Hacker Cinema
Uncle Tom
2020 · Film · documentary · 106 min
Directed by Justin Malone
In a collection of intimate interviews with some of America's most provocative black conservative thinkers, Uncle Tom takes a different look at being black in America.
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In the spirit of the Juneteenth last Sunday, as a first generation Chinese immigrant from Mainland China, with firsthand experience and struggle with group identity and victimhood in both China and North America, I would like to share this great movie, "Uncle Tom", to remind us of what makes America America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVLj-zARCv8
The documentary Uncle Tom talks about the active work the press and educational circles do to suppress Thomas Sowell's work. His data-driven research and conclusions counter leftist educational and media institutions, and those institutions see Sowell as a threat to their power base. In other words, follow the money.
Truly a shame...
Larry Elder's recent documentary "Uncle Tom" explores this same phenomenon from the Black conservative point of view.
> The blame for the situation lies squarely at the feet of the federal government
It's more complex than that. The UK is keeping things stable/frozen, but with nothing being produced, the value of their money is shifting.
You cannot keep paying people to do nothing. You have people in jobs where they are still employed, saving tons (because there's nothing to spend it on) and record buying of future e-waste (Going back to the 2000s, PS3 prices were back to normal two weeks before x-mas Christmas. PS5s are still $1000+ on eBay), and the income inequality is growing between those who happen to be in safe industries and those who weren't .. and it's arbitrary. Nothing has changed for the manager at a Wal-Mart, or a UPS driver or an engineer, but it has for the restaurant manager or someone who owns a small corner store in California.
The completely arbitrary and almost random lock-down decisions have crushed all small business, giving over their entire customer bases to large big box stores.
The people with their small businesses don't want handouts. They'll take it sure, but they want to work. Some have shifted and found new creative ways to make money. That's the nature of capitalism. You do what you have to, within the limits we've evolved over the past 100 years (no more child labor; pure capitalism without regulation is bad), to offer goods and services people want. But many are struggling.
In contrast, the earlier larger unemployment payments provided a perverse incentive to keep people from returning to jobs that had reopened. Lowering them a bit has helped those return to jobs that were there, but it's been devastating to those who have nothing to go back to.
We cannot just inject money. Social welfare has been a disaster in many respect. Only only need to watch modern documentary that break the bubble: "What Killed Michael Brown" and "Uncle Tom" to see how the perverse incentives from badly constructed government systems actually hurt a lot of low income communities and destroyed families.
There is a lot of talk about "A great reset," used in many countries to indicate a global agenda to fundamentally change economic models. Make no mistake, people at the top with influence are not going to give up or redistribute their wealth. Bezos, Gates and others at the top will hold on to their wealth. But reconstruction could destroy people under a certain income threshold if it's not done correctly.
People need merit and value, and the draconian COVID regulations have removed personal agency from the masses.
> He starts by noting that white men and black men are killed by police at around the same rate. This is, again true. But this means that Black people are killed at around 5 times the rate of White people. > These racial differences show more police violence towards minorities.
Naturally. Don't you think it's completely logical that people who also commit far mor crimes, also get into far more tussles with the police? Probably find a way for your community to become more law abiding and peaceful, and this will stop being an issue all by itself!
One way to do it, is to ask for policies that open up for more social community work, where the first responder to economical, drug related or abusive behaviour stops being the police, but rather a social worker, or some other community representative. It's just a suggestion. Should be right down your lane since you are a left winger!
If you can get democratic traction for something like this, which is far more fruitful than playin the blame game, I think it would help crime go down greatly. It's basically what is done in my own country, and while the system isn't perfect, it's preferable to storming communities with police all the time; a thing that naturally causes some legitimate outrage, though it's not necessarily due to racism.
This way of doing things isn't free, however—and let's face it, Norway is filthy rich—so you can assume there will be pushback on how it should be funded, especially from the Right. Then there's the fact that Norway is a far smaller and more close-knit society in general. But then so are most ethnicly homogeneous neighbourhoods. I still think it's an idea to at least explore. And I also think these ideas are far more preferable to the Right than tearing down statues.
