THE COMPLEXITIES OF UNCLE TOM

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Mr. Hessler's article in your March 24 issue begins with a verse or song that contains the following lines:

You either are a freedom fighter

Or a "tom" for Sheriff Clark.

It is likely that these lines were simply reported rather than endorsed. In any case, they express a most unjust assertion which would not be made so confidently by any but the young of any race.

Is it fair to call a man a "tom" because he is, say, a sixty-year-old Negro who is obliged to earn a living in Alabama? Many Negro men and women, born too early in the South, are in such a position. No Northerner, white or black, has the right to level such an epithet at these people, or even to give it ambiguous approval, after returning to his own state. Moreover, it is doubtful that an Alabama Negro of twenty has the right to level it at one of sixty-five.

A person's age, like his race, is something that he cannot choose. Need the supporters of the civil rights movement assume, with the general, that every war must have its casualties? Shall we then take it upon ourselves to designate these unfortunates? Can we be sure that such an attitude and action would be fair, let alone consistent with the ambitious morality of principle? Alan J. Berman   GSAS