America Magazine

WHY ‘FEELING RIGHT’ ON RACE IS NOT—AND NEVER HAS BEEN—ENOUGH. Almost 170 years ago, Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped to propel many progressive, elite white women toward abolitionist sympathies. When President Abraham Lincoln, as is alleged, greeted the novel’s author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, as “the little lady that started this big war,” the description was mostly hyperbole. … In 1862 (she) Stowe made feeling right on race easy, righteous and comfortable, all at once. We face the same trap today.