> Elder then notes that police forces can be diverse, which is true but ultimately a distraction.
No, it's not. I means there's a far less chance that the police are racist.
> He mentions the NYPD as an example of a highly diverse police force, but neglects to mention that the NYPD's Stop and Frisk policy was so problematic that it was deemed unconstitutional due to its discriminatory nature[4].
Dude, what has the obviously political and administrative policy of "stop and frisk" to do with the racial composition of NY cops? I'll tell you: Nothing! They'd have to carry out that policy whether they were all black, all white, or diverse to the point of employing martians!
Either way, don't you think it's a little unfair to try to pin political policies on the police force? In fact, then Mayor Bloomberg (D) had the power to stop the frisking policy in New York at any point, but instead he chose to defended it.[1] And for good reason, because AFAIK it was wildly successful, and made New York a lot safer for most people.
> He then mentions that the Police-Public contact survey shows no evidence of police abuse against black people, but the Fryer paper Elder cites manages to reach the opposite conclusion: that based on the Police-Public contact survey, there is statistically significant evidence of greater police use of force against minority populations, even when controlling for a number of factors.
That's because there is no opposite here... Abuse ≠ Legitimate use of force.
> He then mentions his movie, Uncle Tom, which contains a number of "conservative thinkers", who are mostly pundits. It contains no academic experts.
Of course. All academic experts of the Right are just pundits. I get it...
> [It] ignores the Southern Strategy[5], an explicit Republican strategy to gain support in the south by appealing to white fears about race in the wake of the civil rights movement. 13th goes into detail on this.
Were these fears unfounded then? Obviously the numbers show that blacks do indeed kill far more whites than whites kill blacks, both per capita and in pure numbers. Again, facts, not claims. Do you think that shouldn't be a cause for consern? Man, lives are literally at stake!
You're making a lot of (intentional or not) dogwhistles. So let's dive in to a few of them:
> Blacks kill more blacks than any other race or ethinicity.[1] Blacks also kill more whites, than whites kill blacks in pure numbers.
Indeed, let's rephrase this: races in the US continue to be relatively segregated[0]. And crimes, even violent ones, are usually committed within-community. So the meme around "black on black violence" is a bit of a distraction unless you also are concerned about "white on white" violence. And if you are, organizations like stop the violence[1] do exist to address specifically violence within the black community.
So you start by stating true, but ultimately misleading claims that are often used to justify racial prejudice.
Then, you justify this opinion with two videos from black people. Neither Larry Elder nor Denzel Washington is an expert on incarceration or the US justice system. Larry Elder, in fact, is a right wing political pundit, so his income relies on his viewership. This calls into question his reliability. I'd suggest you watch the documentary 13th[2] or read up on these issues from actual experts.
But I'll spend some time breaking down his video:
He starts by noting that white men and black men are killed by police at around the same rate. This is, again true. But this means that Black people are killed at around 5 times the rate of White people. Then he restates the whole issue of black on black crime, which we've already discussed.
He then cites a paper from Roland G. Fryer[3], which I happen to be familiar with. It concludes
> On non-lethal uses of force, there are racial differences – sometimes quite large – in police use of force, even after accounting for a large set of controls designed to account for important contextual and behavioral factors at the time of the police-civilian interaction.
These racial differences show more police violence towards minorities.
Elder then notes that police forces can be diverse, which is true but ultimately a distraction. He mentions the NYPD as an example of a highly diverse police force, but neglects to mention that the NYPD's Stop and Frisk policy was so problematic that it was deemed unconstitutional due to its discriminatory nature[4].
He then mentions that the Police-Public contact survey shows no evidence of police abuse against black people, but the Fryer paper Elder cites manages to reach the opposite conclusion: that based on the Police-Public contact survey, there is statistically significant evidence of greater police use of force against minority populations, even when controlling for a number of factors.
