Uncle Tom
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English
Etymology
Referring to the character in the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Noun
Uncle Tom (plural Uncle Toms)
- (derogatory, ethnic slur) A black man who is servile towards white authority and accepting of white supremacy, a black race traitor.
- 1968, Norman Mailer, “Nixon in Miami”, in Harper's, §6:
- ...their master... was no ad for anybody but the most arcane Black Power, he was an old prince of a witch doctor—insult him at your peril—but the other ten musicians with their trumpets and snares and assorted brass would prove no pull for Nixon on TV with any Black votes watching, for they were old and meek, naught but elderly Black Southern musicians, a veritable Ganges of Uncle Toms. They had disappeared with Tom Swift and Little Lord Fauntleroy.
- 2014 April 2, David Remnick, King of the World: Muhammed Ali and the Rise of an American Hero, Knopf Doubleday:
- One of the less entertaining components of the Ali act was the way he tried to "outblack" someone like Frazier, call him an Uncle Tom, an "honorary white," when in fact Frazier had grown up dirt poor in South Carolina.