The Controversial History of Uncle Remus

[@tiffanyleblanc]

Ok. I’m a white girl from the south. And my Daddy loved these stories and told them to me all the time growing up. They’re stories meant to entertain. I love folk stories from all walks of life. They give you a view of how people lived and it makes the past more real for me.

[@mendbetz]

I’m glad I bumped into your video. It helps me understand the literature better before reading it. I just got The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus print from my library’s bookstore for 25 cents! I picked it up because I liked the illustrations on the cover. As I flipped through it when I got home I was like, hold on, let me get familiar with what I just picked up. I’m glad to hear that it is a book filled with tales that look back in time! Im excited to read it for sure. Thank you for the info.

[@RussellRobinson971]

It would have been a great disservice for these stories to die with those storytellers. Doesn't matter who recorded them, even though you must understand the time and place from which they were recorded. One thing I don't understand, how so many people can reject a reality that existed, that has absolutely no bearing on their lives. It happened, it changed, things are much better now. There's nothing wrong with learning about life that existed back then, presented in the manner that it was.

[@paulaharrisbaca4851]

Are they that much better now? Visit any blue city where African-Americans are allowed to "let off steam" as though they were angry toddlers instead of treating them like adults....the people I am aware of whose parents actually lived through the Jim Crow era said that there wasn't this hostility between the races. I visited my relatives in Georgia as a little girl 2 years after the welfare programs were started and it was still a pleasant and nice place, blacks and whites got along, there was no hostility. Only 15 years later bullet proof glass was popping up in stores, and still later, in 2002, it felt like my uncle's house was an armed encampment, they'd been broken into so much that they had to board up the entire bottom floor of the house and cut all the lower branches of their trees. It was shocking. The Democrats ruined things, oddly.

[@OlversEars]

Thank you. I just recently watched an interview which had "Uncle Rhemus" used as a pejorative. I didn't understand. The interview was likely 50/60 years ago, so the context was far more topical than now in 2023, and with our current sensitivities, and denial of our past, may no longer be used as such. Found your vid while researching. I need to find these stories now. Again, thank you.

[@gijane02]

I'm African-American and I had forgotten about this book I can vaguely remember one story. I'll have to get it before it gets cancelled and put on ebay for an astronomical price like the recent Dr. Seuss books! I feel that if a person has a genuine interest in presenting their research of any culture in a respectful and thoughtful way, then what does it matter what they look like? I have a book about black people in the West and it was written by a white man. It was well researched with very hard to find photos of that time. He could have been Asian, so what? If no one else will tell the stories, or diligently look for the true history of our world that's been buried, then how will each generation know the truth? I am SO SICK of the state of our country and as a Christian, I truly believe only Jesus can heal us.

[@ourhouse]

Amen

[@tiffanyleblanc]

Amen as well!

[@Loyale1229]

👀

[@ahmedmacktume2803]

It's amazing because I found such a book when I suddenly noticed a signature of Joelle Harris Chandler inside the book... Then I noticed the same signature was on the front of the hardcover... So I have a Uncle Remus.. Book with two signatures as well as a third signature inside I can't make out the name... I do want to keep it the offers are welcome.

[@nightowl5475]

It just goes to show you, passing down children’s fables like this book only gives children wonder in story-telling. People want to erase the past, but that’s part of us. We can’t erase the past. I remember seeing this in the movie theatre years ago. Look at kids today. They don’t have any clue of their heritage. It’s worth holding on to these stories.

[@ourhouse]

Agree!

[@mslibertyh]

It sparked me to look up on youtube slave stories. There are hours of recorded personal accounts of peoples' experiences being slaves and after the emancipation proclamation was enacted, how their lives were affected.

[@itsme_mrsdoe]

As an African American, I appreciate that there is a written perspective of the lives of enslaved persons. I have never heard of Uncle Remus and unfortunately, the inter-generational trauma of slavery and systemic ongoing racism and discrimination has contributed to a lot of our elders going silent. I look forward to reading the Uncle Remus stories and am curious if I’ll need to reframe them for my daughter as I do so. Thanks for sharing!

[@ourhouse]

Yes, please let me what you think of them. I can definitely understand the complexities but like you and another subscriber wrote on the original video, it’s the stories that are written down that get passed down and we can at least appreciate that aspect. Thank you for sharing!

[@LampWaters]

We are a mixed family and these books are coming up in our list and I was also thinking about getting some other books like one race one blood by Ken ham and we just went through the westward expansion in some other reading too. I appreciate the review before I get into the books.

[@MultiPetercool]

Uncle Remus is the African American Aesop. His wisdom and fables are important. Too bad Harris got slagged over it all.

[@rebeccainspiringhope4357]

I have this book and it was passed from my husband’s grandfather. I will read it to my sons when they are a little older. I’ve never read it..

[@ourhouse]

Wow, I love it when books are passed down like that! It’s very rare today.