He then mentions his movie, Uncle Tom, which contains a number of "conservative thinkers", who are mostly pundits. It contains no academic experts. Compare to 13th, which includes interviewees from both political parties, as well as non-political subject matter experts. Uncle Tom peddles ultimately irrelevant facts, such as that the democratic party was historically in favor of slavery. This is true, but ignores the Southern Strategy[5], an explicit Republican strategy to gain support in the south by appealing to white fears about race in the wake of the civil rights movement. 13th goes into detail on this.
But you can see some of it in things like this[6] Lee Atwater quote (Atwater was a republican political strategist), where he essentially admits the racism at the core of the southern strategy, and the need to, over time, move from explicit and overt racism to more systematic changes that, while not explicitly racist, help white people at the expense of black people.
Edit: I actually forgot one thing Elder mentions, that no one cares when unarmed white people are shot by police. This isn't actually true: The Black Lives matter movement has a reasonably well documented history of raising some awareness about cases of police killing unarmed white people. For example, during BLM protests in the wake of Michael Brown's murder in 2014, Christian Roupe[11], a white kid from Georgia, was among the names of people killed by police violence mentioned at the protest. More recently, in the wake of Daniel Shaver's murder, BLM voices raised awareness[12].
Which leaves one more thing that Elder discusses: "black fathers", which is also what Denzel Washington discusses. So once again, go watch 13th, I'm basically repeating the things it says here.
In the Nixon/Reagan era, "Law and Order" politics[7] became a central issue. Most notably, the "War on Drugs". Through this, laws were passed that disproportionately keep black people in prison, notably around crack vs. powder cocaine. But even with other drugs like marijuana, where white and black people use and historically used cannabis at the same rate, but black people are 3x more likely to be arrested for cannabis use[8] even today, and as a result literally tens of thousands of young black men are in prison for things that aren't a crime.
Those disproportionate arrest rates, combined with some of those other crime laws from the "Law and Order" era mean that someone who never commits a violent crime can end up a felon or even behind bars for life. Those people are disproportionately likely to be black men, especially young black men. Young black men who should be forming families but who can't because they're being put behind bars for crimes that white people commit at equivalent rates.
That, combined with historical issues like redlining[9] and housing policies that prevented black communities from building generational wealth[10] mean that it's difficult, if not impossible, for black fathers to create stable homes. They don't have the generational wealth that white households do, not as a result of their actions, but instead due to years of explicit government policy that directly prevented their parents generation from accumulating wealth. Then, of course, they're overpoliced and sent to prison which can prevent them from doing important and economically stabilizing things like attending college, or even in some cases completing high school, and acquiring decent jobs.
And this cycle is self-reinforcing. Without the ability for the current generation to create stable households, the next generation won't have wealth to build off of and will continue to be unstable. And so the cycle will continue. That's why we call it "systemic".
Hope that helps inform you about these issues. I'm also happy to break down why some of the things you've done generally won't engender you much sympathy and will result in you being accused of "dogwhistle" racism. But I'll only dive into that rhetorical analysis if you specifically request it.
[0]: http://racialdotmap.demographics.coopercenter.org/
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_the_Violence_Movement
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8
[3]: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/empirical_analysis_tables_figures.pdf
[4]: https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/landmark-decision-judge-rules-nypd-stop-and-frisk-practices
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#%22Southern_strategy%22, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
[7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_order_(politics)
[8]: https://www.aclu.org/report/tale-two-countries-racially-targeted-arrests-era-marijuana-reform, see page 28 of the report
[9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
[10]: https://youtu.be/AGUwcs9qJXY?t=240, covers redlining and generational wealth issues, but the whole video is great and, it should be noted, is made by a Christian who I believe identifies as conservative. It overlaps a lot with 13th, but 13th covers a few more recent things about the US prison industrial complex and contains more firsthand accounts and interviews.
[11]: https://newsandletters.org/thousands-chicago-ny-ferguson-stop-killer-cops/
[12]: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/09/black-lives-matter-supporters-call-attention-graphic-video-arizona-shooting