Racism Hidden in Plain View on Inside Automotive Web Site
2024 August 17

There is no separation between the KLIF Wheels radio show and the Inside Automotive (IA) website. The radio show repeatedly airs commercials for that site during its four hours. And during the radio show, the hosts personally instruct listeners to visit the IA website for both car dealer referrals and e-mail communications. Reciprocally, the Inside Automotive website promotes the radio show and its associated dealers. In other words, Wheels owns what is on Inside Automotive and Inside Automotive owns what is on Wheels.

So if Inside Automotive pushes a racist trope, it is the Wheels radio show on KLIF that is pushing that racist trope as well. This brings us to the case of Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) Justice Clarence Thomas. When Wallace publishes an image of Justice Thomas to accompany an article link, the image’s filename occasionally invokes the racist trope by referring to Justice Thomas as “Uncle Tom”. The Oxford Reference defines the “Uncle Tom” trope as “a figure of speech used to refer to fawning, selfish black men”.

Make no mistake; IA’s usage of Uncle Tom is racist. And to bolster that position, consider the following opinion editorial published by the Washington Post:

Dear white people: Stop using the term ‘Uncle Tom’
Washington Post - November 16, 2018
[article outside of paywall]

“[…] they are using a term of derision applied almost exclusively to black people, which puts it in the same league as another word. […]

Finally, white people have no business trying to police authentic black identity.”

The Inside Automotive website frequently links to Washington Post opinion editorials. So Wallace himself places value on that publication. For others, one can consider that a broken analog clock is correct twice a day.

Inside the Metadata of InsideAutomotive.com

Metadata is “data that provides information about other data”. A filename is metadata. The name can describe the contents of the file.

Article links on the Inside Automotive (IA) news aggregation page are sometimes accompanied by an image. That image exists as separate computer file with its own name. The source of the image is sometimes taken from the linked article, but not always. But regardless its source, IA’s author (Ed Wallace) takes that source image, adjusts its various properties, and saves resulting image as a unique file on the IA server with a filename of Wallace’s choosing. The result of this process is the image that is seen on the Inside Automotive news aggregation page.

When viewing a web page, one is not normally viewing a single file. The browser presents a composite view of text files and image files, among other possibilities. So, when viewing the IA website within the browser, the text and images are combined to present a view such as what follows:

[EXPAND]

When linking to a story about Justice Thomas, Ed Wallace has repeatedly embedded the racial slur “Uncle Tom” within the filename of the image that Wallace publishes on the Inside Automotive web site. These image filenames are not visible with normal viewing of the IA page with a browser. One must inspect the page’s source code to expose the filenames.

Uncle Tom in Real-Life – A Brave Man and Leader

Not only is the Uncle Tom slur racist, it is also is wildly inaccurate. The above Washington Post editorial makes this point, but a sitcom from the 1970’s conveys the same message more effectively.

The Jeffersons (S1, E7)
“Lionel Cries Uncle”

Uncle Ward
“Tell me something, George. You like to use the words ‘Uncle Tom’ a lot.”

George Jefferson
“Only when it fits.”

Uncle Ward
“Do you know who Uncle Tom really was?”

George Jefferson
“Sure he was that dumb *** that used to thank Simon Legree for whipping him.”

Uncle Ward
“Wrong. That's another one of those lies about our people that has been accepted as truth.”

George Jefferson
“Who was he then? Super Fly in disguise?”

Uncle Ward
“No George… In real life, Uncle Tom was a slave named Josiah Henson, who escaped and walked all the way from Kentucky to Canada with his wife and children. And there he started the first manual training school for our people.”

George Jefferson
“How you knew that?”

Uncle Ward
“I read. Sometimes I listen. You could do the same thing.”

George Jefferson
“Huh…”

Uncle Ward
“You heard of the underground railroad?”

George Jefferson
“Sure.”

Uncle Ward
“Well, Josiah Henson helped 100 slaves escape up north even before there was an underground railroad. He was a brave man. A great leader.

And I'll tell you something else, George…
I'd never call you an Uncle Tom.”

Ed Wallace likes to use the words ‘Uncle Tom’ a lot. But unlike Josiah Henson, Wallace is neither a brave man nor a great leader. When the time came where Wallace alleges that he could have changed the course of Texas history by exposing corruption, Wallace cowardly took the following course of action:

Wheels with Ed Wallace
KLIF 570 AM – October 22, 2022 10:51AM

Ed Wallace
“ Because I have a story that I have held for literally since 1998. That is a story of corruption in the state of Texas that I knew if I ever said it, back when the show could have gone south or take off, if I put that story out, I would have been the headline news at the Fort Worth... at the New York Times.”

[…]

“Unfortunately, some of the people involved are some of the most powerful people in Texas. And they’re still in very powerful positions.

So I had a guy write me this week. Are you gonna tell that story at the end? And I said, ‘Do you know something? I don’t want to spend my entire retirement in litigation.’

But it was… It may sound simple to people when you first tell it to them. It would change course to Texas history. It was that… And I just… So I did what I’m supposed to do. I said, ‘Here’s what I want you to do for me and I’m not gonna tell the story.’ Do you know why they would have crucified me? This show would have ended in 1998.”

Frank Kent Auto Group President Will Churchill
“So you’re telling it next week?”

Ed Wallace
“No”

Frank Kent Auto Group President Will Churchill “You’re not going to tell?”

Ed Wallace
“I am not going to spend retirement in litigation.”

[Some extraneous interjections omitted for readability.]

The real-life Uncle Tom bravely risked everything, including his life, to deliver himself and fellow slaves from bondage. Conversely, Ed Wallace served only himself. So, there should be an end to Inside Automotive’s casual tossing of this racist trope.

And there is something else; the verdict of history would never call Ed Wallace an Uncle Tom.

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