[@bbtfan4617]

I saw Song of the South, and my impression of Uncle Remus was he was a kindly gentle man full of folksy wisdom and loved children, as well as being a great storyteller. How was that a negative portrayal?

[@LampWaters]

My family has a mix of ethnicities and family stories but we don't know alot about everyone's family history and that's harder to come by, so having some documentation of the stories are important, not every family is the same or shares the stories or even learned them. When I originally asked my husband what kind of history and folklore would he want the children to learn and I told him I'm happy to share any with them and this type of stories but my husband isn't familiar with them himself and he said just teach some native American folklore and and american folklore because we are just americans.

[@Dnightshade100]

The only depiction I ever heard about the stories of uncle Remus was through the movie song of the south. Before that I never even heard of it. And now I’m glad that this Joel Chandler Harris collected and got these stories published. Cause if he didn’t, these stories would have died out, never to be heard again and Disney wouldn’t have helped keep these stories alive by making a movie about it. I don’t understand why anyone would want these stories to be forgotten.

[@crystalmanteuffel8858]

I am happy these stories were preserved in books, even if written down by a white man, because they allow descendants to hear stories from their ancestors who couldn't write them down themselves. The dialect actually isn't as hard for me because it actually seems very similar to the way my grandmother spoke who was raised in rural Appalachia. There are still a lot of people living in remote areas of the mountains that haven't moved as far away from that culture as most assume. I am glad there are books that I can share with my children of very similar stories to what I heard growing up.

[@ourhouse]

Thank you for sharing!

[@edmccray212]

When I read them I sometimes need to read them aloud to understand them but when I do it's like Uncle Remus lives again.

[@paulaharrisbaca4851]

My father is named after Joel Chandler Harris. Just thought I'd throw that in. He was born in 1921. I have no idea why these very pro-American culture and the black American stories which were copied down by a man who was thoughtful enough to record African-American folklore for people who cannot read nor write for themselves....(if no one had written down the stories for Walker's people they would be totally vanished now, replaced by chants and rants about "guns, drugs, money and b*tches".

[@michelleg2880]

I think a lot has to do with television and movies. Unless parents are deliberately seeking out these older stories, books etc they are lost. I think it is great that they are written down so we have a way to preserve them because I think in this burger king society people don’t tell stories because they just flip on the tv instead.

[@ourhouse]

Very true!

[@rustyshackleford1733]

I can’t speak from any perspective but from my own, and it seems like if the writing was done out of respect and praise and maybe awe of a different culture, that seems like something that should be seen in a positive light I would hope. I get it also that people have strong feelings and for good reason but it’s hard to come together when you put the atrocities one person has committed and place it on others who may be of the same skin color but are as horrified of those things from the past as they are. You don’t want to forget the past because you want to learn from it, but you also want to move forward. I really wonder how the people who the stories originally came from feel and what they might say about it all. Thank you for the video, I haven’t grown up with these stories but I’m sure they’re full of insight and perspective.

[@ourhouse]

Thank you for watching and sharing your thoughts.

[@Loyale1229]

I think it would have been better if a Black person had written it. There were black authors back in the 1800s (ex William Wells Brown, Frederick Douglass, Frances E.W. Harper, Harriet Jacobs, David Walker, and Ida B. Wells) who would’ve been able to write the stories down IF that was something they wanted to do. This just seems to be another example on how another race/culture can take someone else’s culture/ideas and profit off of it. All mentions of the book credits Harris as the ‘creator’. Disney paid him close to the equivalent of $210,000 for the rights (not including the money he made from publication on his own). From my perspective, this book is a slap in the face to Black southerners who prided themselves in tradition. They’ve passed down these stories generation after generation, orally, with no issues. It would be safe to assume that putting the stories in books was not done for the benefit of Black people but for critical acclaim and monetary gain. I only see white people profiting from this (I am 100% positive Harris did not share his earnings with the people that provided the stories to him). I think it’s offensive and a slap in the face to the Black southern ancestors. This should have remained an oral tradition within the community but instead the stories were gathered like infinity stones then tweaked by Harris, a white man, and sold to the highest bidder, a white corporation. That’s my honest opinion! Thanks so much 🙏🏾 (I apologize, in advance, if there are any grammatical errors as I am typing this out on my phone)

[@adelarosa5563]

I 100% agree.

[@rebeccafincher7415]

As a linguistic research intern after college, I had the opportunity to participate in recording the stories of indigenous people in South America. As the world continues to modernize and industrialize, traditional stories that are are not recorded do tend to get lost and cease to be passed down. Would we still know all the favorite European fairy tales like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty if the Grimm brothers had not written them down? Probably not. Susan Wise Bauer (of The Well trained Mind) recommends that elementary children read many myths and folktales from many cultures, because these stories convey the values that make us truly human, and by reading across cultural lines, we find the threads of our common humanity. The Brer Rabbit stories directly descend from African "trickster" tales, in which a smaller, weaker animal character defeats a stronger one through cunning or cleverness. I've heard some people take issue with the "tar baby" story. Far from being a blackface-type mockery of African Americans, the tar baby originated within African American culture, and simply represents a sticky situation that entraps you further the more you fight with it. For those who find the dialect difficult in Joel Chandler Harris' book, Julius Lester, the black folklorist and professor mentioned in the video, has written a version that is much easier to read but still faithful to the original. His introduction is well worth reading too.

