Uncle Tom takes a different look at being black in America. Uncle Tom examines self-empowerment, individualism and rejecting the victim narrative. It shows a different perspective of American History from the often ignored and ridiculed Black Conservative group.
The documentary features interviews with some of America's most provocative black conservative thinkers in the United States, such as: Larry Elder, Robert L. Woodson, Stephen Broden, Jesse Lee Peterson, Herman Cain, Carol M. Swain, Allen West, Chad O. Jackson and Candace Owens, as well as archive footage of people like Ben Carson, Shelby Steele, and Thomas Sowell. They question how the black population have been treated by the political establishment as well as consequences of the policies introduced specifically by the Democratic party. The War on poverty legislation launched in the 1960s is in particular questioned and criticized, and is summarized by Elder with:
"And what the welfare state has done, in my opinion, is incentivize Black women to marry the government, and allow men to abandon their financial and moral responsibilities to their families. We’ve gone from 25% of Black kids born outside wedlock in 1965, to nearly 70% now. You cannot attribute that to Jim Crow and racism. It has to do with bad government policy." — Larry Elder
One of the main issues the documentary problematizes is the lack of respectful disagreement in black community, as well as why black thinkers like Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Shelby Steele are in large ignored or marginalized, and remain unknown to large parts of the black population despite decades-long bodies of work in academia, writing books and columns and speeches.
The film title references Uncle Tom, the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which today is used as a derogatory term for black people, as demonstrated in the documentary by how black conservatives experience being called terms like "race traitor", "house negro", sellout, "boot licker", coon, "Uncle Ruckus", and "Uncle Tom" by political adversaries.
In the documentary, Larry Elder describes "Uncle Tom" as:
"An Uncle Tom is somebody who has sold out by embracing the white man, by becoming a Republican, by rejecting the idea that you’re a victim, by supporting things like hard work, accountability, and low taxes, by refusing to think of yourself as a black person first as opposed to as an American who is black." — Larry Elder
Uncle Tom is an eye-opening documentary that helps educate Americans on Conservative thoughts in an understandable and empowering format.
