see his smile, hear his pleasant laugh, and see his ever-ever-optimistic point of view. I’m sorry there are not more people just like my brother Robert who saw hope in everything, believed in everyone, and loved incessantly. There is no exaggeration here, no hyperbole, no pain on my part. I will miss him. There is sadness, but I get to live in the joy of knowing that I knew one of the greatest joys that God has ever created, who is my hero, my brother, my loved one.

I will not be sad for long because every time that sadness tries to come over me, I will remember the joy and love that he gave me. It also helps that my youngest child, my daughter, was born on the same day as her uncle Robert.

I say to my family and to those who lost someone during this horrible Covid time, when you feel sad and cry, try to remember the good times that your loved ones brought to you.

I say to you: heroes don’t die. They live on in our memories and our lives forever. I hope you all have a hero as I did.