[@ourhouse]

Great comment to read, thank you! I also read the Tar Baby story and couldn't understand what the problem was. They are very good lessons.

[@daughtersofjacob1014]

@Rebecca Fincher and @Our House, whilst I totally agree that the origin of "tar baby" orginates in African Folklore and simply means 'a sticky situation' over time meanings can be altered from the original. An example would a word that simply means happy like gay but in modern times has taken on new meaning even though it still holds its original meaning, and in modern times there are no doubt young people who have never been exposed to the origin meaning and only know it in its' current form. Thus new meaning can override the original. I'm a black British person and I am familar with both usages for the term "tar baby" and from the 1800s until the 1940s in was commonly used to refer to a difficult problem that is only aggravated by attempts to solve it, alluding to the Uncle Remus story. However, by the 1940s, xenophobes chose to use it to demean black people altering its meaning from an innocent one to a derogatory slur and with the Uncle Remus stories largely being lost to later generations the slur meaning is more commonplace to the many black people who are not familiar with the original meaning. Further, The Oxford English Dictionary mentions "tar baby" as meaning, "a contemptuous term for a black person", and the subscription version also mentions it as "a derogatory term for a Black (U.S.) or a Maori (N.Z.)". Interestingly, we in the UK are told it's a US slur but its omitted from the American version. Another meaning of "tar baby" is in a derogatory sexual context. It has been used by xenophobes to describe a sexual interaction with a black man or women. Two examples that come to mind are: 1. In the book Coup by John Updike he says of a white woman who prefers the company of black men, "some questing chromosome within holds her sexually fast to the tar baby." and 2. In the film Django, Leonardo DiCaprio's character Calvin Candie refers to intimate relations with his black slave woman in the following terms: "[n slur redacted] love's a powerful emotion, boy. It's like a pool of black tar. Once it catches your ass, your caught." So I believe that's why some believe it be a slur because they are not familar with the original meaning and conversely why some think it's not a slur because they are not familar with the way it was used as a pejorative. The reality is it's both. Here are examples of other words that have changed meaning overtime (its quite a common occurence in language): www.google.com/amp/s/theculturetrip.com/europe/articles/10-english-words-that-have-completely-changed-meaning/%3famp=1

[@rebeccafincher7415]

@@daughtersofjacob1014 Thank you for sharing this. I have actually never heard that in actual usage before.

[@searchthescripturesdaily]

Cinderella isn't European. I have a version that says it descended from a story from Egypt.

[@kubakola]

I love uncle Remus and that is that.

[@Kodachrome40]

I just finished reading this book and I had trouble understanding the broken English that Uncle Remus spoke in. I had to go back and reread paragraphs and still didn't understand some of it. Do you know of a translated version of the book.

[@Loyale1229]

I couldn’t read it at all because the dialect was off putting and confusing to me 🥴. Unfortunately there isn’t a translation.

[@mslibertyh]

After hearing my daughter reading this outloud to me, i was totally googling this yesterday 😂 are you spying on me 😂😂😂

[@ourhouse]

How funny!

[@socotroquito2007]

They are erasing the African American heritage in the service of political correction , because the slang? Next in the list is all Of Spike Lee’s movies?

[@muffemod]

Dis sho' am good.

[@mslibertyh]

I dont think it matters if a black or white person wrote it. If its accurate and not demeaning, that's what matters. I think that story-telling has been left off due to technology. It used to be a form of entertainment when there was no tv or radio. Culture gets diluted with each passing generation unless a diligent effort is made to preserve it. I like the Uncle Remus because even tho it depicts the main character with poor grammar, he is very clever and full of common sense which is severely lacking in this generation.

[@ourhouse]

I didn't even think about that connection with technology, so true!!

[@jimjab3631]

More reason to buy controversial books.

[@adelarosa5563]

Nephritis… is pronounced Neph-rye-tis. Not Neph-ra-tease.

[@marcusstone5835]

I'm sure Disney understands the ramifications of the "Song of The South" movie. Wasn't the name Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby.. this is why it has never been released on video or stream. It doesn't matter who made these stories up. Slavery was biggest stain in American history period. These stories do not empower blacks/African Americans. Why can't the children in elementary schools learn about great inventors like Garrett Morgan who invented the three light traffic light or George Washington Carver who invented peanut butter. These things all kids can relate to. Let kids of all nationalities know how black people contributed to this world. Not just stories that made up during the slavery era. In my opinion there was nothing great about the south for black people back then and the stories that they shared with one another should remain that way.

[@tiffanyleblanc]

Folk stories are a part of history too. They’re important for all.