Andrew Sullivan's thought for MLK day.

It's a good one.

"To be called an Uncle Tom is an honor. Like our foundational black thinkers, Uncle Tom is often invoked but rarely read. He is not who the Politburo says he is. He was a moral, religious man of dignity and duty who accepted his lot as a slave because he had no choice yet by his behavior transcended it. He was an ancestor of whom to be proud; how has it been overlooked that he chose torture and death rather than inform on two sexually abused female runaways? To follow the Politburo's anti-intellectual, perverse construction to its logical conclusion, blacks should have cultivated no manners, created no art, pursued no knowledge, expended only the mimimum energy at their tasks, and avoided any kindness or heroism that could not have been confined to the black community. They should have actually been subhuman." - Debra Dickerson, from her new, stimulating book, "The End of Blackness."

This sounds promising, I'm ordering a copy today.