Commentary
“Uncle Tom II”—the new film by Executive Producer Larry Elder and Director Justin Malone—opens with a shot of Chad Jackson (proprietor of Chad O. Jackson Plumbing) preparing a plumbing site with an excavator. It’s a beautifully photographed scene of an intensely focused young man operating a complex machine in order to build something.
His attention is directed at the act of constructive work, and as Jackson (who happens to be a black man) makes clear, his plumbing enterprise has given him a strong sense of self—as a prosperous business owner and dignified free citizen of the United States. As the film unfolds, the viewer realizes that his life and work are an undeniable refutation of the definition of black Americans as “victims” of “systemic racism.”…