Well according to Uncle Ruckus he was once a beautiful white boy but he got the dreaded disease Revitaligo and turned black.
And Uncle Tom wasn’t a kowtowing subservient character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, either. In fact, just the opposite – a proud and principled man who would undergo suffering before giving in.
It was the de-evolution of the character in stage adaptations over the decades following the Civil War (to make the play acceptable to white audiences, it’s claimed) that turned him into the eager-to-please spineless character that gave rise to the stereotype of the “Uncle Tom”
I suspect the OP really had something like Uncle Tom in mind. I haven’t seen the cartoon of Boondocks, so I don’t know if Uncle Ruckus is really like that.
As for Uncle Remus, he was the Wise Old Storyteller who’d tell stories to white and black alike (“Uncle”, by the way, was the form of address used by whites to older blacks, even before the Civil War. It sounds respectful, but, at best, it still classified blacks as “other”. You didn’t call older white guys “Uncle” unless they were relatives) Despite all the hoopla about Disney’s Song of the South, it claims to depict post-Civil War society, but the depiction of blacks and racial relations still looks too uncomfortably like “whitewashed” stereotypes for comfort.
The show does have a character named Tom DuBois who kind of riffs on the “black guy acceptable to white audiences.” He’s not portrayed as a bad person, though.
Sorry, but I am confused about the ethnicities of the people in the OP’s story. Is everyone in the story black, or is one of them not black?
Grude is WASP. Woman is black. Son is biracial (grude’s wife is black).
Trinidad is roughly 40% black, 40% east Asian (mostly from India proper), and 20% others/mixed/mutts. Proportion of the last one may be getting higher with each year and generation.
Blacks and Indians may have the same skin color, but darn it do they discriminate, disparage, and carry a lot of racial issues with each other.
But other than hurricanes, the weather is good. Then there are the mosquitoes.
Yea this pretty much captures it.
Sorry about the typos in the OP and lack of replies, I have been very busy and sleep deprived lately.
Everyone assumes he is a brat, and a white brat to boot. Unless I tell them he has autism, then they don’t want to touch him because you know all diseases are caused by jumbies. And you’ll catch it by touching him, or your kids will catch it.
Well, judge for yourself what Uncle Ruckus is like…
Well I’m not so WASP, I was recently for the second time mistaken for a Venezuelan?(second person even said I had the accent huh?) and once a man walked up to me and my wife and asked if I was middle eastern. We have a private joke about that, hey are you middle eastern? heh.
But oh yeah, this country is very race and class conscious. I stopped posting on a local forum after a high post count poster made fun of a child hit and killed by a car by saying she was nasty cuz she sucked her thumb even in death.(victims and suspect where all black) And use of dog whistle code words like “sufferers”. And on the other side there are radio stations advertising stuff like the black caucus which ask for donations to build black owned grocery stores and other merchants and such.
“Dog whistle code words”
What does this mean?
If you find it such a clearly damaging environment for your child, (and you seem to be at odds with the culture at every turn), why are you raising your autistic son there?
Did you challenge this vile woman’s words, at the time? Or just let them ring in your child’s ears? Or perhaps, say nothing to her, but rage away to him/anyone that would listen afterward?
And if you’re not about to change locations, (for whatever reason that could trump your disabled son’s well being and future) how is he supposed to feel at ease in a culture you spend so much time at odds with? Or are you trying to ensure he never feels like he fits in?