Hollis Robbins: belief

Transcript context

…Is the portrayal of Uncle Tom in the novel in fact racist, as is sometimes alleged? Well, Uncle Tom is the racial epithet and has been almost from the beginning of the novel. I don’t think he’s racist. I think he is a character who works within his belief system as a character and does not fight back. He’s an avatar of nonviolence. Certainly, if you’re going to say that nonviolence and those who espouse it are racist, then you’re going to have a little bit of trouble thinking about where to put Martin Luther King. Why does she have this one novel that’s so wonderful and so famous and so full of life just falling off of the page, and then none of her other novels are read at all anymore?…

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